Last week was an interesting one in school – it was the last week before the Abitur (basically A Levels) students’ exams, so essentially their last week in school.

Before I go on to explain what they get up to in their last week of school, there’s one thing you should know. Germans, as a rule, don’t really do fancy dress as often us Brits do. While you do have your ‘Motto Parties’ in Uni (normally ‘Fetisch’ theme in my experience!), fancy dress club nights are a rarity. For example, when  I went to a Lady Gaga themed night last weekend in Augsburg, where free drinks were promised for those dressed up as Gaga, there were still no German Gagas running about, except for those employed by the club. Whereas you know that theme in a British club would have everyone donning a blonde wig and a leotard! The only time I’ve seen German fancy dress in force is at Karneval… So, in essence, Germans dress up rarely, but when they do, they do it well.

So after having thought that Karneval was the only time that Germans dress up, I found out that Abi-Feier Woche is another. The students choose a different theme each day, and then unleash chaos on the school in the form of pranks, refusing to go to lessons, interrupting other students’ lessons and basically getting their revenge on the teachers! I asked some of my Klasse 9 students about it, and they told me that it’s pretty much the highlight of your school years, this one week where you can pretty much do what you want and cause havoc for the teachers. The week culminates in ‘Khaos Tag’ on the Friday, where everything is just mental. Three years ago, according to the students, someone managed to get a cow in front of the staff room on Khaos Tag. Now I’m gutted my day off is on a Friday! Fancy dress themes ranged from ‘Azi Tag’ (basically German Chavs) to Superheroes, but my favourite came from another school in the area, which involved each student wearing white overalls, painting themselves and spraying their hair white while donning a pair of sunglasses with those silly noses and moustaches stuck on so that none of the teachers knew who was who.

Of course, I was completely out of the loop and had no idea this was happening. So cue my Klasse 6 lesson on Tuesday, I notice the door was wedged open with a t-shirt. All the doors in my school have to be opened with a master key, but this is a bit of a German thing too so I thought nothing of it. Turns out, one of the kids had wedged the door open so that the Abi-students could come in and go a bit mental in my lesson! It was a bit of an… oh dear moment, mostly because the task I had for them was written, and there’s no way you’re going to motivate 15 12 year olds to write about their pretend holiday in Wales when they have all these Abi-students sitting next to them in costume… so I just got them all to count in Welsh, which seemed to go down well!

I’m annoyed I didn’t think to get more photos, but I did get one from when they stormed my classroom at least :

Really jealous I never got to do anything like this in school!