Homeward These Shoes

For every adventure, there always comes an ending. Since I have returned home from my experience in Germany, it has taken me more time than the average trip usually consumes of my time to figure out the things that I enjoyed the most. Life after Germany essentially picked up from where I left off; immediately I lured myself back into my biking, first working at a day camp for young mountain bikers through Coyote Hill, then I spent a week myself at camp, riding every day for 3 hours on beautiful Vermont singletrack, and my weekends are spent racing my bike. During this re-adjustment of being back home, my mind was elsewhere, and in many ways it still is, but having to re-familiarize myself with the culture of my own in America and the one that I experienced for 3 weeks in Europe certainly was not  a matter that I concerned myself with too much. And I'll tell you, it's been a long time gone.

     

Camp director, coach and good friend Tom Masterson admires his parking job of his ancient van while my friend Emily poses next to her new sleeping quarters for the week at mountain bike camp...I slept in the cabin called "Camp David" behind her Euro Van. Only at bike camp do you sleep in such marvelous places!

Here is a shot of the Coyote Hill camp fields after a
rainstorm in the evening. 

People often ask what I was doing in Germany, and in short I tell them about how I spent 2 weeks attending Gymnasium and a week in Berlin, and maybe a few other tid-bits that I find exciting (they change every time!),  but more often than not I find that I have to hold my tongue in order to avoid spending their whole afternoon re-telling my experiences of the trip (which I actually did with my wonderful neighbors shortly after I returned home!).  Being an exchange student and living with several German families exposed me to many of the similarities and differences of our lives. I am forever grateful for the friends that I made while I was in Neustadt, and for the amount of generosity that each of my families presented to me to make sure that I was able to immerse myself in their culture and that I was comfortable. The experience was that much greater because of the things that my host mothers, fathers and siblings within the two families exposed me to. No tour guides, only locals providing me with an insight on the things in their lives from their perspective that they find significant.  And I find that to be pretty cool. 

My first host Christiane. The Bickert family was absolutely wonderful to stay with.

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Outside a museum in Berlin, we found these neat (free!) pamphlets. Here I am 

on the far right in red, with my friends Lauren (middle) and Carrie (left). 

In Berlin, I learned a lot about Germany and it's history. As I have said in a past post, having to adapt to a new style of living was hard. Walking everyday was wonderful but sometimes overwhelming, but I was rewarded with astounding artwork, ancient artifacts and European city life, so life was good. Every museum that we visited impacted me on various levels for different reasons, and they forced me to think about the things that we often find to be beautiful, sad, ugly or odd in different manners. The sites we saw were only the things that I used to see in books, but experiencing them in person 

truly has meant a lot to me.

   

                                

Shots of some of the artwork from the Berlin Wall (East side).

            

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As for my traveling group, new friendships and understandings of one-another developed over the course of our trip. I appreciate the amount of effort and enthusiasm from both of my teachers, who were put in a difficult position to lead the trip after a sudden accident from my German teacher, but they are the ones who made sure we got around OK and that we got the most out of the trip. Their patience, persistence and mannerism are what I have come to admire the most about them.

   

Here we are at the top of the German Bundestag dome (left), in front of Checkpoint Charlie (middle), and my two teachers, Mr.Lavigne (left) and Jeff Doyle (right) are possibly the greatest guys ever! 

Thanks for making the trip a wonderful experience guys and gals.

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Maybe it is for these reasons that I am able to step back and appreciate the events and their worth for what they were, and what they will mean for me in years to come. This marks the end to my wonderful trip to Germany, but they are things that I will certainly cherish regardless of where I choose to go in life. I have the past to review and the pending to look forward to. 

The Green Mountains, shot from the Northroad on the way to Barnard, VT.
The weather here in Vermont this summer has been wonderful!

It has been a pleasure to share my experiences with my readers; I hope you have enjoyed my blog and that it has also provided you with an insight on a wonderful place to visit. 


But for now, Vermont is the place I call home. Until we meet again, 


                                                                        Green Mountain Girl

Sunset waltz on Silver Lake in Barnard, Vermont. 7/31/10