There's a few things I've realized that all exchange students have in common, no matter how different we all may be. I'd like to share them with you.
1.) We are always hungry. No matter what time of the day it is, no matter how much food we've already eaten that day, we'll still be hungry. You think it's bad in high school, when you pull out a bag of chips or a pack of gum and everyone suddenly swarms around you and asks for some? Well, with exchange students, its a million times worse. Don't expect them to ask, expect your bag of chips or pack of gum to be grabbed from your hand and inhaled in .2 seconds by everyone but you. To quote Cal, my friend from Arizona, "I always buy two packages of whatever I'm buying. One for me, and one for everyone else to steal from me". Smart, Cal.
2.) We are always tired, but we never sleep if it means missing out on the fun. Our ability to push ourselves far past our limit of mental and physical exhaustion is amazing. Imagine a whole day of walking around a city for 10+ hours straight, staying up until 2, 3, or 4 am, and then waking up at 7. Now imagine doing this for 11 straight days. Never in my life have I ever been more exhausted than after the tour. Funny story actually (well, it's funny now, but it wasn't at the time). One night I was up late talking and learning Portuguese with Matheus, and after looking down at my phone and realizing it was past 2, I figured I should get some sleep. I didn't have a key to my room but one of my roommates had left maybe an hour earlier and promised she would let me in. So I knocked on the door.... knocked again.... kept knocking for about 10 minutes.... and finally came to the ultimate realization that I was screwed. I ended up sleeping on the extremely cold floor in my jeans with no pillow and no blanket. So needless to say, I had it pretty rough the next day when we walked around the entirety of Munich. But of course, I didn't dare miss out on the fun, because after-all, I'm an exchange student!
3.) A group of exchange students is a family. No matter where we're are from, we're all here together now, and no one will ever quite understand us and what we're going through the way we understand each other. At the last few seminars, I didn't think that I would ever get that "exchange family feeling". But somehow, cramming us all on a bus and driving around Germany for 11 days gave me that. At one point it stopped being groups of individual languages, and it just ended up being exchange students. I feel like I've known some of these people for my whole life, and although we don't have a history together we are currently sharing a journey that only we can understand and help each other through.
So now, I will try my hardest to give you all a taste of my experience on the tour.
Day 1 and 2: Hamburg, Germany
We spent the first two days of the tour in Hamburg. I hate to admit it, but I was a little disappointed. As you can see, the weather was awful, and I was disappointed with the way the trip was organized because we never went in to any places, we only walked around and looked. Obviously, later it picked up and I had an amazing time, but at one point I actually thought that I wished I hadn't chosen to go on the tour. I think I will have to visit Hamburg again another time, because the weather was so awful that I don't think I really appreciated the city.
The lovely view from our hostel by day...
The view from our hostel by night. I think if you ask any of us on the tour we would all mutually agree that the hostel in Hamburg was the nicest one we stayed at. Hostels aren't generally the nicest places to stay, but this one was pretty cool.
What a lot of people think is really special about Hamburg is that there is lots of water throughout the city. Now when I look back at the pictures I think that it's really cool, but at the moment I wasn't too impressed. I feel pretty bad about this now, but I really think the weather had a lot to do with the way I was feeling at the time.
My Turkish "twin" and I.
Hamburg's Town Hall.
My Finnish friend Julie and I.
Day 3: Potsdam
On our way to our next big stop (Berlin) we stopped by Potsdam for a few hours to see this gorgeous castle that is there.
It's pretty amazing how much attention we draw when we whip our our flags for a group picture. In Berlin at the Brandenburg Tor when we did this, every single person in the square stopped and looked, and a lot of people took pictures or asked if they could take pictures with us. Exchange students are powerful, I'm telling you.
We take history very seriously.
Like I said.
Day 3, 4, and 5: BERLIN
I'm writing Berlin in all caps because it was the funnest stop of the tour. Another thing that disappointed me in Hamburg was that we had so much free time we literally didn't know what to do with it. But with Berlin, we took action. We made sure to see all of the city in the three days we were there, and at one point Ari, Lia, and I managed to figure out the train system by ourselves and not only plan our whole day in Berlin, but find it back to the hostel without using a map. There's no feeling like the one we had at the end of the day when we realized that we had just "figured out Berlin" by ourselves. I'm sure three American girls roaming the city laughing at everything was quite the sight, but we did it.
