Preparations for my final week in Germany

Dear all,

This week is announcing to be quite hectic as my internship at the Forschungszentrum Jülich comes to an end and I need to prepare a formal report and a PowerPoint presentation to give to a big lab group on Wednesday. I feel quite silly because initially, I think my Ph.D. student only expected me to prepare a presentation but I stupidly asked if he would like a report to go with it too. I just finished making a 14-point check list for this week such as packing, cleaning up the apartment, closing the bank account, finishing all the academic things such as the work report and presentation, buying souvenirs for family and friends I have been out of touch with since coming to Europe (“No, I didn’t forget about you. Here’s a keychain”), and somehow feel ready to leave by Saturday.

I will be leaving from Düsseldorf International Airport this Sunday at 7:20 am, transferring in Iceland and Boston before arriving in Ottawa, which means that I probably will need to camp at the Düsseldorf airport on Saturday night. At the moment, I am starting to get a little worried about how I am going to haul my two monstrous luggage bags from Jülich to Düsseldorf. I’ve accumulated a large number of useless objects and memorabilia that I can’t throw away during the past 7 months in Europe so at the moment, the arduous road home seems rather unappealing.

On another note, for my last full weekend in Europe, I visited the city of Munich and dreamy castle of Neuschwanstein on the German-Austrian border! I also visited Dachau to see what is left/what was reconstructed of the concentration camp there. It was depressing no doubt and a few people I’ve talked to warned me against going there, but Dachau was the first erected concentration camp during the Third Reich and set the example for a slew of others – this part of history is so dark but yet so recent and real that it would be just irresponsible to shy away from it. That morning was cloudless and incredibly sunny so the contrast was very strange. I feel very privileged to have had such a grand ending to my experience in Germany. This is all that I will say about the Munich weekend for now, or else I will keep going forever and leave my work report and presentation on the back burner for too long. I leave you with a promise to write a more detailed post about my Munich trip later, before I jump into the time machine (or plane, but I really see it as a time machine – I have no idea what lies ahead over there anymore!), back to North America!