It’s four days until my plane leaves, and there’s a pile of clothes growing (though not quickly enough) in a corner of my bedroom. It’ll probably be added to and then weeded many times before it’s finalized. How do you pack when you need clothing for three and a half months, you’re only bringing one suitcase, and you really want to be a low-maintenance traveler, even though you know you’re not a low-maintenance person?
That’s the one bad part of my life right now: fitting a semester’s worth of stuff into a suitcase, a carry-on and a “personal item”. Everything else is pretty much incredible.
In four days, I’ll be on a plane to Iceland, where I’ll board a plane to Munich, where, after four days in Germany, I’ll cross the border into Salzburg, Austria, a city on the border and my new home for the spring. Salzburg has it all: Mozart’s house, the staggering presence of the nearby Alps, and even a castle! We really don’t have enough castles in the U.S.
In fact, I’ve never seen one. That’s not why I decided to study abroad, but it’s a piece of it. I’ve never seen a castle; I’ve never crossed an ocean. I’ve never lived outside of New England or shared a room or home with someone from another country. My life has, more or less, existed in a very small, very Yankee bubble, and it’s time to change that.
As I get ready to leave, I’m filled with two emotions in very different camps: excitement over the experiences I know are coming, and the creeping feeling that I’m underprepared for all of them. I told myself I was going to learn German before I left. That didn’t exactly pan out. I’ve read all the materials from Salzburg College, but I really still have no idea what to expect, and no amount of reading will change that.
It’s a lot of fun, and it’s a little bit terrifying. I won’t lie; there are a million things to be nervous about. What if I don’t make friends? What if something goes horribly wrong with my flights? What if I can’t watch the Bachelor in Europe? You know, the big issues.
But it’s very easy, in this moment, as I consider the hazy, undefined vision I have of the next four months, to turn all that nervous energy into something positive. I’m excited for every second on this trip, starting with my first transatlantic flight and going onward. There will be more opportunities to enrich myself in the next three and half months than I’ve maybe ever had, and I want to take advantage of all of them. When I reflect back on my semester abroad, I hope the only thing I see lacking is downtime.
