T Minus 26 Days Until Liftoff

Disclaimer: You can only imagine my delight at discovering that residents of Hamburg are actually called “Hamburgers”. We will have to wait and see if I am still as pleased with my food pun a year from now, when I’ve had to explain to people why this is the title of my blog (The inevitable will happen: “I JUST REALLY LIKE MEAT AND ALSO PUNS OKAY?!”).

 

I am leaving for Germany in less than a month.

I am excited, but mostly terrified.

Though this might seem an appropriate reaction for some (I probably should be scared about moving to a country that I have never been to before, where I am expected to speak a language that I am not all that good at speaking, and then teach a bunch of high schoolers English, when I swear that sometimes I am not all that good at speaking English either [side note: also I kind of hate high schoolers]), for me this reaction is out of the ordinary. I have a history of jumping headfirst into things without a second thought, without worrying about the outcomes…or the potential difficulties…or the finances. Spend all the money I had saved up working two jobs in high school in order to travel in Europe with 25 other high schoolers that I had never met before? Sure! Move to Italy for a semester with a certifiably insane roommate, when neither of you speak Italian and both of you want to kill each other? (FYI, pretty sure I would have won that battle) Why not? So this feeling of apprehension and impending doom is something new for me.

So I did what I always do when I am feeling unsure about something: I googled shit.

I had already been planning this blog, so as I perused countless travel blogs in search of words of wisdom from expats currently residing in Germany, I discovered something: a distinct lack of entertaining blogs about young travelers living in Germany. Everybody and their brother was blogging about jetting off to Paris and eating their weight in brie, and moving to Italy with their three beautiful bilingual children, or you know, climbing some damn mountain in Argentina with a yak and a Sherpa or something.

First: since I am allergic to dairy, consuming 115 pounds of French cheese sounds like a terrific way for me to die a slow, painful death. Second: not only do I not want to have kids right now or any time in the foreseeable future, I certainly don’t want to lug said non-existent children around the globe while they impress people with language-speaking abilities that I do not possess. And third: I have no desire to climb a mountain in Argentina. Especially not with a yak or a Sherpa (never mind the fact that I’m not entirely sure what either of those things are).

All of the blogs about Germany, on the other hand, went something like this: “Mmm, BEER. Mmm, big-ass pretzels. Yay, Oktoberfest! Oooh, pretty lights at Christmas. Hey, let’s drive really fast on the road with no speed limits” (not gonna lie, kind of want to do that last one).

So the end result of my search seems to be this: I must write this entertaining blog about a young traveler (that would be me. Hi.) living in Germany. Having tried (unsuccessfully) to write a blog before, this will be an exercise in both my writing abilities and my patience (both of which I seem to be lacking post-college graduation). It will also help me deal with my aforementioned irrational fear, for by looking at the next year (ish) as merely a new chapter in my life, hopefully I can see my inevitable struggles as simply an entertaining story to tell you guys.

Also, hier gehen wir.