Preferred book carrying devices in German Gymnasiums?

[ceruleanblues]

I have a student in the 11th year of a German Gymnasium. I've been able to get most of my information from the internet, but I'm stuck on how she might carry her stuff to school. Bookbag? Backpack? Are books/notebooks left at school?

Comments

[theguindo]

I'm not too sure about Gymnasium but I recall from German class that students in high school aren't too shy about backpacks. I'd think, just like in America, that it'd carry over into college.

[dragonsblog]

As I recall, my German exchange partner carried a backpack. I guess most kids did. Nothing stands out in my memory either way. I know she usually had one. It was like...the last two weeks of school, so they didn't have much work. (They were watching Donald Duck in math class. It was special.) I assume stuff is carried to and from school. Hopefully someone can chime in with more definitive details.

Damn, now I'm pining for some good german pretzels. Mmmmm.

[onlyemarie]

I attended Gymnasium my junior year. Backpacks or book bags, either one. They do, however, get to keep all of their books and supplies in their desk at school, as people stay in one classroom all day and the teachers circulate around the school.

[amnesia_ride]

not in 11th grade. past grade 10 you change rooms as well (:

[lyorn]

Depends strongly. 16 Bundeslaender (roughly "Federal States"), 16 different systems, kept barely compatible. Some schools have lockers, some don't. Until now I have never heard of anyone from 5th grade (9-10 years) onward who ever spent as much as half their school week in the same classroom. (Rooms cost money.) A backback makes lots of sense because usually you are schlepping five kilos or more of books all around school. (And in some cases all around town, if your Gymnasium doesn't have enough classrooms, or no computer lab, or no gym.)

[swedish15]

Exactly. Rural Rheinland-Pfalz had me carrying the roughly 10 kilograms of backpack around the entire day; no lockers, or similar. Since all books were owned by the pupils, and therefore carried by them, this got tedious, especially if one of the books was an atlas.

[doro_chan]

Well, personally, I always used a backpack, but bigger bags are about as common as well. It really depends on how much stuff you carry with you (one guy always carried all his books, eleven in total).

In my school, you could use lockers, but few really did. You just left the stuff you did not need at home. Like your biology book if you did not have biology that day. We had to change rooms quite a lot, by the way. It depends on where in Germany this takes place. In Lower Saxony, the course system (where you don't have classes or classrooms) starts in 12th, but I am not so sure about the others.

[nerdpony]

Lower Saxony?

Niedersachsen?

[doro_chan]

Yes. That would be the German word.

[nerdpony]

I always get really confused when I read about the Bundesländer in an English context, because I ALWAYS refer to them with their German names.

[comicstar]

The Gymnasium I went to was quite a small one and didn't have any lockers; you just brought the books you needed to school every day. Everyone had a backpack and 90% of those backpacks were a brand called "Eastpak". This was Hannover in 2003, 10th year. My Australian friends' host-siblings who were in the 11th year, from all over the Germany, had the same backpacks when we went on travel jaunts.

Hope that helps.

[dragonsblog]

My German exchange partner definately had an Eastpak bag that she carried everywhere. Light blue. Why the hell do I remember that???