Reflections

Days Abroad: 126

Countries Visited: 10

Cities Visited: 21

Languages "Spoken": 9
Currencies Used: 5

Pictures Taken: at least 2,000

IES Students: 61

Flatmates: 6

Bad Experiences: 0

I am now back home in the U.S., although it feels strange to type that. La Honda is obviously my hometown, but Freiburg was my home for five months. I got so used to referring to my apartment in Freiburg as home, waking up and going about my daily routine with my flatmates, and riding my bike along the usual paths. I can already tell it is going to be an enormous adjustment and it will certainly take more than one blog post to attempt to explain it.

I'll use this post to update everyone on some of the activities I did since my last post as well as provide some sort of overarching perspective on the whole experience. It's going to be a bit long, so consider yourself warned! After my bike ride with Mike that I wrote about, I became extremely busy. Not only were there lots of final papers to write and finals to study for, it was our last week in Freiburg and we wanted to live it up. I'm glad to say that we finished all of our work and had an incredible last week at the same time.

Last Monday, we went to Das Quiz one final time and enjoyed some beers and a 21st-place finish. It was amazing how people of all different stripes would come to this Irish pub in Freiburg every single week, completely committed to playing an English-German quiz game. Looking back, I consider those nights as highlights of my experience, and I wish I had gone every single week. We ended up going back there the next night just to hang out and enjoy each other's company. Even though we all had tons of finals, we rallied so we could have a great final week.

The next day, Wednesday, was also a highlight. It was the first sunny day in a long stretch of rainy days and we decided to take advantage of it. My good friend and I went on a bike ride around Freiburg and into the neighboring town of Kirchzarten. Luckily, he was able to borrow a bike from our other friend. It was absolutely beautiful with all the flowers in bloom and the green hills of the Black Forest. We came back by the soccer stadium and down the river, which is an especially beautiful area of Freiburg. We went about 25 kilometers in total - not too shabby, I think!

On the stretch to Kirchzarten

What a truly beautiful city

Wednesday night was also great. My flat had decided to cook dinner together to wish me farewell and to welcome our new roommate (a girl!) who moved in the day before. "Cook together" is a bit of a stretch, though - instead, Johannes cooked us a German feast while we provided drinks and a few Euros for the food. The result was a delicious (and nearly 100% organic) meal of traditional potato soup, Frikadellen (German meat patties, similar to meatballs), mashed potatoes, red cabbage, and homemade tiramisu. The food was absolutely amazing and we had a great time with everybody there together. After dinner, we played a few rounds of UNO and then went to a party next door that my friend was hosting. It was so much fun to go out with the whole flat at once.

Our flat! We're incapable of taking pictures where everybody looks good, so this will have to do. It was interesting not to be the only girl for the first time all semester.

I spent most of the day on Thursday trying to get work done before the opening ceremony for Model EU. I know I haven't really mentioned that before, so I'll start here. Every semester, IES puts on a Model EU conferences that takes place over three days. All the students act as either Heads of State or Foreign Ministers for each country in the EU, but a couple of people assume leadership roles such as the High Representative as well. I was the Foreign Minister for the UK, which is a role that allows for a bit of fun. The UK is known for being Euroskeptic, which is only more true given the recent change of government from Labour to a Tory-Lib Dem coalition. At the same time, the UK is a major influential player in European Union policy. We all got dressed up in our business clothes and went to the opening ceremony at IES on Tuesday night. That wasn't what we were really looking forward to, though - back in early April, the central IES Study Abroad office announced a contest to see which IES location could get the most votes for the best study abroad program. Our program director, lovingly known as Ulli, told us that if we made it to quarterfinals, he'd take all 61 of us out for cocktails at Kagan, one of the trendiest clubs in town. The entire group cheered upon hearing that, but I don't think Ulli realized how serious we were about to get. We all voted right away, got family, friends, and flatmates to vote, and dominated our way not just to quarterfinals, but all the way to finals! Unfortunately, the final voting period coincided with our program being stranded all over Europe without Internet access during the volcano drama. I'm convinced we would have won if we had Internet, especially since we only lost by 100 votes. Regardless, we earned our cocktails and headed to Kagan as a massive group shortly after the Model EU opening. Kagan is a great club on the top two floors of one of the tallest buildings in Freiburg. This means it had a great view of the entire city and the Black Forest. It was so much fun to enjoy free cocktails with all of our program, including most of the teachers. Nothing like seeing middle-aged Germans let their hair down, right? Afterwards, most of us stayed to enjoy some dancing before having to wake up early for the first real day of Model EU.

Model EU was pretty fun. We debated issues that are especially important in EU foreign policy, notably Afghanistan, illegal immigration, and anti-terrorism intelligence efforts. The downside was that we had to sit in the two rooms for eight hours a day, which was especially difficult for some people who had partied a little too hard the night before. Regardless, we had a good time pretending to be important on the global stage. Several different people came up to me afterwards and said how impressed they were with my debate skills, which made me really relieved! I was afraid I'd lose it all after leaving the debate team for a semester. On the last night, Saturday, we wrapped it up, took a few hours off to relax, and then people came to my place to hang out for a few hours.

