Wow! I can not believe our two weeks are over. I had the absolute best experience on this plus 3 trip to Germany! I am so thankful that I was granted this opportunity. Professor Feick and Claire were such a joy to travel with and made our time so enjoyable. Looking back, these two weeks flew by and each day more amazing memories were created. It has always been my dream to go to Germany and I can finally say I did! This trip made me fall in love with a new place and culture. I met so many amazing people and some of which will be going to Pitt in the fall. Everyone I talked to was so nice.

I learned so any new things and made so many new friends. Germany is very different than the US. One difference was that their cities are very old and have a lot of history that is very noticeable from just a glance. Their cities are also a lot “shorter” than cities in the US are. Not many of their buildings are too tall and there are not really any skyscrapers. Another difference is that their cities seem to be a lot cleaner, I’m not sure if this is because there is someone constantly cleaning or if Germans are more polite than we are, but there was no garbage on the streets or ally ways at all. It definitely felt much cleaner is Germany than it does in the US. They also do not have plastic, so any straw that you get is paper. Germany seems to be doing a lot better with being more environmentally friendly than the US.

Another weird little thing I noticed is when one day I went to the store with both American and German students. As we were picking stuff out, one of the kids started putting what he was getting in his bag. We all started freaking out and yelling at him and he was so confused. We told him that if you do this in the US it is seen as you are stealing something. He explained back that you can use any bag you have like a back pack to hold your stuff while you continue shopping. This was so strange to hear and witness.

Even though I do not know any German there was no issue with language barriers. Almost everyone, including the students we were with know English, they have been learning it since kindergarten or younger. This is where I wish we took more of an influence from Europe because we do not start learning languages until it is almost too late for children to actually retain from it. Sometimes I felt like the German students knew better English than we did.

I always need water and if you are the same way definitely bring or buy a water bottle to carry around with you. In Germany there are no water fountains and water is not free. The other thing is is that Germans prefer sparkling water over still water, so when ordering water make sure you specify what kind of water you want. The public bathrooms there are not free either. If you need to use a restaurant in a pavilion or a store you normally have to pay under 1 Euro just to use the bathroom, which is annoying if you don’t have coins or time to find coins.

When walking past restaurants there was a lot of outdoor seating, and when looking around almost every table had a smoke tray and people smoking there. Smoking cigarettes is a huge thing in Europe, almost everyone does and anywhere. On all of the packages there were kind of creepy pictures, either of burnt lungs or a baby to try to influence people to not smoke cigarettes.

I wish I could go back to Germany and Augsburg today! It was so so much fun and I had the time of my life. Again I could not be more thankful to have gone on this trip. This was such a good experience to studying abroad and learning about the automative world. I can not wait to see everyone coming to Pitt in the fall and hopefully one day going back to visit Augsburg!

Thanks for sticking around and reading my blogs!

Signing out, Lauren McCay