There are three main things that I would want someone who is planning on participating in this program to know. The first is to hang out with your “buddies”. When going somewhere new, it is difficult to meet new people that you can trust, but this program actually gives you friends that look out for you. The students are very knowledgeable of the city, and are also a great resource. From our experience, they are not only well versed in the area, but they are also so much fun to be around. We would text them every day to see what they were up to and if they wanted to come do whatever we were doing. Often, they were busy with schoolwork or actual work, but they said that it meant so much to them that we wanted to include them. Even if not all of the buddies could hang out, we made even more friends through projects and other school events that we had such a large network of students that loved hanging out with us while we were there.
The next is to not be afraid to talk to people. If we had not talked to anyone on the trip outside of the students on the program, we would have just sat in the hotel room and not had any fun. Almost all German students were excited to talk to us, and it would often lead us to texting them to come hang out at the river or go out into the city at night. Even if they were not students at our school, we often found ourselves talking to random people if we were walking in the same direction. After going to the FC Bayern game, we followed the crowd out of the stadium to enter the train. While we were walking a German overheard us talking and made a joke about what we were talking about. We began talking for the entire duration of the train ride and as we got off the train, we asked for a restaurant recommendation. Instead of just telling us a name of a restaurant and going on his way, he walked with us an additional 20 minutes to show us exactly where it was.
The last piece of advice would be to make the most of your time in Germany. The trip is only two weeks, and there are many school-related events, leaving free time after class. Every night we would get back from school and gather everyone that was willing to hang out from our group, and then we would text the German students to join us. Often these nights would take us into the early hours of the morning leaving very little time to sleep, but the memories that I made will never leave me. I can strongly say that the two weeks on this study abroad program were one of the best times of my life. On the last night of the trip, we went back to the river for the final time with the buddies. Here we said how amazing it was that just two weeks ago all of us including the American students met for the first time. I want anyone who attends this trip to be open to making new friends that will last a lifetime. Nathan E.
Swanson School of Engineering 