Towards the end of the Christmas term, it was finally time for our Marlborough German exchange students from Years 8, 9 and 10, to travel to Cologne to be reunited with their partners and take their turn to stay with a German family. Students enjoyed a wide variety of day trips and sightseeing. This time it included a trip to the Unesco world heritage site that is the Aachen cathedral and a visit to a family bakery producing the local 'printen', a very special local type of gingerbread style Christmas bakes. They also sat in the middle of Germany's biggest advent wreath and toured the football stadium of FC Cologne.

 

Due to a generous grant under the Turing scheme we were able to take our programme to the next level and enable an additional 18 Marlborough students from Years 10, 11 and 13 to join us in Cologne for the second part of the exchange week.   On the penultimate day in Cologne, students visited our partner school and went to five lessons accompanying a German student.

 

This concludes our German exchange adventures for this academic year. The next exchange takes place in November and December 2025, applications will be opened in March for current KS3 classes and will be widely advertised on Class Charts and in German lessons.