Why Germany?...Again...
When I told my friends and family that I would be going, once again, to Germany for North Central College’s annual D-Term Trip, the first question they posed was, “Again!, Why not try some of the other countries like England or Ireland?”. Honestly, I couldn’t help but ask myself, why not just stay home and take an educational breather, save a couple thousand dollars and fix my motorcycle instead???...it still sounds tempting but opportunities like this are few and far between for countless people my age.
When I went to Germany last year with NCC D-Term Germany 2010, it was my very first time out of the country, (except a couple fishing trips to the Canadian wilderness which, frankly, doesn’t count in my book). I had no idea what to expect. Right from the “git-go” things got a bit wild for me as, prior to last December, the longest flight I’d ever been on was less than 4 hours to San Diego. Jet lag was something entirely foreign to me…similarly, so was being crammed into an airline seat for several hours since I’m 6’4” tall. As it turned out, the flights were the only parts of the trip in which I was even slightly miserable.
The main reason I chose to travel to Germany on that trip was because my mother has strong German lineage and she, herself, has never been to Germany. Aside from that, little else but the simple excitement of seeing another nation and becoming immersed in its culture lead me to sign up. That trip, however, left me yearning for more. I’ve never seen Germany in the fall, spring, or summer, but I can’t possibly imagine any amount of green grass, tree blossoms, and 60 degree highs bringing such a culture to life as inches upon inches of snow…in the heart of the Christmas Season. Chicagoans are chased indoors by cold, windy, snowy weather…Germans, on the other hand, bundle up and swarm to the Weihnachtsmarkts, (Christmas Markets). It is beautiful.
The most difficult thing for me to deal with, however, was the obvious fact that not every German speaks English. I had taken German in the 10th grade, (for my younger colleagues, that was the year 2000), and for a couple semesters at a community college but even that was a couple years back. However, being surrounded by people to whom English is not a second language…and to others, not at all a language, is something with which I am somewhat familiar. I had worked full-time for 4-1/2 years at a warehouse where I was forced to try and learn Spanish on-the-fly in order to communicate with those who came to America without being able to comprehend or dictate any English. To work with those who had perhaps a 2nd or 3rd grade comprehension level of English, I learned to rearrange/shorten/invalidate my sentences and lower the vocabulary level in order to better accommodate communication. These were skills which quickly became invaluable to me while I was in Germany. Drawing upon those skills and patching together my own “variation on a theme” of German, I found that I was actually able to find my way around and communicate reasonably well; I wouldn’t have ever known I could do it without getting my arse on a plane and trying. For this coming trip to Berlin, I will be better prepared to go, “Once more unto the breach” as I will further advance my German language abilities with German 201 in the fall term which will end only a few days prior to boarding the flight.
One obvious question remains, “Why did I sign up to do, this trip again”. The truth is, I feel as though I’ve only scratched the surface of what Berlin, and Germany have to offer. Last year’s trip focused on Berlin; we spent every night there, although there were a few day-long trips to other cities/kingdoms. The fact remains that the core focus of last year’s trip was Germany’s ability to come to terms with its unbearably troubling recent past from the flawed era of the Weimar Republic, to treacherous Third Reich, to the Berlin Wall, and how these people somehow ended up becoming a unified economic powerhouse. This 2011 trip, on the other hand, will be quite different; we will spend many nights in a couple other cities and kingdoms whereby I’ll see and learn still more of this fascinating culture. Even if Dr. Wolf made this trip exactly identical to last year’s and I wouldn’t be able to earn 3 more credits, I’d still sign up as there are plenty of things I wanted to see in Berlin but didn’t take the time to do, namely, the Berliner Philharmoniker.
Prior to leaving for last year’s trip, Dr. Wolf reiterated countless times that we would come to understand and learn more about Berlin in 18 days than we’ve learned about Chicago in our entire lives growing up in Chicagoland. Though I was initially skeptical of his claim, I learned that Dr. Wolf was right. In my whole life, I had never once spent 24 consecutive hours in Chicago, I’d never slept in a hotel in Chicago, I can still only name about 8 significant buildings in the whole city. After last year’s D-term trip, I spent about 500 consecutive hours in Berlin, 21 nights in a Berlin Hotel, and I can identify a whole lot more than 8 buildings.
I’ve ridden my Harley Davidson 60,000 miles through 36 of our Lower 48 United States…in 4 years. I love to travel and see new places and going to Germany takes me to a whole new level. Something else I love is history and Germany, being nearly 4 times older than the earliest settlements of the Americas offers far more Geschichte than the U.S.A. ever will. When most people speak of Germany, they don’t realize that they are talking about a people who have their roots in antiquity. With the victory of unified Germanic tribes against the Romans at the battle of the Teutoburg Forest in 9 A.D, the German people made their fist mark in history books…to the dismay of the Romans. The Americas weren’t scribbled into history books until nearly 1,500 years later. The wealth of history that lies in Germany is beyond the grasp of likely anyone. We Americans think that 1776 was a long time ago yet I, in Germany, set foot in a church which was built almost 550 years before Thomas Jefferson penned the Declaration of Independence.
That the Nikolai Kirche, built in 1230 A.D., was destroyed in World War II is in itself a tragedy, yet, simultaneously, an illustration of the strength of Germany. Of German strength and unity, I am very proud. In the past century, they have had a rather tumultuous history but, better than any other nation, they have confessed to their atrocities, suffered for them, and now look to the future, which for Europe’s economic powerhouse, looks brighter than ever. With that I’ll crib a line from Shakespeare in saying, “Once more unto the breach dear friends, once more”.
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