After an eight hour flight from Chicago, I finally arrived in Munich at 9:00 am having gotten only two hours of sleep since 7:00 am the previous day. Immediately after getting off the plane I knew it was going to be a fantastic experience. Because I know very little German, all of the signs were impossible to understand, which made navigating the airport kind of tricky, but also fun. Having to figure stuff out as a group and try to ask people for directions was an interesting experience to say the least.
After getting out of the airport, we went on a Mercedes bus (something I never expected to see). We then took the Autobahn to Augsburg, which was fascinating for several reasons. First off, I realized that the roads and cars were extremely well taken care of, which is far different in the US. I also saw Audi, BMW, and Volkswagen cars, with almost no trucks or SUVs. A majority of the cars were also darker colors which made the traffic look very uniform and sleek. It was awesome to see the flying down the highway.
After the hour bus ride, we checked into our group’s hotel in Augsburg. The hotel was very nice but the rooms were definitely smaller than what is typically in America. After briefly unpacking, we met with the Augsburg staff Sonya and Marius who gave us a lot of information about the city and their university.
Augsburg Walking Tour
That afternoon Dr. Feick led the group tour through Augsburg. I really loved how clean the city was, and there was very little air pollution compared to American cities. We got to see a lot of cool stuff, such as the Dom and the Roman Ruins in the city. I was absolutely astonished by the Dom because it was absolutely massive. It really spoke to the power the church had during the middle ages to build a massive structure such as that without modern tools.
We then visited the Augsburg town hall. I really liked this building because it had the crest of the old Holy Roman Empire on the top of the building. In addition, the large room at the top was decorated with so much gold. The building was originally built a long time ago, however it was almost completely destroyed during World War II. It was really great to see it renovated and restored to what it was before.
First German Dinner
After the tour, we had a great German dinner in the Dunklebeirbraten. I made friends with a German student named Freddie. We talked a lot about the German way of life and about our shared travel destinations. I was really surprised how well we got along and how he and I shared a very similar sense of humor. We talked a for a while about politics in both our countries as well and again I was surprised to see how much we agreed upon. I was glad to hear that he realized not all Americans were Trump supporters because that seems to have become a common stereotype the Europeans have of us. After talking about the national embarrassment that is the US president, we moved on to talking about Brexit and how that is perceived in Germany. We both agreed that it was a really stupid decision and a complete mess. Throughout our talk, I was really happy with how similar our beliefs were and it was really interesting to talk about all of this stuff with someone from another country.