(A famous German song, and one that was stuck in all of our heads the entire seminar)
Thursday, January 17th,
after a long and arduous day of staring at the clock, I boarded a train to Köln
(Or to the English speaking world- Cologne,) to meet up with the 49 other
American exchange students half a year after our time in language camp together. I must say, this was probably one of the
single best weekends in my entire lifetime. Not only is Köln an amazing city
that sits right along the Rhine and is packed full of amazing culture, but the
people I was there to share it with have truly became my family and understand
me like no one else at this time point in my life. When we all got in late
Thursday evening, the feeling was just about as close to coming home as it
could get. Sharing hugs with the people I haven’t seen for half a year is
indescribable. We all have seen so many beautiful things, endured a few
struggles, and overcame them all smiling and always ready for more. I am so
lucky to have such an awesome support group.
We stayed in a youth hostel a short
U-Bahn ride from downtown Köln. It is actually quite nice to write this blog
and not to have to orientate it, because I have had quite the difficult time
pronouncing the German “ö.” Any of my German friends reading this are probably
chuckling from me making a fool of myself during my many attempts at unsuccessfully
manipulating my mouth to form whatever sound it requires.
A lot of the Seminar was filled
with, you guessed it, seminars. We would meet up a few times a day and discuss
topics ranging from our experiences so far, to advice we want to give to future
CBYX’ers, to our plans with meeting the Bundestag in Berlin. These were 100% in
German, and it was really fun to finally be able to speak with our language
camp teachers and show them how much we’ve learned.
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| Group photo in Bonn. My language camp teacher, Rolf, is throwing snowballs at us from the bottom ;) |
While
searching for lunch we found a restaurant titled “Tacos.” So naturally, we were
all pretty excited to satisfy our Mexican food craving. Unfortunately, the
restaurant did not have any tacos on the menu. I had an extremely “Mexican
Style” quesadilla that consisted of potatoes and corn, and somehow, no cheese.
Nevertheless we all had a pretty good meal. J
The second
half of the day we went to a German history museum that turned out to be
surprisingly cool. It covered a lot of the history between the GDR and FRG, and
reunification of Germany. I’ve been learning about all of this in my history
class and it was fun to see all of the elements in a more hands on environment.
We also had the tour in German, and I understood the entire thing.
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| From the top, absolutely gorgeous |
The second
day we had the morning to explore Köln. We
started by climbing up to the top of the Kölner Dom, the highest Cathedral in
Europe. After a long, long, climb we reached the top to discover an absolutely
amazing view from the top of the city and the Rhine. After that we went to the
chocolate factory museum. At this point we were all pretty pooped and quite
honestly a bit over filled with information. We may be student ambassadors, but
everybody has to chill right? Well, we know how to do it. In the cafe of the museum,
which was filled with glass windows displaying the unusually sunny day along
the river, around 10 of us sat down and ordered 10 different cakes, passed
around assembly line style. It was like we enjoyed the variety of 10 different
cakes, with the calorie content of one. We’ve all became a little chubbier than
we were in language camp over the last six months. ;)
Sunday a
group of us began our day by going to the church service at the dome. I’m not
religious, however I have a tremendous respect for the service they put on and
am 100% open to seeing the beliefs of others. It was a really classy, catholic
service, and it was such a cool experience to view a service in such an old and
historically famous church. There was a
huge choir, with boys draped in long black and white cloaks, who followed three
men swinging a lantern-like device with smoking incense. They were singing in
some twisted and beautiful language, presumably Latin. The way it echoed
through the huge stone church was absolutely memorizing and wonderful.
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| "Fantastic Four-" Outside the theatre after Pitch Perfect |
The rest of
day was filled with seminars, but afterwards we were let off early to cherish
the short amount of time we had left together. After eating dinner, a group of
us went to go see “Pitch Perfect” in German. Funniest movie of my entire life.
I think it was just that we understood all the jokes in German, and they were
10000x better than they would have been in English. We laughed SO hard. And
provided a high quality surround sound for the entire theatre ;). When we got back to the hostel, a huge group
of us went out to go for a midnight walk along the Rhine. We all huddled
together and embraced the chilly temperatures, really wanting to embrace the
moment; knowing that tomorrow we would get on the trains and not see the
majority of each other till we meet up again in Berlin in June. We walked to a
bridge that illuminated all the city lights from the top. With snow lightly
falling over our heads from the top of the city skyline, we all threw snowballs
into the river together and made wishes. The feeling was simply magical. After
hearing one loud “plop,” we began to head back to the hostel. Along the way, we
got in just about the longest and most epic snow ball fight of all time. Wet
and freezing, we got back to the hostel
and after using my hair dryer to warm up, dragged nearly all of our mattresses
into one room for a movie night. We were pulling an all nighter. Well, at least
that was the plan. We all fell asleep within the first 5 minutes, actually. It
led to quite the rude and unexpected awaking in the morning. Monday. The
melancholy day we all boarded the trains for another half a year of full on
German integration. After a 2-inch snowstorm, nearly every train at the station
was late. Finally, I was on my own for the return home reminiscing the weekend.
A mix of happy and sad hit me, these people are my family and despite the fact
that we stay in contact, I miss them all like crazy. I got to see so many historical and beautiful
things over the weekend, but the best part was reuniting with the people that
know exactly what I’m going through. It was an absolutely spectacular weekend.
