Germany 1990
This is a long one - so apologies beforehand.

I was involved in a German exchange scheme back in the late 80's / early 90's.

The 1990 trip came around and I found myself at 17 years of age, on a coach with 1 other lad (a 6'6" metal-head called John) and 20+ lovelies from Queen's college in Chester.

John had disastrously hosted a German boy called Manfred the previous year, which was the worst possible pairing EVER. Manfred loved his camera, didn't like talking, didn't like girls, didn't like what we ate or our music and in the spate of a week, shit his bed twice and was found by John's mother wiping his cock on the guest room curtains.
We didn't want to stay with him! We were told by the organisers that he was not part of the exchange this year, so things looked good.

We bought lots of duty free and sat in the back of the coach getting riotously drunk with the coach load of hotties, and it was somewhere around Belgium that the exchange lists were given out. John and I were told we were staying with Manfred and family. I tried to get the coach to stop and let us out near a train station, but the organisers told us not to be so stupid and constantly made it out that we were the troublemakers to begin with.

So the rest of the trip to Germany went downhill from there, and the coach pulled up to be met with excited girly squealing of old friends reunited. After about 20 mins and people drifting off to their hosts houses, John and I saw Manfred, his Brother and parents stood in a line behind their BMW on the other side of the car-park. We were gestured to go to them and carried our cases to the car where we loaded them in the boot as everyone else had got in without saying a word. We drove in silence to their house and were told to get our cases out, leave them by the front door and follow the Father to the lounge.

The Father pulled the armchair in front of the patio doors to one side revealing a large brown stain on the cream carpet; "YOU SEE THIS!? THIS IS THE BLOOD FROM THE HEAD OF A BURGLAR! I HIT HIM WITH MY GUN BUTT!"

I nearly shat.

The Mother then came in from the opposite side of the room carrying things out of our suitcases, brandishing John's boom box at us; "WE WILL NOT HAVE ANY MUSIC AT ANY TIME IN THIS HOUSE!"

I shat.

The two weeks following had us pleading with the organisers that we just couldn't stay there, we weren’t allowed out in the evenings to meet with the other people on the exchange. John and I were fed separately from the family (one night we got a pound of butter, two fried eggs each and a half loaf of bread for dinner) and the family (apart from the younger brother Autur) didn't want anything to do with us.

So complained and complained. And the organisers (unbeknownst to us) did three visits to the Family in the daytime to see if there was a problem - they were treated like royalty and were told that John and I were the trouble makers but nothing that they couldn't handle. And so we were branded.

So we started causing trouble, as no-one would believe us and enjoyed ourselves immensely on the coach journeys. We stocked up with lots and lots of drink, which Dave the Clayhead coach driver hid for us, and which we started drinking like idiots as soon as we got on the coach.

It was a fucking mess. Trips around stately homes, the Wasserkuppe in Bavaria and the Buchenwald concentration camp in Weimar punctuated by offensive outbursts by two drunken monkeys who couldn't find their arses with both hands. I tried drunkenly copping off with about 4 of the girls, so unsuccessfully that that the entire girl population stopped talking to me for the final week (he he!).

We even started escaping from the house at night, and to our surprise the 8km walk down to Fulda town centre one night was rewarded with their yearly beer festival. We somehow managed to drink our body weights in beer and stagger back up to Aschenberg pissing in people's gardens right back to near the place we were staying - to be picked up by the Police which the Father had called saying we had gone missing.

I could go on and on with the fine details of this disastrous (yet fun) holiday, but will finish the tale by telling you the results:

1. On the day we left both parents couldn't even be bothered to be there, so we were being picked up by taxi from the house to go to the coach. John distracted Manfred, and I spread an half litre jar of jam over his bottom sheet and replaced the duvet. We also managed to steal every single kettle and power lead to everything we could find in the house, and they're all sitting on the bottom of the channel somewhere.

2. I lost my job with the BBC. I was a junior reporter for BBC Stoke and was given an unofficial assignment to get 'something' while I was away and especially going to (the just about to end) East Germany. I was contacted by Roy Hill from Radio Stoke the hour I got home asking for the tapes of 'interviews with East German Kids'. What he got was hours of drunken ramblings and swearing from random people on the coach.
(Catchag "You know!....For Kids!", Tue 26 Apr 2005, 16:18, Reply)