Europe Through My Lens

Most of Europe, including Germany, was hit with an insane heatwave over the last couple of weeks. I’m sure you’ve seen it on social media and the news since people in France were dying from it. Like most people who live in the US, I thought that Europeans were just being dramatic and couldn’t handle heat, but after dealing with it myself, I know that isn’t true. I’m probably not the best judge of handling heat, however, because I typically don’t handle heat very well. I do definitely miss AC, and I don’t have a fan, so my only way to combat the heat was to keep my shades closed and my window open enough to let air circulate. The heat was so bad that I had a lecturer end class earlier and another move our class to another room to try to make it more bearable. Unfortunately, the room they moved our class to was even hotter than our typical room. This week was a lot cooler, and we even got a little bit of rain, which definitely helped. We shouldn’t have another day of 90°F (32°C) weather for a little while. It should get close, but nothing like what we had the last couple of weeks. I got one heck of a sunburn on my shoulders and back from swimming and hiking in the heat. Sunscreen can only do so much when you’re swimming and the water washes it off or when you’re hiking and you sweat it off seconds after putting it on.

That being said, I went on some really cool hikes the last two weeks. Only two hikes, but I got a lot closer to some people in my hiking group. Unfortunately for me, I’ve actually gotten closer to more people in all my clubs, like the soccer team, run club, and hiking group. It’s unfortunate because I finally was able to buy my ticket home, and I will leave on August 7th, so I’ve officially entered my last month abroad. I really do miss home, especially my mom. I call her so often and get excited every time I get a text from her, so I’m definitely excited to be back home with her and the rest of my family in a month. Earlier this week, I walked to run club with someone who is in my distance group. We talked, in English, while walking to run club. Apparently, we live in the same building. She’s very nice.

Speaking of the clubs I’m in, on Tuesday, we had a thunderstorm, which cancelled my soccer practice at the beginning of it. So we went there, got warmed up, and then the wind picked up, and it thundered, so we went on a thunder delay. Unfortunately, it only started raining harder. Usually, I count Tuesday soccer practices as cross-training since we do quite a bit of running during those practices, but since it got cancelled, I decided to go on a run. Also, I really love running in the rain. I didn’t bring my phone because I didn’t want it to get wet, but I had my watch (it’s waterproof), and my keys in what I usually use to bring my phone on runs. It was kind of stupid because it was actively thunderstorming, but it was so fun. An underpass that I usually take to get to my club meetings was completely flooded, so I ran through it, and the water was nearly a foot deep. It was so fun. I got soaked, and so did my sneakers, but shockingly, they were dry by the time I had run club the next day. I hadn’t expected them to be dry. I ran only a 5K (3.1 miles) in the thunderstorm, but the next day at run club, I got convinced to run an 11K, but it really was 12K (7.46 miles). I didn’t take much convincing. The person I had walked to run club with was running 11 kilometers, so I decided to wing it and go with them. It was a very fun run; quite hilly, but I had walked the trail we ran my first week in Germany, so I knew it was going to be.

Recent Hikes

As for things I’ve done the last two weeks, and not just discussing the future. I went to Oberstdorf with my hiking group. Oberstdorf is located in Bavaria, Germany, near the Austrian border, tucked between the Bavarian Alps. It’s a gorgeous town. During the hike, I finally got to see the cows that have the bells on them. You could hear the bells all throughout the area, no matter how far you got, and we went fairly far up. There were also some pretty cute donkeys, and I will include a photo that I took of one of them below. There were two waterfalls on this hike; one was a little harder to get to, but we were hiking with someone who lived about thirty minutes from Oberstdorf, so he acted sort of as a guide. I’m very excited to go back to Oberstdorf on Sunday and hike a real mountain this time instead of just looking at them.

I also went on one solo hike on June 26th around Nagold. It’s called the 7-mountain trail because it goes all around the outskirts of Nagold, covering 7 mountains that surround it, but if you ask me, they were more like hills. I mostly wanted to do the hike because there was a castle I wanted to photograph. This trail also had quotes on trees in German as you went along, so I’ll include some of those with the English translation because they’re super cool. It was pretty hot, so I did cut off the last mile or so. I only really wanted to do that hike for the castle, so by the end, I was pretty done. I also tripped on a root while trying to decide whether to cut off the last mile or so, so that definitely sealed the deal. During that hike, I saw a rabbit, and it was very cute, but it got scared away before I could get a really good look at it. I also saw a bird with a really long wingspan, but I didn’t get a great look at it to identify it. However, after the hike and for this blog post, I did a little googling, and I narrowed it down to two possible birds: either a Black Kite (Schwarzmilan) or a Common Buzzard (Mäusebussard). Even in the heat, it was still worth it.

