It finally feels like summer! My shoulders are burnt, but in a good way, like crème brûlée. I have to work all weekend, but that means that one day next week I’ll be free. And there are only three weeks left of my German class and of work. I’m already thinking about coming to Munich for a week or so in December, if I survive my first semester of law school. But okay, I’m not going to think about that right now. I have the details of a trip to plan--backpacking through the parts of Germany and Austria that I haven’t seen yet for ten days in July.

To make things interesting my back up credit card expires at the end of June, which means I’m going to have to be really careful to stick to a budget. But I got this. I can definitely stick to eating on 10 Euros a day if I stuff my suitcase with instant noodles, baking chocolate (it’s 1/3 the price of regular chocolate) and the Pringles that make me just nauseous enough to not want to eat so I can skip buying a few meals if need be. Oops, that last piece of information is going to concern a few people. I promise I’ll stop doing this to my body as soon as I get back to the States. I might even start wearing sunscreen if I’m moving to Miami and the sun will no longer be such a rare treat.

Anyway, the first two days of my adventure I’ll be in Salzburg with two friends, then it’s back to Munich for one night. Then I take the bus to Stuttgart by myself. Why Stuttgart? Because it only costs 9 Euros to get there. I spend two nights there and carpool to Dusseldorf for 24 Euros. I’m a little nervous about traveling in a stranger’s car, but not too much because first of all, it’s Germany, plus I know plenty of people who have carpooled without any problem. Then I spend at least two nights in Dusseldorf. Then I don’t have anything booked for the weekend because Ader might still get the weekend off and we could meet somewhere. Then on July seventeenth I fly from Cologne back to Munich. Flying is, bizarrely, the cheapest way to go. Then I’m back in Munich for one night to have a going away party and therefore am not booking a hostel.

Then it’s back to New Jersey at ten in the morning on July eighteenth via Berlin and New York. I’m excited to see my family again, and a hand full of friends. Although my social life is overall better in Germany, muss ich sagen. It’s not so much the quality of individual people but the number of quality of people and their availability. I still don’t know how to feel.