Florence, Italy
How can I articulate this?
How can I possibly explain the experience of studying abroad? There are the cliché, to-be-expected statements I could use, of course.
“It’s life changing!”, “It’s the time of my life!”, “I can’t believe I really live here!” But then, how can I convey to my audience that these statements couldn’t, in fact, be truer? You’ve heard it a million times from every single person you have ever spoken with that has studied abroad.
We all say the same thing. And yet, I don’t believe a single one of us has ever had the same experience.
Contributed Photo: Danielle Dickstein visiting the Exotic Gardens in Eze, France. Dickstein is living and studying in Florence, Italy, for the fall semester. Dickstein has also visited the concentration camps in Dachau, Germany.
I came to Florence, Italy, ready to study. I knew I wanted to travel, but to where? I had signed up to live in Italy for a reason. I wanted to be here. In this city. And I could not be happier with my choice of location.
The city is warm and welcoming, but is resilient in maintaining its authenticity despite the rate of tourism. But the travel bug always works its way in and I couldn’t resist.
Oktoberfest was a given first-trip to book. And as a birthday present from my parents, I couldn’t imagine a better way to celebrate my 21st birthday.
Having come for the first weekend of festivities, we were given the day on Friday to explore the city of Munich, Germany before the party began on Saturday. An early-lunch visit to the Hofbrähaus started the day off just right.
Contributed Photo: Dickstein at the Hofbrahaus Tent at Oktoberfest in Munich, Germany, during her study away in Europe.
Wandering around the streets of Munich, finding the best possible deal for a Dirndl, a traditional Alpine peasant costume, followed the lunch of roasted chicken, mixed meats, oversized pretzels and large steins.
We capped off Friday with a bike tour of the city, leading us from castle to church to castle, and finally to the English Gardens. Larger than New York’s Central Park, the gardens offer rolling greens and ripping waves in the man-made river for surfers to ride. The party that ensued the following day at the festival is certainly one for the books.
While the festival will forever be an experience I will never forget, the Sunday of my time in Munich was the most important of the weekend for me. Being raised in this era of advanced civilization, that I have been so fortunate to have been born into, there was no shortage of history lessons on the tragedy that was the Holocaust.
Sunday, my best friend and I explored the concentration camp in Dachau, Germany. While wandering the grounds, listening to audio clips of each location where we were currently standing, it strangely felt a little fake to me.
So much of this camp had been dismantled, that the replacement replicas of the bunks, and the conversion of the Central Maintenance Building, that once housed the prisoner’s kitchen, bath house, laundry, and workshops, into a museum, has tarnished the aura of the campground.
We visited every site nonetheless, but it wasn’t until we came to the Crematorium and Gas Chambers that the chills set in. Original in its structure, the ovens and “shower” rooms remained untouched.
And suddenly, this was no longer a museum or memorial. This was the concentration camp that took innumerable lives.
I wasn’t sitting in a classroom, thousands of miles away, reading this in a textbook, even looking at photographs online. I was here, and the Grave of Ashes was at my feet.
If you asked me a few years ago if I thought this would be my current life, I would have responded with “Oh yeah, I wish!”
I have always loved traveling. There is a reality in new knowledge when you travel that simply can’t be read. But then again, I’ve always been more of a hands-on learner anyway.
Given the opportunity to study abroad, even if you don’t travel around, I would have to encourage anyone and everyone to do it.
As popular and cliché as it is, I have always felt St. Augustine’s quote to be utterly true and a resounding summation of the need to roam, that “the world is a book, and those who don’t travel only read one page.”
I beg of any person even slightly considering this opportunity to pursue it.
I promise, you won’t regret it.