My adventurous journey to Germany has only one word worthy of describing: unforgettable. Therefore, as far as I am concerned, this country does look completely exotic: from the dreamy design of the streets and houses, the white weather washing the green with frostbite, the salty flavor of the meals, and the burning passion of the people making contrast with the freezing wind. Once there, I didn’t actually want to return, and it took me all my strength to finally brush off the last of my inner struggle and follow the route home. If I ever get the chance, I’m definitely going again.
　

It all started in summer vacation, when I found out that the school was picking twenty students to make an exchange of twelve days to Germany. I was really excited, and I really wished to go. After consulting with my parents, I was out of my mind when I knew I could go. Later, we were told to make presentations about Taiwan, so that over there in Germany, we could show them our hometown. Even though we took a lot of time and sweat to prepare this Power Point presentation, and create a script out of thin air, we did our best and, thus, the learning started then and there. Three weeks passed by, stressful but successful.
　

From the beginning, on November 9^th: Twenty of us students and six school staff, including the school master himself, gathered at the airport, ready to start out with Germany as our only destination. Thirteen hours on plane seemed thrilling, even though as uncomfortable they felt to be, the excitement of the trip got my head. It was the first time I traveled without my parents; however, I was the least scared. The anxiousness kept me at ease, no matter how controversial that sounded. We arrived in the early morning, when the sky was still dark and the first rays of the sun were gleaming soft. It was really touching to see a handful of students and staff welcoming us after the tiring journey. The air was stabbing cold on my legs, because for some dumb reasons I wore a pair of thin stockings. The scenery was all dreamy, with big wood houses of every color, and flora sprouting merrily, as if everything was drawn out of a fairy tale story. It took us a couple of hours to arrive in the school, and the rain was crawling its way down on our skin.
　

The time I spent with my home stay was extremely sweet. I had so much fun with them. It was composed of a mother (Gaby), my partner (Marlene), and her little brother (Vincent, but in short, Vini). And I would see his little brother’s best friend (Sebastian) almost every day, with his red hair and freckles. And the structure of the house was weird for me, since it had three floors and a basement. On the basement were the lavatory, the stock room, and her mother’s chamber. On the ground floor was the living room (tidy and sweet, with a chimney in which Vini lighted up for me to see), a kitchen, and two bedrooms. I was surprised to see the bath separated from the toilet, forming two little quarters on their own, because normally in Taiwan, they were together. On my very first day, we walked around town and went to see the small village church they had there. Their thinking and the spirit was so different compared to ours. Their church, even small and simple, was well respected with their silence, as we whispered through the church. I told her that in Taiwan, we generally had temples, since most of us followed Taoism, and we celebrated our gods the noisy way. Later on, we planned for the week. They took me to shopping, seeing snow (for the first time I had touched it and balled it and threw it), skating on ice (boy, that was so hard for a rookie like me, my inner voice kept screaming “why in heaven can’t you keep your legs together?!” and I remember that my exchange partner later on told me that some guys were watching me at the skating hole and she overheard them discussing that I was cute, goodness, I flushed bright red), and baking cookies (not my first time baking but I really felt it was fun, since I consider handmade things nice, even though we talked too heartily that almost overcooked the poor cookies).
　

On the other hand, I think that their education system works really excellent. I truly believe that eastern-styled way of teaching by far the best for naughty students like us, since they have the space to learn being more independent, creative, and pursue the knowledge by themselves. Besides, they are not bound by the information on the textbooks; instead, the students take notes on their own and write handouts. And not forgetting to mention that they leave school very early, about one and a half p.m. unless they have opted for specialized classes, and I think it is awesome, due to having more time for oneself or maybe for some other extracurricular activities to culture talents. I loved the diversity of the English classes we took together and the flexibility of the teachers when dealing with students. I remember the first English class, a girl named Jasmine had to do a report in English about something she read on the newspaper about the exploding of women in poorer regions of Asia. I respected her courage, and she wasn’t afraid to speak and be corrected by the teacher. And I believe that is something students of Taiwan lack and need improvements on. They learned English as long as we did, besides, English wasn’t their first language either, so how come they can do a project in English by themselves and present it to the classmates, and we couldn’t? It really made me wonder, and I felt a little bit like a failure. And I remember that on one English class, we had to read an article and take on the characters the teacher assigned us; we had ten to fifteen minutes of discussion to design the skit we had to perform in front of the whole class. This was a role play, but I think of it more like a debate, since it was discussing about salary, overtime work, and safety issues in a workplace such as a factory. That was amazing.
　