We got to see the Brandenburg Tor once during the night, and once during the day, which was really quite special. We got there on the first night of the famous light show held in October, which made the experience even more amazing.
My favorite part about Berlin was being able to see the wall. Like the Tor, we also got to see the wall both during the day and at night. What was so great about Berlin is how full of history it is, and seeing the wall really made the fact that at one point Germany was divided into two parts seem real.
A few of us found some pieces of the wall that were too small to take home, so for whatever reason, we decided to eat them. Don't ask, because I can't answer.
Ari, Lia, and I pretending to be hobos. Again, not sure why.
Me signing the wall! If you're ever at the wall, look for my name on the dinosaur's neck :)
The wall by night.
The Berlin Dome.
We got to go inside the government building which has a glass dome on the top that offers a beautiful view of Berlin. Ari, Lia and I are always joking that ROTEX's (the tour group that took us, who all are past exchange students) favorite thing to do is to watch us suffer as we climb a million stairs to any given tall structure to see a view of whatever city we're in. Luckily, this time, we got to take the elevator.
S/o to Julie for snapping this lovely picture of me freezing my butt of at the top of the government building.
The Olympic Stadium that Hitler built, where I believe two olympic games were held.
Ari, Lia, and I went to both the holocaust memorial/museum, and to this memorial to honor those killed. Each stone is a different hight/shape to represent the diversity of all those murdered in the holocaust. This picture doesn't even begin to show the height of some of these stones, many of which reached far over my head. Truly this memorial is astounding, and although the three of us were pretty sad after we left the museum, it was a really eye-opening and important experience.
Checkpoint charlie, the last U.S. checkpoint for those wanting to cross the border dividing the East and the West.
Berlin's famous Television Tower (before you ask, no, surprisingly we didn't go to the top of this to see a view of Berlin)
In East Berlin, the green sign that signals it is okay for pedestrians to cross the street has a top hat.
After being sufficiently exhausted walking three days around Berlin, Eda and I exercised our newly-discovered talent of being able to fall asleep anywhere by sleeping like this on the train.
UPDATE: I accidentally placed this in the wrong spot. I thought we visited the camp during our stay in Berlin, but I just remembered it was during Munich.
During our stay in Munich, we took a bus to a nearby town called Dachau to see a concentration camp. This was quite an emotional time for everyone, I think. The tour guide we had was extremely good at explaining to us what happened here, and exactly what a concentration camp is. A concentration camp isn't the same as a death camp, where people are killed immediately upon arrival. Basically, the goal of a concentration camp is "extermination through work", as she put it. Before coming to the camp I had no clue how everyone in Germany could simply turn a blind eye to the horrors that surrounded them. But Hitler did an amazing job of making it seem like he was doing the right thing. Obviously he wasn't, but our tour guide explained to us how he only made these camps seem like work camps that didn't torture those who worked there. While there were gays and religious leaders placed in the camp, and later jews, there were also actual criminals which made people believe that these camps were where the people who had legitimately done wrong went. Not that they deserved the horrors at the camp, but many living in Germany at the time had no clue exactly how horribly the prisoners there were treated.
During our stay in Munich, we took a bus to a nearby town called Dachau to see a concentration camp. This was quite an emotional time for everyone, I think. The tour guide we had was extremely good at explaining to us what happened here, and exactly what a concentration camp is. A concentration camp isn't the same as a death camp, where people are killed immediately upon arrival. Basically, the goal of a concentration camp is "extermination through work", as she put it. Before coming to the camp I had no clue how everyone in Germany could simply turn a blind eye to the horrors that surrounded them. But Hitler did an amazing job of making it seem like he was doing the right thing. Obviously he wasn't, but our tour guide explained to us how he only made these camps seem like work camps that didn't torture those who worked there. While there were gays and religious leaders placed in the camp, and later jews, there were also actual criminals which made people believe that these camps were where the people who had legitimately done wrong went. Not that they deserved the horrors at the camp, but many living in Germany at the time had no clue exactly how horribly the prisoners there were treated.
