We left for Maastricht and Aachen at 6 in the morning, a time at which I’m usually sound asleep or still up. Needless to say, I had a hard time looking forward to anything about the day. Additionally, my allergies gave me a hard time and so I ended up closing my eyes and listening to my Creative Zen throughout the whole three-hour drive there.

We had an appointment at 11am with a local realtor who had specialized on assisting students. I had decided that this was going to be the least comfortable part of the day; strolling around with an important looking businessman, having my dad talk shop back at him. The main focus of our trip was to find me a place to stay that was both affordable and inhabitable. Unfortunately, neither was accounted for by said realtor.

I’m not sure if that is just the way it is in Maastricht or if we just happened to go with the wrong realtor and the wrong websites prior to our visit but of the three places that lay within my budget (below 500 euros/$780 a month, all expenses included), only one looked remotely nice. And I’m not talking luxury here, I’m not talking about special extras - simply a nice enough place that anybody would want to live in.

Don’t get me wrong, the realtor was essentially a great guy. He was young, friendly, good-looking and spoke almost flawless English. So did his colleague who was even younger and drove us around town to look at the different apartments. But the places itself - I WOULDN’T HAVE WANTED TO STAY THERE IF PAID FOR IT. Let alone spend such a ridiculous amount of money on it.

At the third place, the current student living there stumbled upon us in a robe out in the hallway. I’ll spare you the details BUT IT WAS NOT A PLEASANT VIEW.

So, apartment-wise Maastricht was a disappointment. But the city itself was as beautiful as ever. The calm, broad river, the old bridges, all the cafés and restaurants and clubs and bars, the expensive designer stores next to cheap tourist spots - it’s so perfect, it’s worrying. I posted more pictures here. They are, however, low quality because I took them with my cellphone.

I had made an afternoon appointment with a landlord in Aachen - also known in the English language as Aix-la-Chapelle, by the way, which is confusing because, really, that’s actually French. She was going to show me two apartments of different sizes but in the same building. Although I had been so worried about Aachen being an hour away from Maastricht by bus or train and had considered it my last option, all that went out the door when my parents and I entered the building. At first glance it was already in such better condition than anything we had seen in Maastricht and at a cheaper price, mind you!

The two apartments themselves, though, didn’t look all that great either. They also didn’t have connections for a washing machine which was an important point because I won’t be able to drive home that often and so I’m going to have to do my own laundry. There were at least ten other people there with me to look at the places and they seemed a little more enthused than I was. I also liked the bigger one of the apartments - especially compared to the dumpholes we had seen in Maastricht - but it still wasn’t good enough. If I was to rent a place in Aachen, it had to be close to perfect because just the distance to Maastricht University was downside enough.

So my parents and I went on to the last option for the day. I had contacted this girl named N by email when I found her ad that she had posted just a day before and we agreed that I should come by to take a look right away.

And what do you know? Sixth time’s a charme, right? Her apartment is perfect for me. It’s right next to the Aachen Cathedral, as in ALMOST PART OF IT. And it’s tiny tiny tiny but it’s already furnished since she is leaving all her stuff behind because she’s returning to the place in March 2009 after spending one semester in Chile. This is great for me because it gives me half a year to see whether it’s a good thing to live this far away from Maastricht without having to spend any money on furniture or other necessities. Maybe by next March I will have made friends in Maastricht and we will want to all move together into a bigger place - who knows, right? This way, I’m not bound to sign a two-year contract and right from the start I have everything I need. I’m just more flexible that way.

The above graphic is both proof of my fer0sh PSP skillz and the layout of the apartment. It’s of course not very detailed and probably not very accurate but it gives you an idea. It’s a very cute place in a great building which, I think, is actually part of the original cathedral compound but it’s been fixed up, of course. Most of her furniture is from Ikea and so, obviously, I liked it instantly. There are a few things I found out but don’t care about (there’s no television, for instance) and a few things I do care about but haven’t found out yet (like, where I can find the next bus stop and how far it is to a grocery store and the train station) - but I’ll go back to Aachen next week and sign the contract and talk to N about the rest.

It’s so exciting, MY FIRST OWN PLACE! I hadn’t expected to actually find something yesterday but I’m glad it did work out that way.

