Today was our last official day of the trip to Germany. Seeing as this was our last and most emptiest day here, I decided I would try to fulfill a lifelong goal of mine and go to a Borussia Dortmund Bundesliga soccer match at Signal Iduna Park in Dortmund. I was planning on taking the Deutche Bahn train, and meeting some friends along the way. This morning, I departed Munich HBF, feeling sad thinking this was the last I would see of Munich.
Or so I thought…
The problems immediately began an hour and a half into the trip, when we made a stop in the tiny village of Kinning. This northern Bavarian village apparently boasts only 1,200 people, which is less people than my dormitory at Purdue. An unusual stop for a cross country ICE train. After sitting in Kinning for almost an hour, the DB staff finally came over the loudspeaker to announce our train was cancelled. Immediately, I began scanning the internet looking for another form of getting to Dortmund, be it a train or plane, but due to an ongoing transportation strike in Germany, nothing was available. Frustrated, angry, and tired, I made my way back to Ingolstadt and then back to Munich. I was utterly disappointed not to have been able to make it to the match, but seeing as I’m also a Purdue basketball fan, I’m becoming used to disappointment.
Regardless of the outcome in the morning, I decided to make my way into the city center of Munich. I went to 6:00 mass at the Fraukirche Cathedral, and took advantage of Munich’s shopping scene to buy some new shoes. It was a bittersweet goodbye to the group of friends that I had grown so close to over the past 7 days. I genuinely wish we had more time for this trip, just so I could take the opportunity to spend time with my friends here. This is my second study abroad trip, and I continue to find it amazing how a bunch of teenagers and 20 somethings can get dropped in a foreign country with nothing more in common than their language and the school they go to, and almost instantly become best of friends.