Open Day 2013
Saturday, 8 June, 04.00 PM at MGS

More visitors than expected and a few experiments make Open Day a success

On Saturday, 8 June, the MGS invited all members, friends and the general public to the annual Open Day, a day of “fun and information”. The aim was to raise awareness about our Society and our work as well as to promote German language and culture.

After learning that on the very same day there would be a number of other events going on in Penang, we were afraid to have only a very small number of people attending our Open Day. But this proved to be an unnecessary fear, because around 3pm, when Dr. Schnieders from DAAD was starting our programme with his presentation on the prospects of studying in Germany, a multitude of people arrived. The upstairs hall was filled to the last seat and there were even some listeners standing on the stairs. As always, the audience was very interested in the first hand information about higher education in Germany and Dr. Schnieders had to answer a lot of questions.

Meanwhile, the upstairs talk was not the only attraction. A vast number of guests were queuing up at the cake stall, and a little later also at the barbecue, to get “a taste of Germany”. In fact, there were so many more guests than last year, that we ran out of almost all the cakes after less than an hour and all the sausages were gone by 6:30pm.

Over the course of the afternoon, besides the food, our visitors were able to get information on our activities, especially the German classes, from our office. They enjoyed the flea market, a car exhibition with two popular models by Volkswagen and children could use the field for playing football or badminton. We were also very proud to present our B1b class with their certificates. They are our currently longest standing students and have been learning German for 3 years. Well done!

Towards the evening we had two totally new activities, a bonfire and a movie. The bonfire was instantly surrounded by the children who were provided with dough for cake-on-a-stick and sausages to roast in the fire. One could tell that they really enjoyed it and after a while none of the sausages and nothing of the dough (more than 2.5kg!) remained. Maybe next year we should try marshmallows, too. At around 7pm, the movie “Küss mich, Frosch” lured almost all the children and some of our students upstairs. The guests seemed to have had a very good time. Many stayed until very late and didn’t leave until the last drinks were finished.

We owe a big thank you to all the helpers, and those who baked cakes for us. A special thanks to Birgit, who organized all the cake baking for us.