Maggie (Without) Borders: My Year in Germany

I said this before, but leaving Cologne was awful. Just as I was starting to feel settled in, it felt like I was ripped from my friends. We all promised to visit each other, so I decided to end my first month in Hamburg with a trip to the capital of Thuringia, called Erfurt, to visit my friend Marissa. Erfurt is about 6 hours by bus away from Hamburg. It’s located in what once was East Germany, but it’s actually somewhat close to the center of the country. It’s a fairly small capital city—the population is only about 210,000, which is comparable to Birmingham, Alabama. It’s surrounded by a beautiful landscape of low hills, forests, and farms, and a lot of the architecture is old-fashioned and elaborate. Needless to say, it is a far cry from a city like Hamburg, and a very welcome change of pace and scenery for me. Erfurt on a map of Germany. I arrived in Erfurt on Friday evening. Marissa was waiting for me with her two tutors and three other PPPler. We went immediate...

On my second day in Germany, I posted a photo on Instagram of some trees, noting how they were different than the ones in the US. One of my former coworkers, an international student herself, commented that she had noticed the same thing when she came to the US, and then welcomed me to life as an international student. This made me pause. I’m an international student? I thought,  I don’t feel any different. While at language school in Cologne, I was able to let this go. Given that I was surrounded by [mostly] Americans day in and day out, my status as an international student went largely ignored. This changed immediately once I arrived in Hamburg and started attending university. It’s amazing what a language barrier can do to you and your personality. At home, I was self-assured. I didn’t worry about people talking to me, and I didn’t worry about having to talk to them. Asking for help wasn’t a chore, and getting to know others wasn’t a source of anxiety. Now that I’...

Maybe you can tell by the title of this post, but moving to Hamburg was, in a word, terrible. My train left at approximately 6am, which meant I woke up at 4am to make sure I had everything ready and that I could get to the Hauptbahnhof in time. Waking up that early wasn’t bad, but waking up to a blank room was a little jarring. Trying to ignore the fact that I was leaving the place I had just started to consider “home,” I got out of bed, took the sheets off my bed (to make it easier for my host mom to clean), and got ready to go. It was as I was gathering all my bags that I realized that I have way too much stuff. In my defense, a lot of the weight was paperwork that I had accrued from the GIZ. Regardless, it was heavy. I steeled myself once more, finally wearing all of my bags, then realized that it was raining. Of course. Luckily, it slowed down right as I left the house, meaning that I didn’t have to try to carry an umbrella at the same time as all of my other stuff....

I didn’t think I’d be really super sad about leaving Cologne, but I suppose that it’s a good thing I am. While occasionally a thorn in my side, I really enjoyed language school. My class was so much fun, and my classmates made waking up early every day worth it. I truly felt comfortable and happy while I was there, and my German is so, so much better. I owe my enjoyment and education entirely to my teacher, Tina. She is definitely one of the best teachers I’ve ever had, and just genuinely an incredibly kind and caring person. I will also absolutely miss my host family. My biggest regret is that I took so long to get to know them. Of course, there was no way for me to know from the start what I should do to talk to them more or even if we would like each other, but I ended up getting on really well with both my host mom and my host sister (and the cat). I’m going to miss friendly, stress-free conversations and the feeling of being at home somewhere. I’m also going to miss occ...

Five years ago, my high school had a German exchange student, Wera. I got to know her really well, and we became good friends. We suffered through both band practice and teenage drama together, and since she left to return to Germany, we talked about seeing each other again one day. I knew as soon as I was accepted for CBYX that I was going to visit her as soon as I could! We finally scheduled a weekend for me to come to her hometown, Regensburg, and I could not have been more excited. My trip was the weekend of Sept. 22, which turned out to be perfect. All the other PPPler were going to Munich for Oktoberfest, which didn’t interest me. Going to visit Wera was way more exciting. I arrived in Regensburg late Friday evening. It was so bizarre to see her again—almost like the 5 years in between high school and now had never happened. We went back to her house where I met her (incredibly hospitable and kind!) sister and mother. We spent the rest of the night catching up,  a...

Hey! Long time, no see, right? Sorry about that. Between trying to enjoy my last weeks in Cologne/moving to Hamburg/getting uni all figured out, I've had basically zero time to give this blog the attention it needs. In short, everything is alright! I'm just busy. Now for the warning: I have typed a few posts in the meantime, and I finally have time to write a few more things today. This means that I'm about to post a lot of stuff.  My apologies in advance to your poor email. So... los geht's!