“Man sieht sich immer zweimal im Leben”

Man sieht sich immer zweimal im Leben roughly translates to “you always meet twice in life.” When I last heard this phrase, I was 18 years old and had just spent my senior year of high school studying abroad in Germany. After 2 years studying here at Valpo, I’m going back for another year, this time at a German university. I’ll be spending my time reconnecting with a culture that I have grown to love, increasing my fluency and learning even more about the people and places in Germany.

Things will be a lot different this time around. Instead of living with a family I’ll be on my own, living in a German dormitory, cooking for myself and navigating everything on my own. This is my first experience living in a true apartment and I’m excited to learn the best ways to cook vegetarian food in a largely meat-based culture and shop for veggies at the weekly outdoor market. I’m also going to live in a city more populous than anywhere I’ve ever lived before. When I studied in Germany in high school, I lived in a town of 500, which is a radically different experience than living in a bubbling student metropolis. I’m going to take advantage of this by exploring and travelling as much as I can in the area right outside my own door.

Katie in TubingenMy first semester will actually start a bit early with the Deutschkompakt (Compact German) course offered by the university. The course will give me the opportunity to fine-tune my German and get to know Tübingen before classes start. I will also get to know the other foreign students at the university as well as my flatmates. In Germany, dorms are replaced by 6-8 person flats where each person has an individual room, but all share a bathroom, kitchen and common living area. Although there are cafeterias throughout the city, there is no central/formal meal plan so most of the cooking will be up to me.

The picture I included above is important, because it’s from the last time that I was in Tübingen, a few weeks before I came to Valpo. I studied abroad during my senior year of high school, meaning that I did not have the opportunity to go on college visits before applying to college. I had been to a few schools when my sister was looking at colleges, but I had not really had the opportunity to go on my own search. Looking at the university of Tübingen was really the only true college visit that I made. It was a trip that allowed me to codify my college search experience and help me transition into the idea of going to college despite being far away from home and all oft he colleges that I was considering while preparing for it.

And so, in many ways, returning to Tübingen is an experience of coming full circle, of reconnecting with my past and bringing together two different parts of my life. I will get to experience living in Germany again while maintaining my connection to Valpo. I fully look forward to diving into this new experience and finding out what more Germany has to offer. Deutschland, wir sehen uns endlich zum zweiten Mal!