Our Stories: My First Class Trip!

School days are the most wonderful time of life – or so we are told. Oftentimes, former students only genuinely appreciate them after they have grown up. But there is one event everyone remembers well: the first class trip. For many of us, this was our first time away from our parents, our first experience traveling cheek by jowl with schoolmates, our first time spending time in a group with a secret love. Many people smoked that first cigarette, had sex or shoplifted from a supermarket with friends for the first time on a class trip, or had their first furtive and secretive taste of alcohol. In youth hostels and rural school residences from Sylt to Hameln, from Emden to Usedom, from Rügen to Salzgitter, the first school trip meant passion and homesickness, flashlights in the dark and tricks played on roommates, long, awful hikes, thrilling and romantic close dancing at farewell parties. Protagonists from various generations from the 1960s up to the present narrate a variety of stories about their first class trips, and are reunited with former school friends, gathering together again for this production at places that are now filled with memory.

"My First Class Trip" is and humorous, entertaining account of former times with schoolmates and teachers, supplemented by private film footage and historic image material. More importantly, it is a piece of German social history: how have the school years changed, and with them, class trips? How have teachers changed, along with their interactions with students?

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