After almost 24 hours of traveling and staying awake for about 28 hours straight, I can say that I have finally been reconnected with my family and friends. It is so hard to comprehend that my 7,171,200 seconds, that is 83 days, of Europe are over. I was able to experience and learn things I could never have dreamed of. This blog will cover my major takeaways and serves as a follow up to my London blog.
My classes abroad focused mainly on European history and the Holocaust. In the U.S., we all learn about the Holocaust, but nothing could have prepared me for learning about it in Europe. We were in the same area that all of these atrocities happened. We were learning about the Holocaust from our professor's family history. It brought my understanding to a completely new level. I heard personal survival stories and saw the devastation first hand. I walked the paths of millions of victims. I visited multiple concentration camps and saw the terrors. I saw with my own eyes the destruction caused by the Nazi regime. In the US, my classes always made the Holocaust sound bad but I still never understood the true immensity of the terror. I was always able to disassociate from my previous learning because it never truly affected me. Yes, it was always heartbreaking, but I still never understood what truly happened. I always received the glossed over version of history. I now carry around a heavy heart for all the victims and survivors. I have a new understanding of the atrocities that occurred and a new found passion on sharing my experience with others.
In my first blog post over London, I mentioned having a rather unique experience that would be revealed at the end of my trip and here it is! When I first arrived in Europe, I went to Europe with two of my sorority sisters. We had all been to Europe in the past, so we were feeling pretty confident. Do not worry this changed by the end of the day. We checked into our first ever hostel not really knowing what to expect and hoping it was nothing like the movie "Hostel." Everything started out wonderfully. We took our stuff up to our hostel room and started chatting with our French hostel mate. We probably talk to this guy for twenty to thirty minutes and everything seemed great. The hostel was nothing like the movies and we would be just fine, right? Wrong. A hostel worker came to our room, opened the door, glanced around, and ran down the stairs. Moments later, the hostel manager and a police officer were in our hallway. Our hostel mate was taken out into the hallway and arrested. We heard bits and pieces of the arrest followed by the clinking of the handcuffs. We sat in our room scared to death. What the heck just happened? Did we make the right choice? Were we about to die? The hostel manager came back upstairs a while later and talked to us about the situation. I guess the French man was arrested on sexual harassment charges from the day before. We were assured that the man would not be allowed back into the room and that the man was reported to the police by the hostel itself. Looking back, we were so terrified and we all just wanted our moms, but now it makes a great story that we can shock people with.
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