For my family, birthday celebrations have never been a big deal. When I was a kid my parents would always organise a party for me to celebrate with my little friends and have very good memories of that. Last time I celebrated myself getting older together with many other people was at 17, few months before I left my birth country for my school year abroad. After that, I have always been somewhere else, travelling and treating myself (instead of treating others!).
As far as I have noticed, for my German host family birthdays are very important. My host mother has got a calendar where she has written the birthdays of literally all the people she knows. She even has your year of birth, so you can’t lie to her about your age! Almost every day she phones a different person to wish them happy birthday and to the her close dears she also writes letters. I think she is almost obsessed with it, it’s some kind of hobby of hers. Heart of the matter, this year my birthday didn’t go unnoticed. Both my host parents asked me months ago how I wanted to celebrate it and they were almost shocked when I answered I wanted to go for a day-trip to meet a friend of mine who lives in Hannover on the weekend after. Not only were they stunned because I would have done nothing on the day itself (on Thursday), but especially because I would have not celebrated together with “many” other people. At the end I felt quite pressured to do more and ended up having the longest birthday celebration ever. Honestly, it was very pleasant to receive so many attentions. The day before getting officially older I received some “birthday post” from my host-relatives, it was the first time in my life to receive it and I loved it! (How they knew when my birthday was is a mystery I’ll let you solve). In the afternoon of my natal day I made a cake and a liquor and cooked a delicious dinner with my host mother. After that, we ate, of course! In short, I made something different, with different people on 5 different days. New country, new habits! I highly recommend living together with other people, like in a host family, during your year abroad. It really gives you a distinct, more complete perspective of the place where you are, the culture, the traditions, the habits and the things to do.
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