Sunday was a bit exhausting because those of us in the highest-level EU seminar class had a massive paper to write for Monday morning. There was also the added pressure of having to get work done before leaving for the IES farewell dinner in a neighboring town. I worked relatively productively given my lack of sleep for the last week and then headed to the dinner. We went to a dairy farm in the nearby town of Hinterzarten. The walk up to the barn was really nice and pretty, especially since we ran into some friendly Scottish Highlander cows that came close to us/tried to lick me. It was an interesting choice for a final dinner, but it was great all the same! We took a short tour of the dairy farm led by the head guy who spoke no English. He had a translator, but I'm happy to say I didn't need one! At least I haven't forgotten all of my German yet. After the tour, we headed into the barn to eat. The food was basically tray after tray of meat products and homemade cheese (i.e. DELICIOUS). It was nice to wrap up the semester with an original and quintessentially southern German experience.

I wanted to take this one home.

My plate and one of my favorite local beers

Monday was both a fun and incredibly challenging day. The weather was really nice and most of us finished our essays on time, but the knowledge that this was the last day really weighed heavily on me. Even still, I tried to enjoy it as much as possible without being sad. We finally made it to the top of the Freiburg Muenster (the main cathedral), which we'd been intending to do all semester! The view was great and we had lots of fun trying to take a picture of the whole group with the self-timer. This was the best we came up with:

We could not possibly have been more American/had more fun.

We all headed back to our rooms to pack in the afternoon. I picked up a few things from the grocery store to bring home before getting started. Packing wasn't as bad as it is at Brandeis since I really didn't bring all that much stuff with me. I took a break for a few hours to have one final beer with one of my favorite flatmates. I'll have more to say about him and the conversations we've had in a later post. That night, I went out with some friends to a local restaurant and finally had some of that famous German Spargel (white asparagus) prepared in the traditional way. It was absolutely delicious and the perfect way to wrap up the culinary element of the semester. Afterwards, we met up with most of the other students in IES at one of our favorite bars to say goodbye. We enjoyed hanging out there for a few hours, although we were quite a spectacle by the end as many of us (including me) started crying. The prospect of saying goodbye to all the people that we've spent nearly every moment with for the past five months was just overwhelming. It took nearly half an hour to say goodbye to everyone when we finally decided to leave.

Luckily, I didn't have to say goodbye to EVERYONE at once since quite a few of us would be taking the same train to the airport the next morning. I checked out of room pretty early and said goodbye to my flatmates before heading over. It really sucked to say goodbye to them. Some people in IES never became friends with their flatmates, but I was really close with two of mine and pretty close with the others as well (even our new one who just moved in the week before). It's hard to believe that I won't be able to sit in the kitchen and chat in German or English with them while sharing beers and food together. The simple pleasures in life have always been the best for me and I'm so sad to leave the good times in my flat behind.

The train ride was relatively uneventful. One of my best friends helped me get my stuff there (he's not leaving Freiburg until June) and it sucked to say goodbye to him, but I tried to focus on getting my two heavy bags on and off the train without knocking people over. Most of the people on the train were on the same flight to Chicago, but I had another best friend with a flight to D.C. around the same time as mine. After we said another tearful goodbye to the others, we headed to our terminal and spent the last few hours eating chips and trying not to focus on how hard it would be to say goodbye to each other. We had spent so much time with each other and with the other friends in our close-knit group, which was fantastic all semester but so hard when it came time to leave. I somehow survived that final farewell with her and boarded my 12-hour flight back to San Francisco. The flight was utterly depressing, but there was no way to avoid that (especially given the super cramped economy seats nowadays).

So, I guess I've basically finished summing up everything I did this semester. I absolutely cannot believe it's over. I have honestly never had a better time in my entire life, and if the biggest complaint I have about Germany is that the dryers in my apartment building didn't work right, then I consider my semester there a huge success. I plan to write another post soon comparing life in Germany to life in the U.S. now that I've experienced both. It will also contain some reflections on politics and how my political views have evolved as a result of my observations and conversations with Germans.

All in all, it is incredibly hard to be home right now. I'm happy to see my family, but the change is already so drastic. I had to stop myself from doing things that have become so routine, such as saying goodnight, good morning, and goodbye in German. Even though my flatmates and I spoke English to each other quite a bit, we ALWAYS said those three things in German. I miss the sounds of people walking in the hall in my flat and knowing who was there based on whether they were walking fast or slow or whistling or not. I hope it'll get easier eventually, but it's certainly a struggle right now. I know some people are able to look back on all the happy memories and leave it at that, but I don't feel like I can do that because I'm not done with Freiburg yet. I don't know if I will ever be. Even if I never go back, though, at least I know that I have been so lucky to have such a wonderful experience. Thanks for reading this blog throughout the semester - there will be more posts soon! As usual, bis spaeter.