The Last Post

I'm home. I've been home for awhile. We had gorgeous weather for the last day in Germany and even the flight was nice enough to be fairly uneventful.

So first, the three biggest changes or things that have been hard to adjust to since coming back.
1. Tax: Germany includes tax in everything already. I keep trying to buy things here with the exact change ready. That doesn't work.

2. I hear English everywhere and it strikes me as really weird. I guess I was used to speaking English still since I hung out with other Americans, but around me everything was still in German and now it isn't.

3. The little words... common words like excuse me "Entschuldigung" and thank you "Danke" still slip out because you say them all the time.


The top six things I've really missed about the US and was glad to come home to.
1. Free tap water. Never underestimate free tap water in restaurants. Having to pay for water is extremely annoying and really expensive over there as well. On top of that, it's often carbonated.

2. Drink choices. Germany has a million juice choices, but other than that, the choices are slim. Coke, Diet Coke, Fanta, Sprite. I very much missed mountain dew and root beer and I really missed lemonade (Germany's version is carbonated) for the days when I didn't want bubbles in my drink!

3. Free bathrooms. I'm not sure if paying for water or bathrooms is more annoying. Even going into many restaurants, there's still a required tip to get to the toilets.

4. 24/7. Not that I need to go to Walmart at 3 am on a Sunday, but it's really annoying to run out of milk Saturday night at 9 pm and realize you're out of luck until Monday morning at 9 am, meaning no cereal for the next two days. Sunday is a great day to run errands, and after 8 pm there are still several hours where it's appreciated to be able to do some shopping...

5. Food. I love German food (this features on the next list) but I missed pancakes with syrup, soft chocolate chip cookies, actual spicy food (German's have two taste buds, sweet and salty... spicy is a foreign concept to them), Mexican food...

6. German Efficiency (this being a thing I won't miss). The country thinks it's so incredibly efficient but it kills me to watch. Everything they do (especially anything involving lines and people-to-people services) takes 3 times as long as it would in the US. I don't understand it but it's the most incredibly annoying thing ever.



Top six things I will greatly miss about Germany and appreciated there:
1. The food. Specifically, knödel, spätzel, sausages in baguettes, German breads, fresh mozzarella sandwiches, Currywurst, pretzels, Butter pretzels...

2. The Euro- I much prefer the fun and colorful sizes of the Euro compared to the long and skinny green dollar. Also, US coins are so thin! It's unbelievable. They're so light they don't seem like they could be worth anything!

3. Getting textbooks out of the library. So much cheaper and such a better idea. $100+ for a book I'm going to use for 4 months? Really? And this on top of our tuition?

4. Traveling all around Europe on the weekend. Cheap plane rides to Pisa and Barcelona, and hostels to stay in... It's a much more travel friendly environment when you don't have to rent a car and a hotel room. And when everything's so close together.

5. The German school system. I admit at first I was wary of Germany's final exam counts for the entire grade. I actually missed the weekly homework and monthly midterms to make sure I was ontrack and knew what I was supposed to be learned. But after two semesters of it, I really appreciate it. It allows you to learn at your own pace. Struggling with homework doesn't cause you to lose points early on. I appreciated the extra time I had on my evenings and the weekends so I could travel and take part in things around Munich that I would never have had the time to do in the US. I'm not excited to going back to 5 hours of class followed by 8 hours of homework and studying every day.

6. Public Transportation. Not that parts of the US don't have it, but Munich has it down. I loved taking the subway everywhere. It was so easy. There was no need for a car. Between the subway, trams and buses coming every 10 minutes, there was always a connection to where I needed to go.


Anyway, tomorrow I head off to Urbana-Champaign to start my junior year. The Germany chapter is over. I'll leave you with a few last pictures. The first two are my room. I'd managed to quite personalize it by the end. The last is me in my drindl. :) It's the typical Bavarian dress and we found them on sale so us girls bought them for Halloween costumes.

But yeah, that's all for now. I hope you enjoyed following this blog. I appreciated the comments and support. In the end, I have to say, it was quite the year but it was worth it. So much about Munich/Germany/Europe is so different than my life in the US. There's a lot of these German/European ideas that I've adopted and appreciate much more than the American. Then again, there are a lot of things about Europe that just aren't home.