Seb's Awesome Summer 2003 Germany Trip

Hello, my name is Seb and this past summer I decided to do a summer program through the IPENG program. I decided to goto Germany because I wanted a summer to remember, and boy I sure got one. Anyone looking into a program like this should read on to see what my experience was like...

The SummerSchool Program

This is the group of us from the U of I who went. We took a crash course in German for 9 weeks before we left so that the language barrier was not such a shock when we got off the plane.

I quickly found my identity in the city of Darmstadt. Here is a picture of a bank in Germany named after me! felt very welcomed by everybody immediatly. My host family was waiting for me at the airport. I didn't speak any German at all pretty much, but it ended up being alright because my host mom Marion studied in England and knew fluent English and my host brothers were taking English in school so it ended up being a good lesson for them.

After the first weekend, our summer program started at the University. It was basically a 5 week crash course on German language and culture. There was only 3 hours of German everyday, and the rest of the time was devoted to excursions around the area. This picture is of one of these excursions where they took us to the trails in the surrounding areas and showed us the some cool natural formations. It was a bit hot and quite a long walk, but that sort of discomfort really made for some good group bonding.

After 9 hours of continued hiking up and down hills our feet were a little soar, so we decided to let them cool off and relax in the river thing flowing in the street.

I saw so many more things I would have never seen if I went and tried to sight-see Germany by myself. The excursions around Germany were very well organized and planned. They knew where all the cool stuff was that I would have never found on my own. Pictured is a room full of real humans bones that were dug up from a cemetary when they had to make more room in the city, pretty interesting stuff.

These excursions were not all exhausting sightseeing tours. In Oppenheim we toured a wine cellar and then got to have a little wine tasting afterwards. Everyone seemed to like this portion of the trip (see picture).

The drinking age in Germany is 16, and you can't get your driving license until you are 18. I tried some reknowned German beers and I have to report back that they were all good. By allowing youger people to drink over there so it doesn't seem like rebelling, there seemed to be less of a problem with alchohol with the youth.

I decided to purchase a Mercedes Benz Kompressor to drive on the autobahn when I was over there ... in my dreams. In one of the excursions we took a tour of the Mercedes Benz manufacting plants and got to see how all of the cars were made. There were some really neat cars there that I got to pretend to have.

One of the excursions was a 4 day trip to Berlin. We stayed in a hostel there and it was the only multi-day excursion we had. Being able to see the Berlin wall was cool because it was interesting to see a peice of history you have heard so much about.

There were many fun interesting fairs in town over the course of the summer. One of the fair's games was to stack as many crates up as high as you can without falling. I was able to get up there pretty high, but what goes up...

...must come down. The Germans seemed to be more into the physical challenges at fairs and I believe this is a reflection of the greater importance of physical exercise in their culture.

The Fam

My host family was awesome. I lived in the town of Eschollbrucken which was about a 30 minute bike ride from my classes. I rode my bike to class every morning with my host mom, Marion. This time allowed me to really get to know her. She spoke really good English so I was not limited at all to what I could say.

One of my favorite activities to do with my host family when I got home from class was to play the board game Siedler with my host brothers and Marion. This allowed for some friendly interaction and bonding with them. Though I rarely won, I always had a good time playing the game. I bought a copy to bring back to play with my roommates, but they keep on thinking I am just making up some rules because they can't read the instructions (and neither can I!)

This is the kitchen. My host mom usually made fresh rolls from sratch in the morning before we left. There was always a fresh supply of real home made jam to accompany these rolls. I really enjoyed the German food while I was over there, 15 pounds of enjoyment that is. The food is incredibly rich, and there is no such thing as low fat or skim milk. After a long day, there is nothing I enjoyed more than to eat some home cooking or stop and get Doner, Germany's version of a gyro that tastes way better than a BigMac.

This is me and my host brothers, Faris (on the left) and Junis (on the right). Faris was really good at English, so I was able to communicate with him very well. He showed me the ropes around town my first few days. Junis was only in his first years of English though, so sometimes we had a communication problem. But soon we found our universal language, videogames. When we would play each other on the PS2, and I blew him up or he made a slam dunk, we both knew what was up.

The Optional Weekend Trips

All the weekends were completly free to do whatever we wanted to do. Since there were only a few weeks we decided to make the most of our weekends and travel around Europe. In the end, we ended up going to Paris, Prauge, and Rome.

I really liked the movie, so I figured I owed it to myself to go and at least try to see the real thing.

The movie Amelie was filmed in Paris, and we went and ate in the cafe it was shot in. If you've seen the movie, it was pretty cool that they had a gnome in the cafe (see picture).

When in Rome try not to get scammed. These are the guys that conned us out of 2 Euro. They tied a braclet around your wrist you could't take off and somehow conviced you take actually buy it. It sounds pretty lame, but they were really good at it. All of us fell ploy to the trick, so the group bonding that resulted was definitly worth 2 Euro.

I just had to get a Gladiator pose in the Colleseum.

Two Weeks Of Adventure After The Program

You can have an optional two weeks after your initial program to hang around Europe. So my mom planned to come over for those two weeks so we could visit one of her good friends over there. But first she stopped in for a visit with my host family. This is a picture of my two moms hanging out.

My mom and I hiked and biked around Bavaria for those two weeks with her friend. We had to climb up some steep stuff to get to the top of some of the hills/mountains. We ended up going to the top of the cross in that picture.

The long trek back down. It may seem insane, but the Germans actually have a biergarten just a few hundred feet away. Some of these biergartens have such an extreme location that helicopters have to deliver their supplies via airlift because car's can't get up to it, or so I was told.

I just want to emphasize that the food was great.

And so was the dessert.

I did a lot of biking with my mom also. We rode all over and I noticed that the bike paths were used much more over there than in the States. I think this is a function of a more health-minded society. It was everybody too. I saw little kids, adults, and grandmas doing some seriously fast biking.

Well, that's about all I have to say about it. It was an awesome experience, and I highly reccomend that you do some sort of summer study abroad program if you have the chance. If you don't know what your doing for the summer, you can't go wrong by choosing to do it.