My 12 days in Germany was such an amazing experience. I got to explore so many cities, delve deep into how automobiles are made, and eat delicious food.

The German (and Austrian!) cities are all so different than American cities. Let me go on a tangent about transportation because this stuff interests me.

I grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia, where a car was needed to get basically anywhere unless you liked 30-minute walks to the supermarket along narrow or sometimes nonexistent sidewalks. Public transport is sporadic and very limited. Buses or trains run once an hour. Biking is dangerous enough outside of the local neighborhood that my parents limited my range where I could bike.

Then, of course, I attended the University of Pittsburgh. At the time, I thought Pittsburgh had a robust public transport system. I just get on the right bus, and I take it to near my destination, where I can usually walk the rest of the way. The buses per bus line arrive about once every 30 minutes, but often multiple bus lines take you to the right place, or nearby enough. Or I can rent a bike or electric scooter to travel faster than walking (while having some fun!) But even then, it can take an half hour to get from Oakland to Polish Hill even though those two places are 2 miles away from each other. And most importantly, as a pedestrian or cyclist(/scooterist?), you need to watch out for cars, especially as the SUVs and trucks have large blind spots in front of them.

And to get from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania’s two largest cities, by public transport, I could: a) Take the Greyhound bus, which costs $50-100 and takes 6 hours, b) Take the train, which costs $50-$100 and takes 7-10 hours, or c) Take a flight, which either costs $200 and takes 6-10 hours (due to connecting flights), or costs $350 and takes 1 hour, plus the ticketing and security. No wonder people make the 5 hour drive instead, costing $40 in gas, assuming you get 30mpg and gas costs $4/gal. The maximum speed of any method other than flying is 70mph.

Contrast this to Germany. The cities are even more walkable than Pittsburgh, due to even more public transportation and the cars are much more restricted in where they can go. You don’t see wide streets in America with barely any cars in them.

German public transportation consists of many methods. There are buses, and in Augsburg, the trams are super convinient, arriving every 7 minutes. They all met in one place so I could get from the Universität Augsburg to the laundromat in 15 minutes, despite being in opposite ends of the city.

And then there is the train system. Taking the train is actually a viable way to get from place to place, as you don’t need a car to get everywhere. It is often faster to take the train even though by car you are sometimes on highways with no speed limit. To get from Augsburg to Cologne, a similar distance from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh except with one of the cities being considerably smaller, a train costs $45 and takes under 4 hours. And even the flights are much cheaper.

And then there’s the German food. I’m generally a picky eater, but most of the German food I tried I really liked. This includes bratwurst, currywurst, and schnitzel. And I can’t forget about the bread. It’s everywhere in every Bäckerei (bakery), which appear nearly every block. The bread is super cheap and it’s really good at the same time. My favorite type of German bread had to be the Bavarian pretzels. And last but not least, the ice cream was even better than American ice cream. It must’ve been the soft serve.

The only things that soured the journey were the journey to get there (by which I mean the super long flights), the constant rain, and on some days it felt like my peers ignored me and left me out of the info on fun stuff such as parties.

But overall, Germany was such an amazing experience. I’m so happy that I was able to visit Germany and do so many cool things. But I haven’t done everything I want yet:

1. Drive on the Autobahn. This is self-explanatory, I like driving, I love driving a sports car, but it’s a shame that I can’t drive it fast in America unless I visit an expensive track. In Germany, you can drive as fast as you want in portions of the Autobahn.
2. Go for a good hike in the Alps. Neuschwanstein didn’t count, because it was downpouring, the “trail” was a paved road, and everyone walked so fast I struggled to keep up despite being in shape. I want a hike where I can stop and admire the German spruce deep in a coniferous forest on my way up a mountain.
3. Go to an actual German party. Playing darts at one club with friends is unfortunately not a party. To be fair, I haven’t really gone to an American party yet, but I had a shot at doing this but it was missed.
4. See picture below. My best friend from high school has done this several times, and it looks so fun.

That’s it for the blog posts. As I say in my YouTube channel, SuperSpruce, at the end of my videos, hope you enjoyed, and peace out.