In my life I’ve grown up with a burning desire to travel. I found myself happiest whenever my family would trek off somewhere, to Atlanta to visit my aunt and uncle, to North Carolina to stay in the mountains with friends, or even just the hop to Winter Park to stay at my grandmother’s house. The thought of Europe, this foreign mass afloat across my darling Atlantic Ocean, was like my Eden, but more easily obtainable. Reaching that place became a great dream in my mind, to see where my family came from.

On my flight into Düsseldorf I kept nervously flipping through my pocket German guide, that I wound up looking at on the plane and hardly at all again. I was nervous, trying to learn a friendly greeting to give to my host parents when I saw them. They recognized me first at the gate, and hugged me. This reception, warmer than I expected, knocked “Vie gates?” right out of my head. We drove the hour home on the Autobahn, in their Volkswagen van in the same model and even color as the one that my dad drives. I loved their modern house right off the bat, and the comfortable bedroom they set me up in, that I made prompt use of. I met Bene’s two younger brothers, who spoke impeccable English, and sister, who I could still slump through a conversation with even though she’d only had a year’s lessons in English..

The way the dates of our respective summer holidays aligned, we ended up attending school with each other, and Bene arrived home from school several hours after I got back from the airport. Bene, his father Kristoff, and I spent my first weekend in Munich, which is more traditionally Bavarian. The biergartens and people in Lederhosen were like the Germany I had seen in my travel books, unlike the modern town where I had been staying. I went to school the following Monday, riding my bike downhill to school and having to try to find my way home uphill for lunch, while Bene had flute practice, and managing to get myself slightly lost. School was quite different than American school, they seemed to work much harder than we do. I was attending after they had taken their finals for the year, and yet they were still doing more work than we do at Midterms. The school was much bigger than mine, for only having about seven hundred students from what would be fourth grade up.

On the last day of school, Bene’s father took us to Cologne, or Köln. Köln is home to one of the biggest and most impressive cathedrals in Germany, the Kölner Döm. The tower is enormous. It’s covered in dark moss or mold, and looks like it was cut from the sky with scissors, a giant black paper silhouette. After studying Art History it was amazing to see what you’d only seen in books and photos up close, the gargoyles and angels more alive than ever before. After staring up until my neck ached, we walked inside and I found myself identifying the nave, the promenade, and other parts of the church.

Climbing the tower I kept running out of breath and praying for the infrequent windows. It was stiflingly warm, but the breeze blew freezing through the narrow windows, so crisp and clean being so high up. The stone steps are worn away first from the clergy making their way to ring the bells, but later from the thousands of tourists that make the climb every day. The walls are coated in graffiti, square inch upon square inch unreadable for how many layers of paint and scratching exist. It seemed most of it was in English, terrible American tourists leaving their mark where they shouldn’t. Seeing the hordes of tour groups was odd, it had been so long since I had seen clusters of people dressed head-to-toe in clothes from the same stores from American malls. Seeing them made me once again realize I was three thousand miles from home, but in such a beautiful and intriguing place like this it was hard to feel homesick.

The city of Köln was one of the most beautiful I’d ever seen from that high up. It was so much different than climbing the lighthouse in my own city, I couldn’t point out and see my friend’s houses or other landmarks I knew. Everything surrounding me was completely foreign, and I was in love with it all. I didn’t want to go back down the tower; the thought of going back down those stairs wasn’t appealing. I was here at the peak, my victory point, and I didn’t want to leave, but all things must end and I fell into line behind Bene and Kristoff.

The circular stairs have an unofficial but followed rule that people going up stick to the inside of the spiral, where the steps are short and worn to round, and the people coming down take the wider outer steps. I passed a man in a hurry on his way up who barged by on the outside, forcing me to walk down on those narrow steps. I had my old sneakers on, those ones I loved until the treads wore away, and I slipped. Falling down stairs occurs to me every time I’m on them, going up or down. It’s a hypochondrium of mine, not severe to the point of debilitation, but it exists, especially compounded by mild claustrophobia as I was feeling in the narrow stairwell. As I slipped, the horror show that could have played out flashed in my brain, of me landing on my face and biting through my tongue again, a repeat of when I was three and tripped on the sidewalk, of my skull hitting the stone if I slipped backwards and my brain being ripped apart, or even of just breaking my foot or ankle and having to skip my upcoming trip to Berlin. Fortunately, I only skidded down several stairs on my rear end and walked away with nothing more than a banged-up elbow, shaking knees, and a souvenir tote bag.

A birthday party for one of Bene’s school friends was that night, and I had my first German beer. We danced all night and then took an illegal taxi home, the night air colder than a harsh Florida winter, but also much clearer. Later that week we went to a concert of German high school bands, they all play heavy metal, and sing in English. 

The last week of my stay, Bene, his friend Marion, (a boy Marion) and Marion’s exchange student Grant from Washington DC took the train to Berlin. We were staying in a youth hostel, and I was the only girl in a room with 7 other boys, only one of whom I really knew. The experience was awesome, and hilarious. I heard them checking out girls and catcalling in German as we walked around and saw the sights, ate fast food, and slummed around Berlin. We spent a day waiting in line for the exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art that had been brought over from New York City. I  was the only one who thought it was worth waiting six and a half hours to see modern classics from Dali and Man Ray.

The entire trip I found out more about Bene and had more time to myself than I expected. I used it to miss my family, miss my friends, and think of plans to give Bene the best American experience. He got to go to football and baseball games, and experienced his first hurricane, Charley, who unfortunately cancelled our plans to go to a major ride park in Central Florida and we ended up going to a Podunk one in South Georgia, but it was just as much fun, if not more so. Getting to show someone else around your own country was almost as much of a learning experience as seeing a new one. I feel I’ve grown so much (and gained five kilos eating German food) during and after this trip. I’ve got friends who saw what a time I had and plan on applying next year to do what I did. I plan on going back to Germany, to revisit Koln, go to Karneval, and stay with the Brauns again, and I look forward to it with my whole heart.