A Six Hour Night: My Transit to Germany

I left for Germany from Logan Airport on the afternoon of Friday, August 17th.  The first flight was a six hour crossing of the Atlantic Ocean to Dublin, Ireland, where I would the board a plane bound for Frankfurt, Germany.  After this two hour flight, I would ride the ICE high speed train for a thirty minute sprint from Frankfurt to Mannheim, my final destination.

During the first flight, I began reading Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time to pass the hours.  It is quite an interesting book and very fitting for the mood of a transcontinental flight, where the sun seems to race around the Earth, warping one's perception of time.  The man sitting next to me, also a fan of Hawking's book, was a professor from the Berklee College of Music, who was visiting his daughter for her marriage in Ireland.  While the short night continued on, I decided that rather than sleep, I would watch Hunger Games on the airplane's entertainment screen.  The movie was decently exciting and had a good premise, but the borderline epileptic shaky-cam and the deadpan faced actors made it a mediocre show in my opinion.  With the Katniss's rivals all dead and the movie wrapped up, I finally arrived in Dublin, the land of my heritage.

Walking through the Dublin airport was an interesting experience.  As I passed the security gate from the city, I was amazed at how odd it feels to be in a country where almost everyone looks like they are related to you.  After about an hour and a half layover I boarded to plane to Frankfurt.

This second flight was almost empty; I had an entire row to myself.  This was the first time on my trip where the people around me were all speaking German. While I can pick out many individual words, I am not yet proficient enough in the language to understand what people are saying when they are talking among themselves. It is definitely a strange feeling to be surrounded by only people who are speaking a foreign language that you cannot understand.  It is a bit overwhelming, but I feel that it is the best way to learn.

After arriving in Frankfurt, I tried to order a ticket to Mannheim in German.  I got a smile, a ticket, and a reply in English.  Ticket in hand, I rushed to catch the train, and after thirty minutes of the best in high speed rail travel, I stepped out into the Mannheim Hauptbanhof on Saturday, August 18th at 10:30 AM.

Introduction

Hallo!
My name is Sean McArdle, and I am a 21 year old college student from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in the United States of America.  I grew up in North Andover Massachusetts, which is a quiet suburb about thirty minutes north of Boston.  I have been studying Mechanical Engineering at UMass Amherst for three years, but for the Fall of 2012, I have decided to study abroad in Europe.  I am going to Universitat Mannheim, in the Baden-Wurttemberg region of Germany.  My goals for this semesters are to immerse myself in German student life, to travel throughout Europe, to get to know other international students, and to become relatively proficient in the German language by the end of my time here.  I will be creating entries in this blog to document my adventure through Europe.