Goodbye Germany :-(

Grüß Gott!

So tomorrow Lisa and I continue our adventure together in the United States. Hopefully, the majority of you reading this blog will get to meet her :-) I've already said that I'm definitely going to come back and that this is the best experience that's ever happened to me, so I don't need to repeat all that in my final post from Germany. I just keep reminding myself: it's not even over yet, and I'll be back! I'm extremely excited to show my new best friend America. To wrap up Germany, here's everything I did, in short. The time's gone so quickly, even I'm having trouble keeping track of everything!

July 5th: Left for Germany
6th: Arrived, Weisswurstfrühstück and sleeping
7th: Shopping in Memmingen and Biergarten
8th: Nina's Abiball
9th: Schloss Mindelburg
10th: Bauernhofmuseum 
11th: Bodensee
12th: Hanging out, running errands in Mindelheim, Spätzle making
13th: School and Schloss Babenhausen
14th: München and Deutsches Museum
15th: Making Schnitzel, Mindelheim as a tourist ;-), Kaufbeuren Medieval Festival
16th: Color Festival
17th: Leaving for Berlin and all that nonsense
18th: Brandenburg Gate, Reichstag, Victory Tower, Jewish Memorial, and Madame Tussaud's
19th: Berlin Wall Memorial, Spree River tour, DDR Museum, Checkpoint Charlie
20th: Fernsehtrum, the discovery of the only Campbell's soup and stuffing in Germany at KaDeWe
21st: Trip back from Berlin
22nd: Schloss Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau, the most epic thunderstorm of my life, and Lexi's arrival!!
23rd: Back to Schloss Mindelburg with Lexi and cake at the cafe there.
24th: Lexi left :-(, hanging out

And today, I helped Lisa pack and calm her nerves :-) as well as made my Swiss Chicken Casserole, which was a real hit! Everybody loved it, and I even wrote down the recipe for Susi, who thinks she can make the soup from scratch and use smashed croutons to replace the stuffing mix. I'm so happy they liked it! I was a little worried that it would be too American: too much cheese, too much sauce, too much salt, too many pre-prepared ingredients, but they all loved it. Maybe I'll start a new trend for American cooking here!

Tomorrow, we leave at 8:15 for a nearby train station, where we will take a train directly to the airport to avoid rush hour traffic. Our flight leaves at 12:30pm Germany time, gets in at 3:30pm U.S. time, then our flight from Newark to Pittsburgh leaves at 7:10pm and should get in around 8:45pm.

I'm definitely going to continue blogging about Lisa and I's adventures in America, but there's a twist. I can't promise you this, because it's hard enough for me to find time to write posts, but Lisa might also write a couple posts (in German)!

Here's the thing: I've explained now for three weeks all the fun stuff I've done here and all the differences I've experienced from a foreigner's point of view. Things as simple as the Rollladen (tough to describe, freaking awesome permanent blinds on steroids on the outside of the house) and Steckdosen (outlets) fascinate me.

I can't speak on the seemingly stupid and mundane, but intensely cool little things in America because I have no idea what they are! Reading my posts (which, rest assured, I WILL STILL BE POSTING despite their more mundane nature :-) will be reading descriptions of what we did with pictures, which is still good, but not quite as cool as the cultural aspect of our exchange, which I would be able to only marginally describe as Lisa's actually experiencing it.

I know there are German readers out there, so you might get your chance to experience America through a German perspective! However, it's going to be equally fascinating for everybody to see what Lisa thinks of the United States in her own words. Of course, she might not post anything, and I'm still going to post as well regardless of whether or not she does, but the added perspective will be awesome to say the least if it actually happens.

For those of you panicking: I CAN'T SPEAK GERMAN HOW DO I READ THESE AWESOME POSTS...(that may or may not be coming)

The beauty of the internet means that I'm either going to fiddle with the settings and try to set up a translate option within my blog, or let you do the the good old "copy-paste" into Google Translate, which works just as well. Anybody with any experience with Google Translate knows that it's crap and that it might not make very much sense sometimes, but we'll see how Google Translate mangles her German before we post, or I can attempt to write my own translation. We'll make it work somehow if we decide to do it.

Auf Wiedersehen, Deutschland :-( Ich komme bestimmt wieder zurrück!!
Until I see you again, Germany. I'm definitely coming back!!
Deine Megan

P.S: Fun fact...I have 40 page views from Finland, 26 in the last 24 hours alone?! That's more than you, America (24)! Also, one view from Latvia, of all places. Who are you, Latvia and Finland? I don't know anybody from either of these countries! Please leave a comment as to how you found my blog! I'm extremely curious :-) Thanks for reading!