On our way back home, and we drove back right after leaving N’s place to be back in time for last night’s Euro half-final Germany versus Turkey, we got stuck into a major traffic jam 10 kilometers (6.5 miles) long. There was no going back or forth. Four huge trucks had collided and lay across all four lanes, two drivers had to be air-lifted to the hospital and they announced on the radio that it was going to take until 9pm to clear the way for traffic. 9pm - at the time that was four hours away. 9pm - the game would have been on for 15 minutes. And after 9pm; after they had cleared the autobahn, we still would have had three hours to go! It was almost sickeningly devastating to just sit there, unable to do anything.

After about an hour, someone had the idea to get off the autobahn through a rest stop and although nobody knew if that would work, everyone - except all the big trucks - followed. Thing was, that now everybody was driving, or rather crawling, down those backroads and straight into another traffic jam who had emerged because police had closed of the end of the original jam and bypassed traffic this way as well.

So basically, THERE WERE THOUSANDS OF CARS WITH ANGRY PEOPLE IN THEM WHO WANTED TO GET HOME TO SEE THE GAME BUT IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE TO MOVE EITHER WAY.

We ended up having to listen to the first half of the game on the radio which was torture. Whoever thought that listening to a soccer game would be a satisfying experience must not be a person I’d want to spend time with.

But as we all know, all in all the game was great and I found an apartment so I’m not complaining, in case it seemed like I was. Oh, official moving in date is August 1, by the way.

So there’s tons of time left to be irresponsible and waste time. Goody.

Check out the other parts here.

Much can happen within the course of a whole year, there is always something. My year abroad as an exchange student, however, was even more eventful than any regular year would have been. Sadly, many things that happened in the very beginning are missing from my memory because of everything that has been going on ever since.

But I kept a diary in which I outlined my new daily life from day one until October 17, 2005. I suppose that by then, a good three months into my adventure, I had gotten used to my American life and many things didn’t seem worth mentioning anymore. Regular entries pick up again on November 10 that same year but continue only for another month. After that nothing about my High School Year is documented anymore. Not by myself, anyway. As easy as it is to recall almost excruciating details by reading one of these entries, it’s just as easy to forget the days I didn’t write about.

At the same time, there are certain moments, conversations, and sceneries that I remember as vividly as if it hadn’t been over three years already since I first set foot on American soil.

I can’t imagine anyone ever awaiting a day with more excitement and hope than I did July 27 of 2005. It had been a hot summer, filled with preparation for my year abroad and although the moment of seperation came crawling closer and closer, I don’t remember feeling shaken up about it. I was busy making lists of things to pack and buying random - as I would later realize, embarassing was a much more appropriate term - gifts to bring. I was in constant contact with Andrea and it only seemed natural to finally meet her and the rest of the Kentucky gang in person.

On July 27, a Thursday, I kept busy until there was nothing left to take care of. Everything was packed, I had my passport, I had my visa, I had EF travel guides, I had my flight schedule and even though I was more than ready to go, I couldn’t help but tear up upon walking out the door. Both my parents and, of course, my brother were going to take me to the local Hannover airport from where my plane to Frankfurt International Airport would leave around 1.30 in the afternoon. I suppose, it’s not surprising that I ended up crying a little after all, but at the time I hadn’t expected it. It came over me in one sudden and short wave in the realization that I was willingly giving up my daily routine, my room, my kitchen, my bathroom, and my TV but I found soon that it wasn’t because I had to say goodbye to my family. I knew I would see them again soon and, maybe even more importantly, I knew that I had only good things to look forward to. Although, obviously, nothing about my year abroad was set in stone at this time, nothing was certain and even my host family could always turn out to be terrible inspite of the obvious counter evidence underlined by the entirely positive feeling in my guts and in my heart; although nothing about this spelled out security, I had never felt as content and doubtless about anything in my life.

The drive to the airport took us not much longer than an hour. I had calmed down which meant nothing else but that I didn’t cry anymore. Inside, a storm was raging. My mom’s eyes looked alarmingly watery the whole way there and she kept turning around to me, smiling encouragingly. Looking back, I guess she probably needed the encouragement more than I did because as soon as we entered the airport, I couldn’t think of anything else but to board the plane, get the traveling part over with and dive head first into my new American life.

As I was checking in which appeared to be an endless, confusing undertaking, my mom went to the bathroom and when I went after her minutes later, I found her re-doing her make-up in front of the bathroom mirror, trying to hide her tears as I walked in.

