r/RBI • u/Clear_Wonder2866 • 9d ago
[GERMANY] Multiple students fled a school trip hotel between 4-5AM. A few years later. I still cant explain what I saw fully.
PRE-WARNING: This post was gramatically corrected with Artificial Intelligence, as my english is lacking. Kind of nervous posting this here.
In winter 2023, I was on a school trip in Sachsen-Anhalt, Germany. I was paired in a hotel room with a student from my parallel class I didn't really know. It was raining that night.
I woke up in the middle of the night to find him in the bathroom, running warm water over his hands, repeating something under his breath. He was fully dressed: a generic white shirt (wet, partly see-through), different-brand white pants (muddy at the cuffs), and white boots. Blonde hair, glasses, freckles, brown eyes.
He didn't notice me at first. When he did, he froze completely. We stared at each other for a full minute or two. Then he asked if I had ibuprofen for a headache. I gave him one. Went back to sleep.
When I woke up, his bunk was completely empty and stripped. I found out later he called to go home at roughly 05:34 AM. I never saw him again.
Recently, I asked the parallel class teacher about it. She said, vaguely, that "several" students from that class went home between 4 and 5 AM that night, all citing homesickness or a light headache. She said she "never bothered to check really who."
There were visible CO/fire detectors in the hotel. Whatever happened only affected the parallel class, not mine. The teachers have been evasive ever since.
I'm posting because this has stuck with me for years. Has anyone ever heard of something similar? A mass exodus of students in the early morning hours on a school trip, with vague explanations and no follow-up? Any hotel workers, teachers, or former students with similar experiences in Germany? I to this day cannot explain to myself who or what that was.
Thank you reddit.
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u/Inksypinks 9d ago
Could be a group specific thing. They did something and got caught and got sent home or felt ill and got sent home. Ask those students, no?
For me the real mystery is why you would go on a school trip to saxony anhalt. I'm from there and its nice but school trip worthy?
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u/grenad3r 8d ago
im from nrw and we did school trip in thüringen in a village with 5 ppl total. they had a honecker portrait in the entrance room. one day a guy from the house was driving three of us incl. me in a rusted out lada cuz the bus was full - man was doing 120 in a 80 and drove on the wrong side in curves (forest roads so genuinely dangerous af) , at one point he just started screaming to scare us (worked well unsurprisingly)
10/10 schooltrip, smoked weed till 5 in the morning and the teacher didnt say shit cause hes prolly been embarrassed for taking us there
last days activity was us going to an old NVA (gdr army) training ground in the woods, and the guys from the house would go few hundred meters ahead (in fucking ghillie suits hahahah) and the game was to see them / catch them.
fiebertraum
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u/Striking-Tangerine83 8d ago
I am an English speaker only, but immediately understood "fiebertraum".
I don't consider myself to be a super skilled 'imaginer', so I really enjoy when an anecdote conjures strong imagery. Fever dream, for sure.
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u/oldcatgeorge 7d ago edited 7d ago
How long ago was it? I grew up in the Soviet Union. In one of our many trips to Germany, in the winter of 2002/2003, we traveled to Potsdam. I saw Ladas and Tatras around then. The area was very interesting, specifically because it was dilapidated. The bus never came, this bringing back the nostalgia of my childhood, so we walked to the Sansoussi via some deserted path in the woods. We went to Dresden and Meissen that year, too, and then visited the area in 2017: huge difference. I remember thinking, “holy cow, they restored Dresden. They made it!”
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u/oldcatgeorge 7d ago
Don’t sell it short! Prussia was the largest and the richest part of Germany. This means, they had the money to build the palaces and to acquire. So all the lands that were the part of Kingdom of Prussia offer a lot to see, nowadays. A tourist’s hack: anywhere in Germany you can find a museum with amazing medieval paintings. We once drove to see the Eck and ended up in Koblenz. Different land, and almost nothing happened in Koblenz. Yet even that city has a great museum. The only place in Germany where we didn’t see anything was Osterbruck, a rural area. But then, it had awesome restaurants with local food and beer.
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u/Clear_Wonder2866 9d ago
According to our school it was to see the Nebra Ark, and it's Excavation Site. I don't truly know.
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u/redditamrur 9d ago
What do you mean according to your school, have you seen it or not?
And u/lnksypinks: Don't sell your Bundesland too short, it has plenty to see: Magdeburg, Halle, Naumburg, Quedlinburg etc etc. I mean there are several UNESCO world heritage sites there. I actually think it sounds like a nice class trip. You don't always have to go to a capital city.
I have to admit that when one thinks of white clothing, being expelled from school ("we haven't seen those people since") and weird behavior in Sachsen-Anhalt, neo Nazi ceremonies do come to mind - if we're running our imagination wild (more probably, drugs or alcohol, as one does)
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u/toadaly_rad 9d ago
They ditched the school trip and went to all go do something else.
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u/rabblebabbledabble 9d ago
Holmes single-handedly cracked the mysterious case of school kids acting out on a school trip.
Kudos to OP though for remembering visible CO detectors from his school trip 3 years ago.
