Maggie (Without) Borders: My Year in Germany

Last week, on Monday, February 5th, 2018, the Berlin Wall had officially been down as long as it had stood. The wall was up for 28 years, 2 months, and 27 days from 1961-1989. For 28 years, 2 months, and 27 days, Berlin was divided; split between competing ideologies and warring countries with brick and mortar. Streets were interrupted, families were split, communities were destroyed. With a wall. I have realized through my college education that US Americans don't actually learn all that much about the walls that divided what were once the Bundesrepublik Deutschland (BRD) and the Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR) . In my primary education, I learned about WWII (often) and you can bet that I studied the Holocaust multiple times over. Don't misunderstand me: it is incredibly important to learn about these things--but after that, we learned that there was a wall, and that was it. We didn't learn the unbelievable speed with which it was erected and then steadily ex...

Get it? Because I'm halfway there? Okay, so this post isn't at all punctual. Allow me to take you back in time to my perspective from one month ago when I was officially halfway through my grand German adventure... ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ *twinkly time-travel music* ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ So, it's mid-January and I'm officially at the halfway point. I want to first mention that I'm pretty proud of myself. I had lots of reasons to want to quit this experience, but I didn't. I had absurdly stressful times, excessive homesickness, endless frustrations... but I didn't once think that I was going to leave Germany early. No way. I've still got waaaaay too much to do here. Though it's still kinda sucky living in my gross dorm, change is on the horizon. I will be starting my internship soon, I'll move in with my host family, I'll see my boyfriend, spring is coming... the only way from here is up. I'm starting to realize just how v...

As foretold by the great program manual, all of us PPPler were required to schlep ourselves to Frankfurt for a week-long seminar celebrating the fact that we had made it through the first half of our year. I went straight from Dresden to Frankfurt, and arrived in time to meet up with the same PPPler from my language class in Cologne before the seminar began. It was so good to see them all together again, but it wasn't long until we had to report to our hostel for check-in. Since I spent a week in Frankfurt for the seminar and  so much  happened in that time, I've taken the liberty of dividing up this post into little sections regarding the city itself, the mid-year seminar, and how we spent our free time outside of the seminar. Frankfurt Frankfurt is located in the the German state of Hessen, which is fairly centrally located. Fun fact, Though home to what is the economic powerhouse that is Frankfurt, Hessen is the greenest state in Germany; 42% of its surface is fores...

I got some really exciting news a few months ago: one of my friends from Ohio State, Grace, was awarded a stipend and would be moving to Dresden! I was hype. Grace did CBYX in high school, and as a result, had been a tremendous help during my own application process. In addition to that, she's one of those super-driven, hyper-focused, alarmingly-enthusiastic people that everyone needs in their life to help remind you that you can always be doing more because hot hell, look how much she's doing. Hej du, Powerfrau. That's Grace. So Grace arrived in Dresden on January 3rd, and I got there on January 4th to help her get settled. After being appropriately excited to see one another, we wandered over to her sad, bunker-like dorm to drop off my stuff. I thought my dorm was bad, but at least mine was carpeted.  Grace had found herself living in an oblong, concrete cage, dooming her to grayness for the foreseeable future.  So we went to IKEA.  We bought... ...