Andrew Dagger: Better late than never

Moving from Vancouver to Berlin was a pretty big deal for me; I'm 25, I was working an amazing career job that paid good money and worked around my night school. Leaving that behind was really friggin scary. The last few months in Vancouver were chaotic beyond belief, getting the financials setup to come over here, subletting our apartment, training my temporary replacement, planning what I needed to bring, and all the while skiing up at WB in every spare moment I could find :) I've already had some fun working holidays in Canada so this was my (maybe my last?) big chance to put my life on hold and go off on a big adventure.

Landing in Berlin, I immediately went to a hostel in Mitte and slept off my jet lag and slowly wandered around in larger circles through the area. Culture Shock hit me pretty bad, not that i wanted to go home but more that I was really disoriented and didn't know how to do anything.

Couple awesome things about Berlin that I picked up right away: the variety of ethnic food is amazing, you can walk around with an open beer ;) the transit system here is amazing and as long as you have google maps on your phone, not hard to figure out! Also, most everyone in a service position could speak English so that made things easier.

I was pretty excited to drive on the Autobahn so we rented a car and drove down to Bavaria to checkout all those picturesque little villages that really do dot the countryside all over. Driving was intense, the average flow of traffic was between 160-180km/h and don't be surprised to get tailgated going that speed by an old man and his family in the audi station wagon until you move over and he zooms by at light speed. You get places quick that way. The towns were so old, had amazing Schlosses (castles) and I don't think I ate anything but variations of sausage, schnitzel and sauerkraut for 3 days. Nuremberg castle and The perfectly preserved 16th century town of Rothenburg Ob de Tor were the highlights of places we visited.

So much fun was had that the next weekend we drove back down to Bavaria but went to the Allgaüer Alps and this small ski town called Oberstdorf to visit a friend. I had brought some gear with me but she was kind enough to hook me up with some office demo and I spent a glorious spring day skiing there, pretty much a dream come true and those mountains are gnarly! It was a completely different experience form the rest of Germany I'd seen, and a completely different mountain experience from anywhere in North America. We stayed for two more nights and partied in the one club in town where people were legitimately wearing Dirndl's and Liederhosen. So much alpine history in those mountains, it was a dream come true.

Looking forward to selecting the bachelor courses and hoping they'll match up with our Masters courses we've already chosen. Hamburg and the north is on the radar for some upcoming travel plans. Maybe a faster car than the Fiat 500 I drove to Oberstdorf is in order.

I'm most nervous about the masters level courses and finding enough time to visit everywhere I want to go.