Personal Narrative Essay: My Trip to Germany

Everything I had heard about the German people, their efficiency, their punctuality, and their beautiful country was true when I experienced it on my first ever trip abroad to the Federal Republic of Germany in August 2016. Germany is widely considered to be the economic and political powerhouse of Europe, and is set to become a global superpower. Germany captured my spirit, and put it in a capsule for it to be locked away. A true land of magic. 

Because I was born in a third world country, obtaining a visa for any of the European countries would prove very difficult, and indeed it did, but after much effort, and many tries and difficulties, my family and I were able to obtain German visas, and I had a chance to travel to Germany. The trip was worth every bit of effort. 

I assumed that I knew what to expect when visiting Germany, but I made a wrong assumption. Germany surprised me in ways that I had never imagined. 

On a very nice and sunny summers day, my family and I boarded a plane bound to the northern city of Hamburg, and I can still remember seeing the thousands and thousands of fields and patches of farmlands from the plane’s windows. We went through airport checkpoints, and we were very nicely welcomed into the country. 

And this is where I lost my spirit. 

We decided to take a taxi from the airport, and on our ride to our hotel, my first impressions were very positive. Everything was clean, the sidewalks were low enough to allow people to get on public transport very easily, and to allow handicapped people very easy access as well. 

But these are just first impressions. 

I was jet-lagged, and I felt very tired after a long flight, but that did not stop me from going out to see the city in the evening. The next thing that I was impressed by was the architecture and the buildings in the city. They were gorgeous. It was as if the buildings had life inside of them, and that they could somehow speak to you. The city was alive and you could feel this. As an example, the shopping system was amazing, because everyone would walk from shop to shop, and no cars were allowed in the shopping area. This made it possible for many street performers to perform, and it made the city much more alive. The streets of the city were full of expensive and luxurious cars, and many people were out for an evening walk.

But there is even more.

My family and I decided that we would travel across the country to the southern parts. We bought train tickets, and got on a train. What followed, I can only describe as pure beauty. German punctuality is something that I’ve never seen anywhere else, everything in Germany is on time. If the time for a train to arrive is 11:00 in the morning, the train will have stopped and it’s doors will have opened by exactly 11:00, not a minute before or after. The German countryside was truly beautiful, there were windmills and solar panels in most places. The villages that I was able to see from the train were the best part of the countryside. I had never seen such villages anywhere else. They were basically miniature cities, but more lively, and even more clean, surrounded mostly by forests and wildlife. All the villages or towns that we passed by on the train, they all had access to a train station, and all the rails were designed to be this way, and this just complements German efficiency. 

We passed many towns and cities on our trip across the country, and each region had its own culture and way of life, every region was different, truly wonderful, and full of life. 

My trip to Germany was a wonderful experience, and I recommend it to anyone that gets the chance to travel. If I ever get a chance to travel to Germany again, I would do it without hesitation.