First Impressions

Getting ready to leave for Germany, I had no angst. No fears. No hesitation whatsoever. That all stopped right about when we were flying over Europe. Then I came to the realization that I wasn’t going to see my family or friends for 7 months. Don’t ask why I chose then to have my little freaking out incident, but that’s when I started to second-guess myself.

Fortunately, I was able to get to Köln without any major issues and my luggage made it with me. Once I got to Köln, I was fortunate enough to run into the rest of the people in my program at the “Jugendherberge” (youth hostel). They had been in Germany for a few days wandering around together and had a feel for everything.

Unfortunately, we didn’t have internet in our hostel so I couldn’t even text my mom to let her know I had safely arrived. Not having any form of communication was difficult mostly because I was expecting it. It would have been different if I came in knowing I wouldn’t be able to use it, but it was just a shock when we couldn’t.

My first full day in Germany, we met with our program director, Katja (pronounced “cat-ja”) and traveled together to our first day of instruction. We were all expecting a course that would teach us how to get around in Germany or things we needed to know for safety purposes, but it turns out that we had to take a legitimate class and learn more about grammar and sentence structure. Talk about disappointing…

Talking to people at the train stations (“Deutsche Bahn” stations) and a few people here and there at businesses had been my only interaction with the people of Germany for a while. Germans are very straightforward and show little emotion, which can be intimidating at times. I was. I don’t speak the language well enough to talk to these people or tell them what I need to do, and they don’t have the time to deal with me stuttering through everything I need to say. Things were getting frustrating quickly.

Luckily, our professor, Herr Mainka, is awesome and really helpful. He explains things in ways that I can understand. Sometimes he still talks over my head, but I get most of it. For one of our classes, we had a scavenger hunt where we had to go around the city asking people to identify what certain landmarks meant to the city of Köln. “You mean ask…other people?” How could we possibly do that?

So we went out on our adventure and hit the first spot. We needed to know about three different objects incorporated into the Köln Dom structure. This is where we ran into Huby (pronounced "hue-bee"). He told us the story about how he drew and his wife designed a crests located on one of the doors. He used language that we could understand and helped me when I couldn’t! He was an incredibly nice and helpful person. I honestly wanted to drop the scavenger hunt and walk around with him all day. It was only my fifth day in Germany, but I felt more comfortable after talking with him.

Picture with Huby - The nicest, coolest German guy I've ever met. He designed the shield on the wall for Cardinal Frings. He was the cardinal shortly after World War II during the depression era in Germany. He said at a New Year's mass that he endorsed people stealing food if in desparate need. The German verb "fringsen", known only to people of Köln, originates from this.

On the left is the crest designed by Huby

Later, we asked a woman about the story behind one of the statues in town, and she took the time to tell us this extensive story, some of which I didn’t understand. The best part was, after she told the entire story in German, she went back and summarized it in English for us! How great of her! We learned a lot about the city that day, but I learned something more important: the people of Germany will be incredibly helpful to you if you try. They see me giving an honest effort to talk to them in German and are willing to work with me. It’s really amazing.