The alarm came early. By 8 a.m. we were out the door and on our way to the airport, bags packed with souvenirs, dirty laundry, and two weeks’ worth of memories. Departure felt organized. Check-in and bag drop moved quickly, and security was smooth. The real test came at border control, where the EU’s new Entry/Exit System required us to go through biometric registration again. Having done it once at Munich on arrival, it went faster this time around. Still, it’s not a process you want to cut close on.
The nine-hour transatlantic flight home hit differently than the one over. On the way to Germany, everything felt electric with anticipation. On the way back, I was just tired, and without a window seat, I had fewer distractions. I worked my way through two Harry Potter movies and burned through my phone battery on games. It got me there.
Our layover in Washington D.C. was scheduled for two hours and twenty minutes, which sounded comfortable until customs swallowed two hours of it After clearing customs, we still had to recheck bags and clear security again before the domestic connection. I made it to my gate just as boarding started. The kind of close call that ages you slightly.
Somewhere over the Midwest on the final leg to Pittsburgh, I started taking everything in. I’m tired. I’m also genuinely sad to be leaving. This program introduced me to people, both German students and Pitt students I hadn’t known well before, who I can honestly say are some of the best people I’ve met. The connections we built over two weeks, sharing meals, navigating cities, hiking up alpine meadows we weren’t quite prepared for, feel real in a way that surprised me. The Augsburg grad students are visiting Pitt in the fall, and a reunion is already in the works. That says everything about the kind of trip this was.
But I’m also ready to go home. A few things I will not miss: paying €3.90 for a bottle of water. Paying to use a public restroom. Hunting for a trash can on every block. Sweating through buildings with no air conditioning on the rare warm day. European infrastructure is genuinely impressive in many ways, but it is humbling how hard it is to find a simple trash can.
A few things I will very much miss: the public transit. Trains that run on time and connect every corner of a city. Buses that are reliable. A system that makes a car feel optional rather than essential. Beyond that, the towns were noticeably cleaner, the architecture carried real history, and the pace of daily life felt less rushed. There is a lot that Europe does quietly and well that I kept mentally bookmarking to think about later.
What I’m taking home isn’t just a cuckoo clock I didn’t buy or two lucky mushrooms I did. It’s a different way of seeing things. I came into this program hoping to experience German culture beyond the surface level of tourism, and the German students made that possible from day one. I leave with a deeper appreciation for what thoughtful urban infrastructure looks like, what centuries of civic history feels like to actually walk through, and what it means to connect with people across a cultural gap you were a little afraid of at first.