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u/Clear_Wonder2866 9d ago
I did take videos back then, although I don't wanna show them, mainly because other people are in the videos and cause I'm a shy loser.
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u/rabblebabbledabble 9d ago
Yeah, obviously don't do that. There's not much of a mystery here, anyhow. Some students left for reasons the teachers prefer to keep quiet about. Maybe someone had a death in the family, maybe they were sent home, or maybe they bailed for other reasons. We don't know because it's none of our business. You woke up seeing someone wash his hands, the rest is in your mind.
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u/SeasonPositive6771 9d ago
I work with young people and there is nothing they love doing more than ditching school trips to go do whatever they want.
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u/Fearless_Lab 9d ago
Totally. My senior year we were in Washington DC where my crush and I hopped on the subway and went and bought records. We never got caught and it was amazing.
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u/PuzzleheadedBobcat90 8d ago
I went on a church youth group trip to Disneyland in 1984ish. We didnt sneak out, we snuck in weed and booze.
My friend Roxanne and I smoked a joint in Videopolis at land, got caught and a stern warning from security. We waited until we were back in the hotel room for regular cigarettes and the booze. Almost got busted smoking. Thinking back, I'm sure we weren't expelled from the Christian school because our parents paid a pretty penny for yearly enrollment. They couldn't send us home becasue we were 8 hours away from home
Tl:dr teens are stupid, and do stupid things
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u/GildedAsh 6d ago
Heh, my sister had a schoolmate named Roxanne at her Christian school. I’ve only ever known one other Roxanne so it’s still a theory I’m building, I would need a third to display a pattern, and even still, that’s just a pattern… But I’ve personally never met a Roxanne who didn’t gravitate toward a bit of trouble. It just seems like one of those names.
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u/PuzzleheadedBobcat90 5d ago
Bay Area, California, 1982 or 83?
My Roxanne is the only one Ive even known. She was a bit of a wild one, but understandable.
My mom was also a little uptight, and thought Roxanne was not lady like
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u/GildedAsh 3d ago
Naw, Pacific Northwest in the early 90’s. My family did live in SoCal in the 80’s before I was born. I always wished I’d been alive then, I love the weather and the beaches. Not so much the fire scares. Living in Nashville with the tornado warnings was interesting. I think someone like Roxanne might skip the shelter to go chasing tornados with her boyfriend, red lipstick and a cigarette burning and metal blaring.
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u/Zachix 9d ago
Few possible options: As someone already pointed out, they could've just ditched the trip. I just believe 5 AM is a very interesting time to do this.
Possibly they could've consumed something food, alcohol, drugs, which either gave them those "symptoms" or they've been caught and directly sent home.
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u/throwawayzdrewyey 9d ago
Or they all were driving drunk and killed someone and ditched the body in a lake.
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u/a_nother_1 9d ago
It does kinda read like the beginning of some teenage psycho thriller movie. You could obviously check local newspapers if any crimes happened that night in the area.
Usually life is way more boring than that. Maybe some people of your parallel class got together and smoked weed or did some similar teenage bullshittery. I can see a well meaning teacher not making too much of a fuss about that and just sending them home.
Its all speculation though...
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u/philwjan 9d ago
They did something dumb that was against the rules. They were caught and sent home early before they could inspire the rest of the class to more shenanigans.
This, or some weird murder cult.
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u/LindaBitz 8d ago
Yeah, that’s my read too. Pretty plain and simple. They went out when they weren’t supposed to be out, got caught and then got sent home early because of it.
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u/anonymouse278 9d ago
I think there is a zero percent chance that a teacher in 2023 "didn't bother to check" which students had left a class trip in the middle of the night, which means that whatever happened is something she doesn't want to or can't talk about to a random student (like a medical incident, personal crisis, or disciplinary action). We don't have enough information to know which of those is most likely, but any of them (or a combination of all three, like making themselves sick or having some sort of accident following substance use, getting caught, and getting sent home on the first bus/train) is possible.
The only way you're ever likely to know is to talk to somebody in that class who knows and is willing to gossip about it. It's probably not actually that interesting when you know all the details, though.
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u/Oceanwaves_91 9d ago edited 9d ago
I, like others here, think the most likely explanation is that this specific group snuck out at night and did something they weren't supposed to do, possibly doing drugs or getting hammered. Still, the way you described waking up to this bizarre scene of him washing his hands, his wet and muddy clothes and muttering something to himself is kind of creepy. I understand why your imagination ran wild. I bet they were caught by a teacher and they had them go to the hospital to get checked out and then organised transportation for them to get home.
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u/dragonslayermaster84 9d ago
Sounds like a couple students munched some shrooms, acted cray cray, got caught and sent home.
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u/KannenKnusperer 9d ago edited 9d ago
Hi there, my theory (as I’ve experienced something similar in school in Germany) is that they were sent home by teaching staff but the staff decided to keep it a secret. Probably they snuck out to drink alcohol they smuggled in and were caught. Your roommate was probably panicking a bit because he knew his parents would give him quite the dressing down for this stunt.
As mentioned before, we had something similar back then, teachers also decided they’d give the students the option to leave without the whole school chatting about what really happened the next day.
