And here I am! Hallo aus Deutschland! It is a grey morning in Freiburg, but the sunrise from my bedroom around 7 was pretty fabulous (1 to you guys in the states)

If any of you want to send me mail, I just learned that this is how addresses are formatted:

Katherine Lloyd

Engelbergerstraße 41E/03/34

79106, Freiburg

GERMANY

41E is the building, 03 the floor, and 34 the room. So there you have it. Now you all know where to find me!

The two planes I took to Frankfurt were relatively uneventful, it was the train ride that really got me. To any one that’s never been to Europe (me at the time) and grew up in the US (and not in a big city) the European railway system is a real challenge. I cleared customs and followed the instructions from IES to a ticket machine to purchase an ICE (high-speed railway) ticket to Freiburg. A nice old German couple even offered to help me figure out the steps on the screen. The problem was, they did it all in German. So, 5 minutes later I was holding a ticket that I couldn’t read, and with no way to translate it because for the first time in years I didn’t have a functioning cell phone. First world problems, am I right? So, I lugged my bags to the station and stood around trying to figure out the schedule. It was about as clear  as mud so I asked a woman at the info kiosk when the next train left for Freiburg. I don’t want to go into too much detail, but lets just say that 2 hours and several other mix ups later I was on a train that I was positive was stopping in Freiburg. I might have been sitting in a seat that was apparently “reserved” (for whom, I don’t know, because I couldn’t read my ticket to see if I had an assigned seat or not) but no one seemed to care because the woman who checked my ticket just punched it and moved on. So, first “crisis” averted.

The first thing I noticed were the solar panels. They were everywhere. On houses, major buildings, car enclosures, you name it. Shoutout to the incentives the German government put in place for that. There were also community gardens in every town I passed by on the ICE train. It’s wild. When I landed, I noticed a few things that just seemed “off”. Being to Europe for the fist time is kind of like seeing everything through a slightly distorted mirror. There are street signs, but they’re different, people are driving on the highway, but they’re going just fast enough that it catches your eye (I hate to stereotype but… yeah), cities are sprawling puddles of lights, but they are set up differently, and from what I can tell, are less grid-like than cities in the US.

When I arrived in Freiburg, I grabbed a taxi to the IES center, where I met my fellow students. From there I moved into my “flat” that I share with 6 other students (one of whom is in my program, Anna, who I can already tell is going to be an amazing travel buddy). My bedroom is massive, and the kitchen and bathrooms are nice as well. We have wifi (!!!) and the chores are all shared. I’ve only met one of our other roommates, but I’m looking forward to meeting the rest. From there I passed out for an hour and then went to dinner with the group at an Italian restaurant. Our tutor Joel, kind of like an RA in the US, showed us around the city and we basically had a blast.

I don’t want to ramble too much, but I can tell that this is going to be a really cool group of students to hang out with. We have breakfast at 9:30, in about an hour, and then orientation/city tour/buying a SIM card and all that jazz. Classes start on Friday so it looks like we’re just getting to know each other and the city until then. Auf Wiedersehen!