Never having been of the openly emotional kind, I had trouble responding to her.
“Mom, what the hell are you crying about?”, I said.
“You’re leaving”, she replied, throwing the answer at me with an accusing tone to her voice.
“But I’ll be back.”
“In eleven months“, she’d throw right back at me. And although I did understand where she was coming from, I tried pretty hard to keep myself together and couldn’t deal with her tears.
“Today is a happy day, mom. Remember? I am making my dream come true”, I reasoned. “You are making my dream come true.” I handed her some paper towels to dry her hands. “And while I am very grateful for that, I need you to please keep your shit together, alright?”
“Alright”, she laughed weakly and we went back to the terminals.

Today is a happy day, I whispered to myself and smiled. I wish there was something more romantic to tell about the airport scene because it seems that’s the way it’s supposed to go; tears, love proclamations, over-usage of tissues - what have you. But all there’s to it, was lots of waiting, a hug from everybody, best wishes, me smiling with a revolting stomach and off I went.

I remember wearing my favorite dark jeans, the black belt with the silver buckle, my dark brown sneakers, my white shirt and a dark black sweater jacket over it. I had my hair blow-dried and brushed and wore my favorite ear rings and although only 16 years of age, with unplugged bushy eyebrows and handbraided bracelets supporting various English soccer teams around my wrist, I felt incredibly grown-up. The Lufthansa ground staff welcomed me with motherly smiles and as I stepped through the metal detector, it beeped and for the first but definitely not the last time on this trip, I was asked to take off my belt and step through the gate again.

This time, it did not beep and I diappeared through the glass doors into the restricted area while waving goodbye to my parents at last, and ahead of me lay a brand new world that included duty-free shopping, waiting areas with black leather seats and other equally sleek furniture and, soon but not soon enough, America.

At this point, I hadn’t fully realized that, time difference included, it would take another twenty-eight hours and checking in and out of four more airports until I could finally meet my host family in person.

As said before, my plane from Hannover to Frankfurt, Germany left at 1.30 in the afternoon and this particular plane was, albeit nice and Lufthansa-y, extremely small. The last time I had been on a plane was roughly six years ago when I went on vacation to Tenerife off the North-West African coast with my family, and that particular plane had been much bigger. I didn’t remember the narrow aisle, the snapping seat belts, the noise of the engine or the pressure when the plane lifts off the ground. Maybe I didn’t remember because I had only been ten years old when we went to Tenerife. But maybe, all this time, my happy, excited mind had subconsciously skipped the part of my dream where I would be thousands of feet up in the air. On the flight from Hannover to Frankfurt all I could do was hope that the transatlantic plane was going to be considerably larger and less bumpy and toylike.

At Frankfurt airport, one of the biggest and most important European airports, I didn’t feel all that grown-up much longer when two EF staff members welcomed me and led me to a large, chatty group of students from all over the world who, on that day, started their adventures abroad with a stop in Frankfurt as well. The EF staff was responsible for seating all of us on the correct planes to our destinations and while many of the others were to go to the United States just like me, quite a few were about to spend EF High School Years in Costa Rica, China and Australia or as close as Italy and the United Kingdom.

Out of thirty students, no fewer than half had tickets to America. Thus, I was rather surprised when only one guy named Jens actually had the same destination airport as me: O’Hare International Airport in Chicago. Just the fact that I was going to Chicago, and never mind that I was probably not to leave the airport at any given time, had me excited in a stupidly charming way. Chicago, to me, was a real American city and a large one, at that. Movies were set in Chicago, it was mentioned in televsion series and played an imporant role in the world of sports and cars and food. Unlike the small town in Kentucky where I was going to spend my High School Year, Chicago was a city people knew. Prior to my departure, I had always sprinkled this information about my trip into conversations in an attempt to impress friends and family.

“So, are you excited about your trip yet?” an uncle might ask and, glooming with pride, I’d nod my head.
“Yeah, sure”, I would reply casually, “In fact, I’m probably most excited about Chicago. You know, I’ll be passing through there on my way down to Kentucky.”
“Wow”, the uncle would exclaim, “Chicago, huh? That’s neat.”
“Well, they say it’s one of the most dangerous cities and airports in the world but, you know, personally I’m not all that worried. It’s Chicago, right? What can go wrong with that?”
Basically, I would try to play it cool when in actuality, I’d feel pretty intimitated by O’Hare upon arrival.