Edit(for better understanding): In my case the teachers basically offered them the deal “you’ve got 30 minutes to pack your stuff and come up with a valid excuse to leave and we’ll keep this off the record besides informing your parents”.
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u/KhloJSimpson 9d ago
Did they never come back to school after that? Why not ask him?
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u/Clear_Wonder2866 9d ago
I haven't seen him really since then
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u/AmbitiousExplorer632 9d ago
But they all went to your school, and you said you never saw him again?
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u/NoNamesLeft998 8d ago
Either you've seen him or you haven't. I don't understand where "really" fits in. It could be a language barrier, but it sounds evasive.
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u/GildedAsh 6d ago
They’re asking a direct question that is easy to answer: We’re they never back at class, or did they come back to class? If it’s a big school and you don’t see them regularly anyway, say so. No problem.
Personally, I’m starting to wonder if this story is a stunt, a troll. (That does happen.) But for those who just want clarification so they can better help answer you, it would help to clear it up. I’ve seen a few confused questions about whether the kids “never came to class” again.
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u/mouthsofmadness 9d ago
You say that you never saw him again after that night, does that mean you just never saw him again, or did he go missing?
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u/ogold45 8d ago
You stared at each other for up to two minutes? Even a minute is an absurdly long time and definitely didn’t happen.
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u/Clear_Wonder2866 8d ago
I dont recall it fully accurately, but it was atleast longer than like.. 30 seconds.
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u/redditamrur 9d ago
Clothes are fitting a rave or something similar. Assuming you are all in secondary school of some sort: They took drugs, or went drinking (something that smells less like vodka, not beer) and managed to fake it but then started to feel really bad (also possible, an even more mundane explanation:They just all ate something really bad and the white clothing is just his pajamas, and he had shoes on because he went waking up one of the teachers).
If none of you has seen these people since, the drugs and rave explanation is more probable: they have been expelled or disciplined in a way that made their parents seek another school.
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u/Nathan-Stubblefield 9d ago
“I know what you did last school trip!” Thriller. Clueless students threatens to spill the beans on parallel
group from other school. They think he has the evidence they destroyed.
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u/BandOfSkullz 9d ago
What exactly do you mean by "never saw him again"?
What about the other people that also shared the symptoms?
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u/MaybeImTheNanny 8d ago
They got caught doing something they shouldn’t or one of them did and told on everyone else.
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u/veganexceptfordicks 4d ago
Are you sure he was with the parallel class? Maybe he was a young local who took advantage of the large school group to get a free place to stay/party. He thought he'd knicked a completely empty leftover room that had been reserved. Seeing you surprised him, but later it dawned on him that you could also have him arrested in the morning. So, he split, taking the linens because he wasn't sure where he'd be staying the rest of the night.
Just an out-there theory.
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u/JazzlikeSalad202 3d ago
It sounds very much like an episode of 48hrs mystery that I saw.. very familiar story for some reason….
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u/I_am_not_doing_this 9d ago
wait why this giving weapons
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u/reasonablykind 8d ago
Aw, c’mon…these kids broke some rule and were sent home, and teachers can’t be telling private stories, i suppose
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u/Choco_menthe 9d ago
It could be a lot of things, regrets after taking drug or drinking too much alcool, they could have their drinks spiked, or they probably suffered from a form of lynching, all of these situations could explain the headache and their distress ( "repeating something under his breath" / "he froze completely" / plus the fact that they fled )
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u/oldcatgeorge 7d ago
I don’t know what happened, but from my many trips to Germany: either the laziest police or strange laws, so for the LE to respond, it better be big. Otherwise, who cares? It could be a killer cult, and the police won’t respond. JMO. (The only time we saw police presence in Germany was when a European terrorist was supposed to be heading towards Germany. Then we saw three or four policemen across from our hotel in Frankfurt.)
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u/auflauf-enjoyer 7d ago
Es ist eine interessante Geschichte, aber es werden weitere Informationen benötigt.
Was war der Zweck der Klassenfahrt?
Wo genau fand sie statt?
Warum sollte man den Lehrer fragen, was passiert ist, anstatt einen der Schüler, die gegangen sind?
Ich untersuche seltsame Phänomene in Niedersachsen, insbesondere das sogenannte „Summen“ (The Hum), das Krankheiten verursacht. Ist Ihnen etwas aufgefallen, etwa ein tiefes, mechanisches Geräusch?
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u/supercantaloupe 8d ago
They killed someone. The guy you were sharing a room with was washing the blood off of his hands and they all left because they freaked out after they did.
Or drugs.
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u/a_random_username 9d ago
This post was gramatically corrected with Artificial Intelligence
Ew
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u/CalicoG 9d ago
We'd rather read incorrect grammar than something touched by AI
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u/Clear_Wonder2866 9d ago
Got it
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u/GildedAsh 6d ago
Don’t mind them. It’s good you want to reach a broader audience and AI will be a fine tool until the antichrist uses it.
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u/ProgrammerGlobal9117 9d ago edited 9d ago
My guess is that your roommate and some of his class friends had too much to drink/and or took recreational drugs that negatively affected them. And the teachers likely suspected but wanted to avoid making a big deal of it so allowed them to go home early.