German vs Italian: Traveling Outside My Host Country
Independent travel is the buzzword for study abroad students. Sure, it is study abroad — but aren’t we truly here to experience a mixture of many different cultures too? I had this past week off for a fall break, and I chose to go on my first bigger independent trip with a long-time friend.
Independent Travel during Study Abroad
Many students are primarily focused on visiting as many places as possible while they are on a different continent — I had similar plans. My program only offered two options for program-facilitated group trips, and so the idea of planning my own independent travel was daunting; however, if I was going to Europe, I might as well see as many countries and cities as I could while it was affordable.
Independent travel — especially solo travel — can be intimidating. My best advice is to keep the balance and do day and weekend trips by yourself. Anything longer, you should consider going with another person. This past week, I spent on the east coast of a smaller Italian island named Sardinia. I met up in Olbia with a friend from South Tyrol, Italy (shoutout Lea Ganthaler) after taking my own flight and train to get there. It was the best decision I made, as we could spend the week together and I could still explore as much as I could of a new place. It reduces the stress of independent travel and also allows me to feel safer as a young woman traveling in foreign places.
Additionally, I wanted to touch on budgeting while abroad, as expenses can add up quickly if you aren’t careful. In favor of a boat tour and cave excursion, my friend and I opted to have grocery store sandwiches, snacks, and iced tea for our trip. Although exploring different cuisines is an option, it is also totally okay to budget towards excursions rather than fancy meals. It comes down to personal preference, and especially with other daily living costs I need to put my savings for, I found that budget meals were a great option. This also does not mean you have to do one or the other, but rather find a balance. It allows you to still travel independently, without breaking the bank.
Seeing Italy
I had such a wonderful time on this trip, immersed in the mountainous terrain of Sardinia and seeing smaller, more remote places. Sardinia is a popular beach vacation spot in the summer, but past September it can feel quite empty. As the weather was colder, there were obviously very few people at the beaches, and it was easy to book accommodations and activities as we went. I found that it was okay to be on the spontaneous side, deciding day by day where we wanted to go and the places we wanted to see. The weather was also very nice, as Freiburg has become quite cold and rainy many of the days. Spending a week in the sunny 60-70s was very much welcome, especially while sitting on the crystal blue shores of the Mediterranean.
The first day of the trip, we flew into Olbia as our base, with my friend driving us in our lovely Fiat Panda, which we fittingly named Giulia. One thing about traveling on an island is that public transport is virtually nonexistent outside of the three bigger cities. Sardinia itself actually only had one actual highway, which we elected to not utilize. In Olbia, we simply looked around and found a delicious ice cream spot while wandering the streets and seeing some beautiful Roman-style churches.
After that, we drove to some stunning beaches that were not super crowded, and we ended the night with an evening swim near San Teodoro. We were the only ones on the beach as the winds were strong, but we had the best time looking out into the sea and other smaller islands. A night in San Teodoro later, we explored between there and Orosei, of course stopping for a gelato in La Caletta (which we returned to on our way back for the Lotus Bischoff gelato). More churches, more beaches, and scenic drives through the mountains followed.
Our last three days, aside from driving back up to Olbia, were spent in Cala Gonone, a very popular boat tour destination. On Halloween, we took the last scheduled boat tour around the eastern coast of the island. We sailed into small grottos, observed the towering mountains, and stopped on the beaches of Cala Mariolu and Cala Luna. I jumped from a small rocky cliff to the water, and we also got to take a swim in the strikingly blue waters. After our return to the island, we had our first (and only) restaurant meal of some classic Italian pizza and, of course, a gelato.
Closing Thoughts
Traveling outside your host country can be pretty jarring, especially when you know your host language. I went from having a great understanding of the vast majority of German and interactions around me, to not even knowing “yes” or “no” in Italian. While I definitely recommend seeing other countries on whatever continent you decide, it can also be exhausting to assimilate a new culture. For me I enjoyed my trip and have no regrets; however, at the end, I was excited to hear, see, and speak German again.
I loved Sardinia and would recommend Italy in general to anyone curious about the culture there. As I head into my last month abroad, I will be paying a visit to Edinburgh, Scotland (shoutout Olivia Wiley), and then using my country-wide Deutschland-Ticket to explore more of Germany and its border countries. At the end of the day, Italy was like a fever dream of Mediterranean culture. It took time, but Freiburg has become my home base, and I love returning after trips like this one. I loved seeing a new culture, but I am glad to be back in Freiburg, which I can finally — and confidently — call home.
Fun fact: Freiburg is in the state of Baden-Württemberg, which endorses fun stickers that people place in destinations all around the world! You can spot them everywhere, and there are parodies for different places as well, but I came prepared with a couple of places for my host state! Translated, they mean: “It’s nice here. But have you ever been to Baden-Württemberg?”
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