Here we goooo, another trip to Germany! But this time I was going to an international conference.
Me and another girl from my town got ready for a loooong drive: we were going 28 hours in a hot bus (it was the end of June) with drivers who spoke only Polish (good luck understanding how long they are stopping and how long till the next stop). But we made it to the beautiful city of Karlsruhe! We nearly lost our minds, but we made it! We were greeted by a German girl from the organizing team and she drove us to her apartment where we stayed for a couple of days. After we took very needed showers we decided to join her in the organizational weekly meeting. Apparently we were the first participants to arrive, so when we were introduced, everybody started clapping. I might say, it is a good feeling when a hundred people are clapping for you. Later we joined them for a beer where we met my friend's host (we would be living with hosts which is an awesome system as you get to know the culture better, not to mention you make friends more easily).
Conference started after a few days and that is also when my sleepless nights began, because c'mon you are in a once in a lifetime opportunity where there are 16 nations in the room, everybody's eager to share their stories and they are a bunch of interesting people! The 16 nations were Thailand, China, Latvia, Lithuania (that's us), Kenya, Tunisia, Iran, Serbia, Macedonia, Germany, Poland, UK, Czech Republic, Romania, Moldova, Slovakia. Overall we were a group of around 40-50 people, so you can imagine that over the week we got to know each other very well.
The conference topic was about whether money brings happiness and what is wealth, is it just money and so on. I know at first it sounds oh my deaaar, that is soooo abstract, but actually we got into sooo much discussion and we talked so much we touched everything: health, education, family, environment, business...I don't think there was a thing that we haven't talked about. And after long day of discussion we would go to party so everybody just stuck together. I'm still in touch with some of the people from the group and that is great.
The people really made it all. They were always smiling, ready to help, just talk, discuss serious topics or just party. Talking about parties, they were awesome. One German guy showed us this super great drinking game which is really fun. I have no idea what it's called, but you get this children's toy where there are four people and they have to defend their part from a plane which goes round and round. And if the plane hits one of your chips, you have to take a shot. We also had cultural dinner one night, so we were stuuuuuffed with German goods (and no, it's not just beer). And what is a trip without a little romance? Yep, there were sparks flying, and promises to visit and late night kisses until he realized that he doesn't want a long distance relationship. Oh well, his loss. No, but seriously, I hope he's doing fine, he's a nice guy. Actually, every person in that conference was nice, especially the organizing team which was always ready with a smile or coffee at times that you needed it most.
And the whole city was so welcoming. I guess it's because it's a student's town, not very big - around 350 thousand people. And ladies, 70% population are guys, so yeah... But it's not the only reason the city grew on me: I loved the trams, the night life, the smiling people, my life at the dorm (which was so funny as my host would be always sleeping when I came back and still sleeping when I left. But overall she was a great girl and really took care of me, even though sometimes I wouldn't even return to her place to sleep. Cause we would be three of us sleeping in a tiny room, so I would sometimes end up sleeping at another host). I loved that the city is green, and I loved that they're building a metro! The city is not that big, but they are thinking about the future, that's great.
There was one bad thing though - my foot swelled up and it was hard to walk or especially dance. But hey, I was not about to let that ruin my trip! Bandaged that baby up and lumped all over our tours. The swelling went down on my last day - haha, very funny, greaaat.
During this trip we not only walked to and through Karlsruhe, but we also visited Strasbourg, where we went into the European Parliament, climbed a veeeeery high church (I'm not a huge fan of stairs, but me and my friend realized that most probably why "stares" and "stairs" sound similarly is cause when you are climbing stairs you usually end up staring at somebody's behind) with a beautiful view. We have also been in Heidelberg and Stuttgart where we half of us visited the Mercedes Benz museum and half of us went to the zoo (I went to the museum) and then we chilled in the little park. That's also the town where I said goodbye to the person I mentioned before. We still called each other and talked a lot for a few more days, but it's one of the things that I learned while travelling - people always leave. And when they leave we usually grow apart - it's very rare to keep in touch and if you can do that, consider yourself a lucky person (I mean, I kept in touch with just one person from that group and I consider myself lucky for that. Sure, the whole group would be very communicative at first, but if there's still somebody left that you enjoy talking after two years like I have, don't be sad, one person is a lot). So I became used to goodbyes, and I stopped missing people that leave (yes, I know it's odd that I don't miss people, but what can I do?). Because in the end, I usually have just memories left. And I'm very thankful for those. I always remember every person who made me smile, but I also learned that not many of those people will stay. And that's ok. It's sad, but it's ok.
The conference ended with a huge global village party, which means each nation had their special food and drinks prepared. The amazing 10 days were over and it was time to go home. I slept all of the ride home.
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