Guten Abend

Hello friends. Currently I am sitting in my hostel/hotel room in Leipzig, Germany, after another long day of traveling and singing. To be honest, I never really envisioned myself being in a position to travel around Europe with a group of my friends, staying in nice hotels and singing to people all over the continent. So far it has been a fantastic journey, albeit very cold and snowy. We have both of those conditions back in Kansas, but the cold here bites a little bit harder and there is definitely more snow here right now than we probably get in an entire winter in Kansas, and it snowed every day for the first 4 or so days that we’ve been here. We’ve already made our way out of Poland and a good ways into Germany, as you could tell if you were to look at a map of the area. So far my favorite part of the trip has been the four days that we spent hanging out in Berlin. I got to see a lot of historical sites, lots of fun modern parts of Berlin, and even spend time with a friend of mine from Berlin who came to America through an exchange program while I was still in high school. I was especially happy about seeing her, as I hadn’t for 2 or 3 years. Along those same lines I should be able to see 3 more German friends while I’m here and even stay with one of them for 2 days, so I’m really psyched about that! Overall Germany isn’t all that different from America, as they are both industrialized nations that are pretty advanced. There have definitely been parts of both Germany and Poland that I could tell were majorly affected by the world wars that happened on their soils. I guess this gives me some good insight on the mentality of some of the people here and the culture in general, because the United States has never had a foreign power invade and defeat it, and I think that experience has humbled some of these countries in ways that I, as a American, have a hard time understanding without going through the same thing. Regardless, it just feels a little different here, though not too different; I figure people are kind of the same everywhere, no matter if I’m in Germany or the Galapagos. Europe definitely has its pros, but I am happy to report that I haven’t found any reasons to change my citizenship to something other than what it is.