2. Preparations and Departure

When one wishes to spend a fairly long time in another country, there are many considerations that are perhaps not so obvious. Naturally, one needs a passport; luckily I already had long since gotten one. Besides that, one needs some official papers, but because I was going through a program of the DAAD, everything was easier. Normally if you want to work you need a work permit, but I got one automatically through the DAAD, because I had an internship. I was not allowed to take any other jobs in Germany while I was there, but I had to fill out almost no paperwork. Every student in this program received a stipend of 615 Euros per month; enough so that we could live there, but not enough to buy a plane ticket. For that reason I had to work at home as well before I left, but with the help of my parents, Alex, and Alex's parents, I collected enough money. I had relatively little time to organize everything, so the help of these people was very important, and I was grateful for it.

Many weeks before my departure (in reality, as soon as I had made the decision), I was nervous. I knew that I could handle everything; I was just not so sure that I wanted to handle everything. But at the same time I knew that I would learn a lot, and in the end, everything would be worth it. It is also very hard to wait so long and to wonder how everything would unfold.

The departure is always the hardest. I had packed everything and was ready; I had new clothes from my parents, a new computer from Alex, iPod, books, photos, money, and some of my favorite movies. The trip would last a day, before I finally met Anja and saw Jülich for the first time. Because Alex had to work in Morris, I was a little surprised to see him greeting us at the airport. It was wonderful that he was there, but also hard, because I could not forget that we would not see each other for seven weeks; in almost six years together we had never been apart so long, and the last time he had been in Germany alone for a month, we had had a hard summer. I told myself that I could only come back if I went away first—and with this thought I boarded the airplane.

The trip was pretty good—because I had already taken so many 8-hour flights to Europe, it was not so strange for me. I was only very tired, and because of this I felt better when I finally saw Anja. She was slender, beautiful, and friendly, and I was just thankful that I only had to follow her for the last stretch of this trip that had been planned two months previously.

Jülich is a small village (with a population of approximately 15,000), about an hour's car ride from Düsseldorf. I arrived in Düsseldorf and had to drive this last stretch with Anja and Jörg Pietruszka (the professor of the group Anja was in). It was very pleasant to finally sit in a car instead of an airplane, and although I saw only a little of the countryside because I was so tired, it looked almost exactly like Minnesota—a little bit of my homeland, on a completely different continent.

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