Future Hikes/Plans

As for my hiking group, I’m hiking Nebelhorn with at least one or two people from my hiking group and some of their friends on Sunday, which I’m really excited for. It’s a really big hike, and the tallest mountain that I would’ve ever hiked, especially in one day. Nebelhorn is a 2,224-meter or 7,296-foot mountain. It’s in Oberstdorf, which I recently hiked in with my hiking group. Up to now, the tallest mountain I’ve hiked was around 4,175 feet, called Old Speck, which is a mountain (or hill if you’d prefer, I prefer mountain though) in Maine. I’ve been hiking a lot recently, so I’m pretty confident in my ability to hike this mountain, especially since the weather is supposed to be pretty cool. It is supposed to rain in the evening/night, but we should be done by the start of the rain if everything goes as we planned. But honestly, you never know with Deutsche Bahn (that’s the train system in Germany).

Another cool thing that I have planned with my hiking group for July is a 4-day hut-to-hut trek in the Austrian Alps. It will occur right after classes end for the semester during the break. It’s also sort of during the second-to-last weekend that I’m in Germany. So that will be in one of my last blog posts.

There was a hike that I meant to do in June, but due to the heat and my train getting cancelled the morning of, I couldn’t go on it. So I might try to plan it for a Thursday or Friday that I don’t already have a hike planned for that week. I want to hike Feldberg, which is the tallest mountain in Baden-Württemberg. This would be a solo hike, so I’d have to plan out everything myself, but the day my train got cancelled the morning of, I had already planned out all the logistics, so I already know that part. I just need to find the time to do it.

In more recent activities, not hiking related, on Tuesday, July 7th, someone in my German class is hosting a dinner. Earlier in the semester, my German class had a dinner, but I wasn’t in our class group chat until the day it was supposed to happen, and I already had plans. It was during one of my club meetings, and I also like to mentally prepare my social battery before social events. This isn’t something I’d typically do, but I think it would be good to get out of my comfort zone. Also, I’m filming a day-in-my-life for my cross-country team on that day, so that gives me more content for that day-in-my-life post.

I’m trying to finish off my last full month studying abroad strong. I may not have collected German cities or European countries like Pokémon cards, but I’ve gone on some really cool hikes and really started to learn/see the life I want to have in the future. I’ve spent quite a bit of time alone, so that’s really shown me who I am when no one is watching. It doesn’t really matter who you are when people are watching you, for instance, when I’m living with my parents, and they’re making sure I eat healthy. But the days that I spend living away from home are the ones that truly count and show me who I am.

Anyway, onto my photography and trip photos. Some photos are photos that people in my hiking group took of me.

My Weeks in Photos

While writing this post, I got reminded that I hadn’t edited the photos I had taken on my camera from my recent hike, so I took a moment to edit those. Some of these photos are edited, and others aren’t.

This is from the park run that I talked about doing in the last blog post. It was way hotter than I had thought it was going to be at 9am, and I started out too fast on top of doing everything you shouldn’t do before running. So I struggled and went way slower than I had planned. But oh well, next time I know what I’m not doing.

The next few photos are from my hike in Oberstdorf with my hiking group. I’ll write under the photos I didn’t actually take. Even though it will be fairly obvious since they’re of me.

This waterfall and the one under it aren’t the same, but are from the same hike. They were both so gorgeous. The pictures don’t do them justice.

This one and the next one after it are photos that some people in my hiking group took of me.

I don’t love how this photo came out, but I still wanted to include it. But anyway, this photo starts the second hike I talked about in this post: the hike around Nagold.

This photo and the one after it may be my favorite photos from the Nagold hike, even if there’s some strange discoloration on the top of the bottom photo. I probably could crop it out, but I like the framing of the plants.

I don’t like the lighting on some of these photos, but they’re still pretty nice. After this, I have the signs from the Nagold 7-mountain hike. I’ll be including an English translation, but it’s a rough translation, and it could be somewhat incorrect.

English Translation: “He who does not dedicate a little time to his health every day will one day have to sacrifice a great deal of time to his illness.”

English Translation: “When you take care of your body, your mind feels better too.”

English Translation: “The most infallible measure of the character of people and of an individual is how they regard and treat animals.”

English Translation: “Coming together is a beginning. Staying together is progress. Working together is success.”

English Translation: “Health is what people drink until they drop dead.”

English translation: “In the first half of life, we sacrifice our health to acquire money. In the other half, we sacrifice money to gain health.”

English translation: “Laughter is the healthiest exercise in the world, because nowhere else so many muscles are moved in such a pleasant way as when laughing.”

English translation: “Sport is not an idyllic world, but a world that can heal.”

I hadn’t planned on including all of the signs that I had taken pictures of, especially since I’m not entirely confident in my translation, but last minute I decided to include them all. Originally, I only had my top four signs, but they were too interesting to stop at four.

If everything goes as planned, I’ll have some very cool pictures to include in my next post. I should have roughly two posts left after this one, but I may write one after I get back home to discuss how it’s been being home and a reflection of the trip as a whole. Plus, my last final isn’t due until the end of September, which is wild since my fall semester starts at the end of August.