Better late than never

Well this post is coming a little late after I left Berlin for the last time - but better late than never.

Before Berlin we were in Bonn for quite some time and then Hamburg & Paris for the two weekends. It was so nice being back in Bonn simply because it felt like home. I knew I could go home, lay in my bed, talk to my family back home, and then get real rest! Looking back as it's been about a week since my arrival into the states, it still feels unreal. The world seems so small compared to what I imagined in my mind. All it takes is a plane ticket and a few hours to be in a whole new environment - and that's incredible.

What I learned most from this trip is to be confident & to not take where I live for granted. Europe is amazing and I definitely believe they do some things better than the states but as the saying goes - there's no place like home. By the end I was missing my family, my friends, and the routine of school. I was even kind of wishing for a real tested final in History of Medicine just so I could study a little bit (there's the BIMS student in me coming out!).

Berlin shocked me. The concentration camp, the Jewish memorial, the fürers bunker, learning that there were still neo-nazi parties advertising in the streets. It was all very new and unexpected. I believe germany does an incredible job at not forgetting the past. And they do a great job at educating their people correctly about the holocsust and Second World War. And that is why it shocks me to learn that there are people who still hold the nazi ideology. I mean, I guess I knew that this still occurred because I have seen racism first hand in Texas but even then it was attempted to be concealed to an extent. Here it was blatant.

It was interesting to learn about the nazi era and the Cold War all at the same time. Really compared and contrasted regimes and I learned a lot about how both ends of the political spectrum if used to an extreme can be devastating.

This trip was incredible. I was happy to go home but also sad to leave. I felt totally at ease traveling around Europe at the end and was even getting a hang of the language!! But I'm excited to see how this trip will impact the coming school year and the rest of my life.