I started the first official day of Plus3 by checking out of Nordenburg at 8am and saying goodbye to Pitt. We took a private bus to the Pitt International Airport, checked in our baggage, and went through security. Our flight to Charlotte was quick and uneventful but when I got off, I did see someone with a cat which kept me entertained as I walked to the terminal of our connecting flight. We then went and got food before we boarded the flight to Munich at 4:30. Unfortunately, this is where things stopped being predictable. About two hours into our flight, right when we had gotten our food, our captain made an announcement that the radar was broken and we’d be unable to fly across the Atlantic. Instead, we would have to wait in the JFK airport until either our plane was fixed, or until we could board another one. At this point, I had only eaten about half my meal and I had to quickly scarf down the other half and prepare for the landing.
After about 30 minutes of waiting in our seats, we were told that the plane was not going to be getting fixed and instead would have to move to a different plane. We embarked on a journey from one extreme of the terminal to the other and sat there waiting for our plane. Originally, we thought we’d be waiting only 10 minutes for them to start boarding. But, 10 minutes turned into 1 hour and then 2. We played a bit of Among Us to pass the time and after 2.5 hours we finally boarded the plane at 9:30. At this point, I was really tired and for the entirety of the 7-hour flight, I drifted in and out of sleep.
We arrived in Munich at 12pm the next day. Yea. Time difference is weird. We were all super tired from the plane ride but we all still had a full day ahead of ourselves. We passed through customs and then had an hour’s ride to Augsburg. We then put our bags down and grabbed food. Most people went to McDonald’s but I didn’t really want my first meal in Germany to be at McDonald’s of all places. Instead, Nate, Jason, Oday, Ben, and I went to get Döner Kebab at Alibaba Döner which was really tasty and definitely better than Mcdonalds.
After we ate our food, we went back to the hotel and met Korbinian Knoll and Maxi who gave us an introduction to Augsburg and covered some logistics with us. After that, we checked into our hotel rooms, freshened up, and met up to walk to the Fuggerei. The Fuggerei is the world’s oldest still active public housing and it only costs 88 cents per year to live there. Our tour guide walked us through Jakob Fugger and how he acquired his riches and then how the housing worked. Overall, it was a cool experience and the entire place was beautiful and seemed like a great place to live. The gardens there were very relaxing to walk through and the whole thing felt like a small town.
After our tour, we went to get dinner at the Zeug Haus. I ordered cheese Swabian noodles and I sat with Jason, Liam, Oday, and Zach. It was pretty tasty but Zach and Liam ordered extra water which turned out to be almost 4 Euros each, which is very expensive. After we ate and talked a little, we went back to the hotel and got ready to go to bed.
The scenery in Augsburg is very pretty and also very different from the US. There are a lot more cobbled streets here and streetcars are literally everywhere here in Augsburg. Also, they stop for no one and almost ran me over. It’s not the biggest city, but it has a lot of tourist elements to it and a pretty big shopping area. It’s also cool to see the Turkish influence with things like Döner Kebab. I also had a few encounters in German. It was hard but it’s definitely a step to not look completely like a tourist.
It’s been a long exhausting day and I can’t wait to see what happens tomorrow!