When people ask me how Germany was, my quick summary will go something like this, with a smile: “It was amazing, but there was no air conditioning during 90 degree weather, so I’m glad to be back.” While that is largely an attempt at a joke, there is so much more to the story.
Germany was amazing, plain and simple. The food was great, especially the street food called Donors. The city of Berlin itself felt like a small town’s downtown area, only it went on for the size of a whole city. There were few true skyscrapers: instead, there were five to six story buildings with shops in their ground floors all over the city. These features made Berlin feel welcoming and homey, instead of imposing and foreign. The towns that we visited on the weekends were similar in feel, but most of those cities had more historical buildings.
For the last week of the trip, we were given the opportunity to travel wherever we wanted, as long as we returned to Berlin the day before we flew home. My friends and I chose to travel to Croatia. The people there were fantastic and friendly, even though they didn’t speak the best English, the beaches there were fantastic, even though they didn’t feature sand, and the natural parks there were some of the most beautiful things I have ever seen.
If given the opportunity to go go on this program again, I would do so in a heartbeat.