Getting there is half the battle

There was no shortage of stories about the exchange from the counselors, and one which stands out to me in particular was one about waiting in a German airport for six hours right after a seven hour flight. I particularly hoped that this story would not parallel my own, but no dice. After a flight during which the most eventful happening was me finishing an audiobook I'd been working on for a while and then a layover and then another uneventful flight from Frankfurt to Berlin, the six of us CBYXers who were to stay in and around Stendal were quite ready to have the german experience. Unfortunately, the two kids we had to wait for at the airport missed their flight so our initial german experience was sitting in a Starbucks for five straight hours speaking mostly English.

The main difference between our Starbucks and the Starbucks in Germany is that Starbucks here in Deutschland are not air conditioned. In fact, nothing except for cars come standard with air conditioning. Airports, train stations, Subways (yes, the restaurant), nothing here has A/C. That is not a problem 10 months out of 12. We were unfortunate enough to arrive in late July.

In any case, after our wait at the Berlin airport we hopped a train towards Stendal. In fact, we hopped a train towards a train to Stendal, because we had to make a connection. Each ride lasted around an hour - keep in mind none of us had slept in nearly a full day because our seven hour flight took up an entire night's worth of time. We were pretty beat up. When we finally got to Stendal, we fell into the arms of our host families more out of exhaustion than out of emotional overflow. Nonetheless, it was nice to be here finally. I myself slept from eight that night to noon the next day.