The best part of my journey abroad thus far has been the friends I’ve made. Anytime challenges arise, like having to apply for my German visa or adapting to the differences in classroom learning, I’ve always been able to fall back on my friends for support and guidance.
When I’m feeling homesick, I tend to find the other students who are hundreds of miles away from where they call home. Sometimes this is pretty simple, as I can talk for hours with my American friend Ian about the things we miss from living on the east coast. The other day we talked for an hour about the interstate connecting North Carolina and Massachusetts, and the memories we had driving on it with our families. Small details like that, which seem so insignificant in the moment, end up being things you remember years later.
Heimweh (literally “Home pain”) or homesickness, in English, is something which is trans-cultural. My friend Sophie is from a French town only a few hours away from Tübingen and yet we often talk about our desire to see our families, if only for a little while.