Something I will never forget is the Zumba class. It was the best physical education class I ever had! Zumba is a kind of warm up exercise combined with different kinds of music like reggae or salsa. It really wore me out, but on the bright side, I believe it is really efficient for lazy people like me. And I am planning to draw some spare time every day for Zumba, since I believe doing exercises helps much better to lose weight than go cropping one’s diet.
　

Moreover, we visited the SICK Company, and I was awestruck at all that automation, the willpower from each single employee, and all those genius people creating artifacts at such young ages, especially that absolute resolution you could next to never expect on Taiwan’s youngsters. Our tour guides throughout the company were mere high school students as well! On the other hand, the natural fresh air piercing through my lungs felt so intriguing. Germany was so clean, so fresh, and so pure that it almost frightens.
　

Before I forget to mention, we were taken to see the major. He was a man of responsibility and nationalism. He talked to us about the city of Waldkirch, about its people and students. He even handed out souvenirs to each one of us with his own hands, a show of total respect and welcome. It was a really warm act of his to take. Later on, we walked our way to the organ museum. Throughout our way, people greeted us while we passed by or waved at us with sweet smiles. And the organ museum was awesome in itself as well. We saw some organs that were hundreds of years old and still played beautiful music! I drank in the melodies with good pleasure and danced with some of my friends to the resonance of the bright notes.
　

On the last three to four days of the journey, and almost coming to the end, our tour guide took us to, literally, see the world. So as to speak, the Neuschwanstein castle was overwhelming. As you may know, I am a girl living on fantasy, and to believe that I was walking on the same floor as royalty of the medieval times did, it drove me crazy. I could even close my eyes, and find the maids rushing to and fro with buckets of water or baskets of laundry, footmen trotting with dirty leather boots squashing on the tiles, knights swearing their loyalty and ladies-in-waiting frolicking all over the place, noble ladies fanned their way slowly and stopping to watch the scenery through the windows while lords and merchants bargained merrily, but most importantly, the king… The young and playful king, wearing all those layers of gorgeous skin, dancing his way down the spiral staircase and I could keep on but it would never end. Therefore, it gave me the new inspiration of starting yet another of my own fantasy novels. Oh, that beauty should I never forget!
　

 While I recall, we went to the Titisee as well. There were lots of ducks and birds I didn’t recognize, so I crouched there and admired the tiny things. I remembered to have some crumbs of bread left on a plastic bag, so I shared them with the ducks, and funnier still, they even pecked on me and my friend when we stopped feeding them while we took a group photo. The sky was clear and beautiful on the horizon, but the winds slapped us so hard everyone’s hands and face were stinging cold. One more place I remember clearly to have gone is Austria. We went wandering the streets at night. To my horror, the people there were a little over passionate, which was a bit scary, but the diversity left me awestruck; the weather was still hard to live with, yet putting all that aside, it’s a really beautiful experience.
　

In conclusion, the whole visit was vigorous. I have traveled to many places on my fifteen years of lifetime, but that was my first time visiting Europe. Even more than what I expected, it was breathe taking… and heart wrenching when I knew that we had to leave. November 20^th on 2013, a day I would never forget, because on that day, my Eden-like twelve days went back to normal and I had to step back on reality again and make up for the things I’ve missed. But that’s okay, I spent the time and money with no regrets, and earned myself something much more valuable than just test scores, do you know what that is? It is an unforgettable golden experience.