We recently spent a large part of the summer in Germany, starting off in the countryside not far from Karlsruhe. I’ve not spent a huge amount of time in Germany and was a little apprehensive about the language barrier (despite having a partially Austrian/Czech Heritage). I found it was fairly easy to ask basic questions and that most people are incredibly accommodating when they see you trying (struggling) with their language. It gives me a lot of hope for the future as I want to visit South America and don’t (yet) speak Spanish.
The German countryside is an amazing place to be. The pace of life is nice and slow and the people are incredibly warm and welcoming. Our hosts introduced us to public viewing for the football, showed us how they brew their own beer and introduced us to the village festival too. We got to explore part of the Black forest, run through the rolling hills and bike to quant wine-producing villages. The best experience I had was seeing a moose for the first time! Ironic considering I’ve spent the last three years in Canada.
After two weeks we moved on to Berlin. We got out of the east station and found we had a little extra time before meeting our hosts. So we figured we’d use some electric scooters to zip around and see some sights. There are literally hundreds of apps and companies that provide these and it’s a bit of a minefield to decide which is the one to use. After fumbling around on apps trying to add payment methods then getting blocked, then finding a scooter that wasn’t charged, we gave up. We’d managed to waste our time and hadn’t seen a thing!
Before returning back to the station to get picked up by our hosts, I thought we may as well poke our heads through the gap in this wall and check out the green space behind. It turned out that while we were fumbling and failing to get a scooter, we had our backs quite literally pressed up to The Berlin Wall! In retrospect we felt a bit silly about the whole thing, but very glad we at least had time to see and appreciate The Wall while we were there, albeit not for very long.
Berlin has so much to offer and really feels like the kind of city where anyone can be themselves. There are people from all walks of life and I especially appreciate the sheer number of vegan options available. Our home for the fortnight was in an area next to an urban forest, only a few hundred meters from the river for amazing running and views too. I have to say that the whole city feels very active, so many people cycle everywhere and it seems very safe to do so with the number of bike lanes too.
Funnily enough, even spending 4 weeks in Germany has shown me that there isn’t enough time in the world to do everything. But that’s a really exciting prospect, rather than a bleak one. There isn’t enough time for everything, so I’ll try and find the things that matter most to me in the places I’m most interested in.
Notes to self