After my fun one-day road trip to Denmark and Sylt my time in Flensburg was coming to an end. My friend hosted a party at her house where I got to meet her friends. The night involved drinking, listening to funny impersonations, and making silly videos. It was so much fun. My friend has a great command on English, as she has traveled quite a bit for extended period of times in the last couple of years. Some of her friends were apologetic about their English (though their English was just fine), one was eager to talk to me to practice his English, while another never said a word to me the entire time. She communicated only in German. I was caught off guard initially, but my friend told me that she was just self-conscious about speaking English. Two of the guys loved country music (yes, up in northern Germany!) and when they found out I would be taking Stella to Nashville (aka country music capital) when she came to the US, they were extremely jealous. The night was definitely a memorable one. I wish I could post the videos as they are absolutely hysterical but I think I should do some major editing before putting them up ;)

We left Stella’s mom’s house and took the train back to Neubrandenburg. The plan was for me to stay just one more night and head back to Berlin for two days. With a total of 9 days in Germany, I thought I had ample time. It’s hard to part ways with friends, and after traveling for 8 months, feeling the comforts similar to home were hard to tear myself away from.

We got back to Neubrandenburg that evening, and I decided to stay another day. We celebrated the eight month mark of my trip with a home cooked meal and yummy cake. We reminisced about Africa, laughed til we cried about funny incidences (mostly our public transit mishaps in Kenya), and made plans to rendezvous in the States for a road trip. The following morning we walked in the dark to the train station. While I never expected to link back up with Stella again on my RTW trip (reminder: I met her in Kenya) and was so grateful for the week in Germany together, it was bittersweet to say goodbye. I had only briefly seen Berlin, but knew I could not leave Germany without visiting two other things: a concentration camp and the East Side Gallery. I made the two hour commute back to Berlin with professionals heading into the city for work. I took a sip from my water bottle, realized the water was yellow with brown flecks floating in it, cursed myself for not turning on the kitchen light when I had filled it, and decided that it probably couldn’t be any worse than the local water I drank throughout Africa. I dumped my bags at the hostel and went right back to the train station for a difficult day of sightseeing.