"Arbeit Macht Frei" or in English, "Work will set you free". This was on the gate entering the camp, as a way to trick the prisoners entering for the first time that if they did their work, they would be freed. Later, when they had spent more time in the camp, it was a way to mock those living there because they now knew that no matter how hard they worked, they would never be set free
A sculpture of starving bodies entangled in a fence to symbolize the fate of those living in the camp.
Every prisoner at the camp had to wear a colored triangle that represented the reason they were in the camp, as displayed in this sculpture.
In English, this statue reads "To honor the dead, and to warn the living". It was put outside of the crematorium years after the camp was liberated, to do just that. The twisted part of it though, is that it was made by an ex-supporter of the nazi party. At the time it was made, all of the artists and sculptures had fled Germany, so he was the only one able to do it.
Day 6: Dresden
We only spent one night in Dresden, but we got to see a lot of the city. Much of Dresden was destroyed by the war, so it had to be rebuilt, but as you can see by my pictures, they did a great job doing so.
Day 7, 8, and 9: Munich
To "kick" off (haha I'm funny) our three day stay in Munich, we got a tour of the famous Allianz Arena, where FC Bayern plays, one of Germany's most famous soccer teams. I have to admit, I felt like a traitor because next Wednesday, I'm going to a Dortmund game. Dortmund is Bayern's biggest rival, so not only did I feel the eyes of all Dortmund fans burning into me as I walked through the stadium, but also Elias's because Dortmund is his favorite team and he doesn't get to go with me on Wednesday (sorry Elias!).
Inside FC Bayern's locker rooms.
We got to meet up with another district in Munich, and spent one of the days with them in the city.
Sadly when we got to Munich Oktoberfest was over (pretty sure ROTEX planned this on purpose), but we still got to eat at the famous "HB" restaurant
Ari said "Take a picture of us, I want to keep this memory!"
Ari and Lia peed themselves laughing so hard at me after I tripped up one of the stairs in the hostel that was higher than the other. But then the next day.....
Ari literally tripped up the same stair.
Day 10: Schloss Neuschwanstein
On our way to our last stop of the tour, we stopped at the very famous castle, "Neuschwanstein". You may know the castle from this picture..... But sadly the bridge where you stand to take the picture was under construction, so we didn't see it from that angle. Still, it was very cool, and we got a tour of the inside of the castle.
Day 10 and 11: Rothenburg ob der Tauber
And for our final stop of the trip, we went to my favorite town, Rothenburg ob der Tauber. You might remember that I went there with my host family for a weekend, so this time I didn't take too many pictures and instead enjoyed looking at the town. We didn't have a lot of time in Rothenburg and ROTEX sent us off to do our own thing, so it was good that I knew the town and was able to lead some of us around quickly in the little time we had.
So, that was Deutschlandtour, as well as I can describe it while still recovering from lack of sleep. Before I actually do try to sleep (its almost 11pm here), I want to share one more thing that I can't even quite wrap my head around.
Before the tour even began, I told my host mom that I was already nervous to return home after speaking only English for 11 days straight. And really, that's exactly what I did. The tour was mostly conducted in English, and I spoke with all of my friends in English (well actually I did speak quite a bit of Spanish, but anyways), so the thought of having to come back to German didn't exactly have me thrilled. But the weirdest thing happened. The best way to describe it is to say that a light switched on, or that something just clicked into place. Before the tour, I had just started speaking with my host family in a little German. Not much, but some. More than just nodding my head, or saying "yes", "no", or "I don't know". But on the ride back home with my host dad and brother, I suddenly was able to understand nearly everything and actually hold up my end of the conversation in German. I don't quite understand it myself. I went to bed that night and woke up the next morning kind of in disbelief that that had happened, but what do you know, that day I was still able so speak and tell stories about the tour in German! Broken German, yes, but German regardless. And today at school, I spoke with my friends in German, when before the tour I literally spoke absolutely NO German with them. Absolutely none. When I asked that morning if they would speak with me in German, I think they thought I was a little crazy, but then when I could understand them and speak back I think they were just shocked as I was, if not more. I don't know what happened, but I'm glad it did. Sure I still can't understand everything the teacher says in Philosophy and what not, and I'm left extremely confused as to why I can suddenly speak and understand so much more, but I'm definitely not going to argue this one.
Deutschlandtour + the magic ability to sort of speak German = a pretty awesome October.
