The Alps

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If one is to live in Germany, the experience wouldn’t be complete without visiting the German Alps. As such, a year after I moved here, I went to the Alps with some friends.

Two friends and I took a few trains to get to Oberstdorf where we met up with another friend that had gone ahead before us.

Reunited, we immediately started walking out of the town and went south. We didn’t have a specific destination in mind, and we just went up the first canyon that looked decent which led us up the canyon right above where it says “Allgäuer Hochalpen” on the map. Continue reading →

Getting a Job Visa in Germany

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I moved to Germany around August 2013. I did a semester abroad in Germany a couple of years prior, and without any other plans after getting my bachelor’s degree, I decided to move to Germany and try to find a job since I liked Germany (You can walk around on the streets with a beer in hand and enjoy it! How cool is that?). I have had many people ask me about what it took to move here, so in this post I will go over the basics of getting a job visa in Germany and then relate my experiences getting my initial visa and getting it renewed.

The Basics

The most important part of finding and getting a job in Germany is getting the permission to work here. Otherwise, you can travel here for vacation, but it is not permitted to work. That pretty much goes for every country in the world, so there should be no surprise there. It can be a bit daunting to get permission here, though. Continue reading →

East Coast (and a bit more)

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While I was in my semester abroad in Germany, I of course talked to Germans while I was there. We would invariably end up discussing the places we had been to in each other’s countries. I had traveled quite a bit in Germany, and I had been to many German cities that quite a few other Germans had not been to. On the other hand, a lot of Germans had been to a lot of cities from the United stated that I had yet to go to. That was largely due to the fact that I had never been to the East Coast.

After I finished University, without any other plans, I had decided to move to Germany. But first, I wanted to travel within the United States a bit more. As such, I decided to spend a few months on the East Coast.

I was living in Wyoming, and I first drove to Chicago to see some friends there. One thing we did was set up a free hugs stand downtown, which was a lot of fun.

I didn’t feel like driving any further because I was afraid of my car breaking down. Additionally, I was looking to save some money, so I started hitchhiking. I went to the south side of Chicago, went to an onramp for the interstate and stuck out my thumb. Continue reading →

Titan I Missile Complex

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I have always been fascinated with abandoned places, and I always thought one of the coolest places to check out would be an abandoned missile silo. I posted briefly in another post (near the end) about an Atlas launch facility that I went to, but that wasn’t too exciting because it was all above ground. I wanted to go underground.

After talking to some people and doing some online sleuthing, I managed to locate a Titan I missile complex in Colorado, which wasn’t too far away from us in Laramie, Wyoming. I talked to a friend who was interested in going, so we headed out early one day.

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Bishop Castle

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There aren’t many castles in the United States, but there is at least one in Colorado. The Bishop Castle has been under construction for quite a few decades and is the fruit of labor from one man. Jim Bishop bought the property and ultimately ended up building a castle upon it. He was challenged multiple times by authorities over rights of the building materials and zoning requirements, but the castle still stands strong.

A couple friends and I drove down from Wyoming to central Colorado where the castle is located at and checked it out.

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Semester Abroad in Germany—More Adventures

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For spring break during my semester abroad, a few other students and I decided to go to Munich and then Berlin. We more or less went individually or in small groups and tried to meet up as we could while in both cities.

I took the train to Munich and met up with the others, and we went on a tour of the city the following morning.

The legend behind this church is that the architect made a deal with the devil, and the church was built in only 2 years. The deal was that there were not allowed to be any windows, so from the following footprint of the devil, no window is viewable due to the pillars.

Apparently, the devil wears a US size 11 shoe

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Semester Abroad in Germany—Other Countries

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While I was in my semester abroad, I traveled to a lot of the areas around Pforzheim, where I was studying, on the weekends, but I also went to a few other countries while I was in Europe.

On one of the weekends I went to Zürich, Switzerland. I used a site to carpool from Stuttgart to Zürich which only took a few hours.

I was couchsurfing, which helped save some money, because otherwise Zürich is expensive! My hosts were fun, and we went out to a club one night. Another time while we were sitting on their balcony, one of them told me how he accidentally stole a table from the university. The university had set out a table with some books that were free to take home, and they had put a sign on the table saying free. As the pile of books disappeared, my host told me how he ran across the table with a sign on it stating free, and he thought he would take the free table home. It wasn’t until later when he talked to another roommate who asked him if he saw the books that were free did he realize that the table itself was not part of the deal. Oh well, he kept it, and that’s what we ate off of on the balcony. When I wasn’t talking with my hosts, I was off checking out the city.

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Semester Abroad in Germany

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While I was at the University of Wyoming, I toyed with the idea of doing a semester abroad. I had just recently come back from South America and my Spanish was okay, but I was interested in improving it further. I looked into doing a semester abroad in Central or South America as well as Spain, but I quickly realized that I would not be able to afford a semester abroad. Not only would it mean that I wouldn’t be working, but I would have to pay for additional costs like an apartment, the flight, food, and any other fees. Since I barely had enough money to go to University as is, I dismissed the idea.

At some point, I got an email that was sent out to all the students in the College of Business (CoB). The email explained that the CoB and Hochschule Pforzheim had an exchange set up and that the CoB was sponsoring students to go there. One just had to apply, and if you were selected, then your flight would be paid for as well as lodging, plus a little bit of spending money. I applied, and as luck would have it, I was accepted along with 3 other students.

My job would let me resume working once I returned, and my landlord in Laramie was fine with me not paying for the half-a-year I would be gone, so I got to keep all my stuff stored in my room in my absence. It all worked out quite well.

The time came for me to leave, and I flew to Frankfurt.

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Wyoming: Reminiscing

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It was at about this time in my narrative journey that I returned to Wyoming. I needed to continue my classes, and it was no longer possible to take online classes which meant that I had to move to Laramie, WY, to continue studying at the university proper.

After returning to the United States following my 3 months in South America, I moved to Laramie. While there, I studied and worked a lot, but I also made some friends and we would explore the surrounding area together. This post isn’t only about the area around Laramie but rather of just some general reflections on Wyoming in general.

I was lucky to come from such a beautiful area. Jackson, WY, is one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen, and I lived there or in the surrounding area for the first 18 years of my life.

The following 2 photos of me are from when we hiked up a mountain near our old house in Etna, where we lived for a few years about an hour south of Jackson.

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South America Expenditures

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As I have been recently posting, after living in Chicago for a year, I decided to go to South America. While living in Chicago, I was studying, so I only had enough time to work part-time. In that time, though, I still managed to go to a couple conventions, I went to Canada, and I managed to save up enough for my South-America trip. Continue reading →