Frühling Deutschland Style

My entire life, I’ve had a bit of a jagged view on spring. You see, I am from Colorado. Colorado is often called the “bi-polar state” and you often hear people saying “Go home, Colorado, you’re drunk.” Spring is basically a second winter filled with sunny days that give you false hope it’s almost summer time. One day its warm and you’re spending the day in the grass drinking lemonade in shorts and flip-flops. The very next school is called off and snow is already three feet high above your window outside. Then there is one day in between the process where all the roads look like rivers from snow melting like great water falls. Then it happens again. And again. Till school is over and summer can finally begin. This, of course, is not the case in Germany. Germany tends to be more practical in most spectrums, including seasons. Not that I don’t like my crazy Colorado springtime, spring has just been extremely pleasant here.

Unlike the wet, rainy, cold and gray tundra winter, spring is filled with many sunny and warm days. It is also SO green! There are flowers blooming all around and buds are growing from all the tree tops. The air feels warm and a light breeze cools your off when it gets too hot. Biking to school every morning has became so much more pleasant and we are able to eat lunch outside on the deck most days. My host family has a garden filled with all kinds of fruits and vegetables that are beginning to bud. If the weather could stay like this forever, I would not be complaining.

Spring has also brought more than just good weather. I am really enjoying my last few weeks here. It is so nice to finally have most things figured out. School is much easier than before and I feel like my German has improved so much. I will be taking the AP German test at an international school in May, which students usually take after 5 years of German in school. I can keep up in most classes, and even had the third best test in my Biology class. I have lots of friends, both American and German, many of who I will probably be in touch with for a very long time. As it is, I hardly have any school left, May is filled with long weekends and in June I’ll be going to Berlin with the other CBYX’ers for our end of the year seminar.

In my last few weeks here, I wonder what it is that I will miss most when I get back to America. Will it be the every day bike rides over car rides, sparkling water with every meal, the trains and busses that connect me to all over Europe? It’s hard to say. Home is like a distant memory at this point; Germany has become my home. I’m also curious if I will have any kind of culture shock coming back into the states. I suppose I will find it all out in good time.

As nice as spring is here, I am pretty stoked to get back. I will still have my senior year of High School, and I will be participating in a special program my school does called Senior Seminar. With the program, a selected group of students are chosen who spend the second half of the school year traveling around the U.S., volunteering, hiking, biking, and finding out who they are and what the world has to offer. Words cannot describe how excited I am. I can’t wait to see my family and friends again. To spend my days hiking, tanning pool side, and babysitting to earn travel money. I look forward to whole foods lunch dates with my mom and playing fugitive on warm summer nights. Nothing beats summer time.

Springtime always brings new life, and along with all the blooming flowers and chirping of birds comes a feeling of conclusion. It is in the air, the feeling that sooner than later this chapter of my life will be closing and a new one will be beginning. There will be things I will miss and things I will not be sorry to leave behind, but either way the lessons I have learned here will stay forever ingrained in my memories and I doubt a day will pass that I won’t think of my time in Germany for a very long time.