I think I have finally been in Germany long enough that I'm over the jet lag and am enjoying things in full consciousness. It is kind of hard to compare this trip to other trips I've taken to Europe because I'm seeing things from a different perspective than I did two years ago or two years before that. But I can definitely say that I love this country! I'm staying with Daria's grandma and aunt and cousins, and they are the most welcoming and friendly hosts I have ever stayed with. They feed me delicious German food all day long, and buy me things like souvenir pennies and tins of mints, and let me use their internet and washing machine. Actually, I'm not sure why I would ever leave...

Today I visited the beautiful Altenberg Cathedral in the neighboring village of Altenberg. We were going to bike there, but it rained so we had to drive.










Since I've been in Germany I've been wondering a lot about the WWII legacy, but it hasn't really been appropriate to bring up. Today in the car on the way to Essen I was talking to Susanna about the city, and lamenting the lack of old buildings destroyed in the war. Susanna mentioned that Germany "didn't do so well in the war. We are very, very ashamed of it," she said. I wanted to ask her more about it, to say "I would think it would be very hard to live in a country with so much historical shame for a war that you weren't even alive for. It seems incredibly unfair, because the holocaust is not something you can write off as not that big of a deal, nor is it something that you had anything to do with." Not being German, I know this is unfair but it still colors my perception of Germans; the first three things that come to my mind when I think of Germany are sausage, beer, and Nazi. But I didn't ask her more about it, for the reason that English isn't her first language. Susanna is certainly proficient in English, but it seemed a daunting task to try to communicate about something so heavy as the holocaust without full use of my vocabulary. How can you discuss genocide with adjectives like good and bad and scary?? It gives me a whole new appreciation for words with so many slightly different meanings and slightly different connotations.

And yet, what am I doing traveling if not trying to communicate and share with people who don't speak my language and don't see the world from my point of view? Conversations like this one are what I've spent so much money on a plane ticket for; I can't be afraid to have them!

Here are some of my favorites from today: