Alright so, it’s truly Fall now, but it’s been cold here in Northern Germany since early-mid September and man is it hard to go from the endless Southern Summers to real seasons again. I feel like I’ve been traveling every weekend, which I kind of have been: Berlin, Munich, Cologne, Bremen, Wolfsburg, Frankfurt and more trips planned for the rest of my time here. Not gonna to do much travel outside of Germany while I’m here, only to Milan and Copenhagen, but that’s alright.
Gotta be honest the first couple of weeks here was really rough, really just did not like it at all. And that’s not an indictment on Germany as a whole, just kinda small northern German town living. I’m used to having a very robust public transportation system when I’ve been to Germany before and just having a plethora of groceries stores to go to and good restaurants and a certain German diet and so that adjustment was rough. I was fairly miserable, didn’t really start enjoying the town that I’m living in until I started to travel to some other places and just see how much worse off of a situation I could be in. The grass is always greener until you see it, I guess.
I’m here to learn German so I’m only taking German learning classes – intermediate German and German conversations – but I’m also living with a host family. They’ve been really nice and really helpful to keeping me honest with practicing my German outside of class. So all good things.
Culturally I think the Germans are really interesting, they have this reputation for being kind of uptight, rigid, unfriendly rule followers and that’s true. But, they’re also the silliest, most unserious people I’ve ever come across. It’s very bizarre.
