Maggie (Without) Borders: My Year in Germany

In attempting to begin this post, I realized that I have entirely neglected to write about the 'Virtual Exchange' in which we are required to take part... I'll get on that, but for now, just know that we were all assigned a partner as a part of this Virtual Exchange, and that our partners were our German counterparts currently taking part in CBYX in the US. --- A couple months back, I got a message from my Virtual Exchange partner, Giovanna, that she would be coming back to the US before the program was set to end. She had a really rough go of it in the US, and decided that it would be wisest for her to come home early and continue to pursue her life and career in Germany. Being the lovely, generous person that she is, Giovanna invited me to come visit her in her hometown, Wacken, upon her return. She told me that there was going to be a music festival in town, and that I was invited to join her.  I'll admit, I was a little hesitant. After all, I had only be...

As I mentioned in the post about my birthday, my dad came to visit me! I was so happy that he was able to make it across the Atlantic to see me. We decided that we'd make the most of his visit here by going on a short trip somewhere else. He suggested Brügge (Bruges), Belgium, and I said, "yeah sure." We decided to take the train all the way there so that we'd have the chance to stop in Cologne. My dad had never seen the Kölner Dom (Cologne Cathedral), but really wanted to. I figured this was pretty easy to accomplish, since the Dom is literally right outside the Cologne Hauptbahnhof. Our travels to Bruges went pretty smoothly. My dad got to see the Dom, we got a quick peek at Brussels, and then scooted on over to Bruges. Our layover in Brussels. Because if you aren't eating fries and drinking Stella, are you even in Belgium? When we got to Bruges, it was a little cold, but fairly sunny. We walked from the train station to our hotel in the old city cent...

I just realized that I forgot to post about this trip back in January, so allow me to make amends now! So my boyfriend, Patrick, came to visit me in January. Being that we both love mountains and snowboarding (though he is, admittedly way better  than I am at it), we decided that his visit would be a prime opportunity for us both to see the Alps for the first time. We decided to head down to a town called Garmisch-Partenkirchen to experience the tallest mountain in the German Alps, the Zugspitze.  Garmisch-Partenkirchen is, as you might expect, waaaaay south in Bayern, or Bavaria, as you probably know it. It's pretty much in Austria. In fact, it's so close to Austria that one of the ski passes you can purchase in Garmisch allows you to ski on some of the Austrian Alps nearby.  Waaaaaaaaaaaasy down there. One of the interesting things about Garmisch-Partenkirchen is that, until 1935, Garmisch and Partenkirchen were separate towns. Hitler essentialy forc...

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...