The flight across the Atlantic was as uneventful as one would usually wish any flight to be but at the time, it seemed torturous to me. We were in the air for about nine and a half hours and although flying Lufthansa’s economy class is more comfortable than, say, swimming to America or riding from here to China in the trunk of an old Volkswagen, my legs and back hurt after the nine hours were up. The fact that I had been up for almost twenty-five hours by the time Chicago slowly shifted closer on the little screen right in front of me, didn’t necessarily make things better. Nor did the realization that by landing at O’Hare, I had only made it through half of my trip.

Chicago airport was huge and confusing and, somehow, I remember it being very fawn. We arrived sometime around 9 or 10 at night local time which, honestly, didn’t make much of a difference to my messed up sense of time anymore. We, meaning Jens and myself, had a ten-hour layover in Chicago and had been told to look out for someone from EF for we were to stay at an airport hotel and catch some sleep. When we finally found three EF guys who, by the way, did their best to fulfill the clichés, what with their tennis shoes, huge lettering on XXL shirts and matching baseball caps, it was after eleven.

They took us outside to wait for a cab and only then did it finally occur to me that I had made it. I was here, I was in America, in Chicago of all places. I remember a white stretch-limo parking right in front of us and everybody around me talking American English and as I looked up into the dark Chicago sky and the planes flying across, as I smelled car exhaustion from all the SUVs waiting in line to pick up seemingly anyone who wasn’t us, I didn’t feel alone - although looking back it seems like the logical emotion to experience. I felt tired and hungry and I had needed to go to the bathroom for hours but being there felt absolutely right.

All that had taken over my life these past months, from working for a better grade in Math class to getting my visa, from goodbye parties to packing - it all was about to pay off, it all was beginning right now.

We met up with other international exchange students traveling with EF and the three guys checked their lists and although at first I still had the hope that they didn’t go through them alphabetically, I soon realized that I had, in fact, been left out. I wasn’t listed.

“Well, shit, there’s always one”, laughed the oldest of the EF guys and slapped me on the back. “But don’t worry, we’ll figure something out.” I think I managed a smile. It was probably good that I was so goddamned tired, otherwise I would have had a nervous breakdown. Feeling as dizzy and happy as I did, though, I didn’t have the energy to worry.

It took EF until after midnight to find a bed for me and when I quickly brushed my teeth before sinking into it, I noticed the rings under my eyes and how my perfectly blow-dried-into-shape hair looked awful and that one of my ear piercings had become infected. Wonderful, I thought sarcastically. But as I crawled into bed, feeling like stone and knowing that I only had three hours to sleep before I had to rise and shine again, rise and shine in Chicago, away from home, finally on this adventure, it all truly did feel wonderful.

That night I dreamed of my host family and what I imagined their day looked like, how - when I had been up for four hours the next morning - they would also get up and get dressed and have breakfast and take care of the dogs and watch some televsion and then come and pick me up from Bluegrass Airport. How, the morning after that, I would be a part of it.

To be continued…

I went on a trip to Bremerhaven on the German north coast with my uncle P to take my grandma to the cruise terminals as she is spending some time cruising the Baltic Sea with stops in Kiel, Riga, Tallin, Helsinki, Oulu, and Stockholm. I am so jealous, she always takes amazing cruises like this.

We left here at 10 in the morning and, as is expected when traveling with uncle P, didn’t use the autobahn until we got to Bremen. Although it takes longer to get places, it is also a more relaxed way of driving. We were listening to the country music I brought which included Keith Urban (DUH.) and Jake Owen (which my uncle does now want a burned copy of - again, DUH.) as well as If you are going to San Francisco and It never rains in Southern California. On top of that, my uncle drives a very, very old dark green Mercedes and we had a German flag pinned to the back window on each side for the Euro 2008. So, to sum up: WE FELT VERY RETRO AND WOODSTOCK ‘69 AND NOT COOL AT ALL.

But that was okay because instead of being cool it was just fun.

The Bremerhaven seaport is one of the most important ports of transshipment which basically means that there’s containers from all over the world and humongous containerships several stories high. Also, there were huge parking lots with hundreds of brand spankin’ new John Deere’s and BMW X5’s on them which I found particularly thrilling. After eating lunch and dropping off my grandma, we didn’t have any time to stay so I only took pictures while driving past things but I posted them here anyway.

Since we had such a great time, I’ll go with uncle P again when we pick up grandma and we’re also going to take my brother and my cousin Lisa. Only this time I’m gonna make sure that we won’t miss that night’s important soccer game (which is what happened last Thursday), what with it being the Euro 2008 final and all.