Crossing from the United States into another country isn't always easy. In my experience, travel usually involves waiting in a long line so that officials can check your entry documents and stamp your passport. I was expecting these types of hassles when I traveled to the Netherlands, a country that shares a land border with Germany. I was sitting on the train with my passport ready, as flat countryside whizzed by outside my window, waiting for us to stop at a border checkpoint or for the conductor to walk by and ask to see my documents. But to my surprise, nothing like that actually happened.
The only reason I knew that something had changed was because the announcements coming over the loudspeaker were beginning to sound strange. It wasn't that the conductor was saying anything out of the ordinary, but rather that the language of the announcements had switched from German to Dutch! Dutch is the main language spoken in the Netherlands. Some Dutch spellings are pretty similar to German (for example, the word for "bread" is brood in Dutch and Brot in German). However, Dutch pronunciation is completely different from German, so I couldn't understand anything being said on the train. Just as I fully realized this, my phone screen lit up with a text from T-Mobile: "Welcome to the Netherlands!"
