My name is Katja Strittmatter and I am 18 years old. I live in Kadelburg, that’s a village near Waldshut-Tiengen in the south of Germany.

At the moment I am at a school which concentrates on the science of nutrition. Typical subjects at this school called Justus-Liebig-Schule are chemistry and nutrition. Next year in spring I will have my A-levels called Abitur. With this certificate I have the possibility to go to a university or to do an apprenticeship. Because of these exams I often have to spend much of my free time on learning for school.

There’s not much time left, where I can follow my interests during the week. But this time I mostly spend on sports like aerobics and step-aerobics, listening to music, relaxing, watching TV or phoning my friends to exchange experiences and make plans for the weekend. During the stressful school-weeks I’m always looking forward to the weekends, where I can meet my friends. Together we do things like going on parties, concerts and to the cinema or we go shopping to big cities like Zürich or Basel. I earn the money, I need for this spare time activities by doing the paper-round or by looking after the children of our neighbours.

I always have a lot of fun together with my friends and we often learn to know knew people.

Our activities are of course depending on the seasons, too. In summer for example, we often go to the river Rhine, that runs along our village. Sometimes we spend the whole weekend on different places along the Rhine. There we do things like swimming, jumping down the cliffs or bridges or even tenting and having parties.

In the summer-holidays I usually travel to other countries like Italy, Spain, France, Great Britain...

In former years I used to go on holidays together with my parents and my younger brother. Today I travel together with my friends.

In winter I always look forward to one of my greatest hobbies: snowboarding.

In our region I have good possibilities to practise this kind of sport. We live at the border to Switzerland, so I don’t need much time to get to the Alps. In winter- holidays I often stay one or two weeks in the Alps in Switzerland or in Austria together with my family or friends.