Schmalkalden isn't on anyone's travel radar...

I spent six months there getting a master's degree – free tuition, a small apartment, and no idea it would become one of the most important chapters of my life.

It's a small town in Thuringia – no tourist infrastructure, no pressure to see the sights. Just daily life in a place that moved at its own pace.

And somehow, I met some of the best people of my life.

One of them – a young Spanish woman I met in the first day – helped my fiancé at the time and I translate for a photographer who wanted us to stage a fake wedding shoot in the forest. We laughed through the whole thing, pretending to be married in a country we weren't from. Years later, she was a bridesmaid at our real wedding.

After class we'd head into the woods with friends and a bottle of wine – Riesling, usually, picked up for less than the cost of coffee – and find a grassy spot overlooking the town as the sun went down.

One night we camped at a lake nearby – or tried to. Two people brought tents. There were at least ten of us. Everyone else around us was perfectly prepared – vans, proper gear, the works. We had a campfire, drinks, snacks, two very small tents between 10+ people, and somehow that was enough. We swam, slept outside, watched the stars, tracked satellites moving across the sky. It's one of my favorite memories from that whole chapter.

Some weekends we'd explore whatever was nearby – Erfurt, Jena, Eisenach. Others we'd end up in Prague, or on a last-minute flight to Budapest or Corfu. That's the thing about being based in central Europe – everywhere suddenly feels within reach.

One evening at a beer garden in Munich, we made a friend who mentioned almost as an afterthought that he'd just taken a senior position at Amazon. Then he changed the subject entirely. We stayed out late, talked about everything else, and the next morning he drove us to Neuschwanstein Castle – casually, the way you'd suggest grabbing coffee.

We drove through Bavaria with the music up, no speed limits, windows down.

He's still a good friend. Germany has a way of doing that.

In Berlin, I walked along what remains of the Wall – the divide that split a city, a country, a century.

In Weimar, I visited Buchenwald. There's nothing to say about it that does it justice. You walk through and the weight of what happened there becomes real in a way that reading about it never quite manages. The silence is different there... it's heavy.

Germany doesn't look away from what it did. It builds memorials in the center of its cities, teaches it in its schools, and makes sure you can't visit without encountering it. That kind of accountability is rare. It left a mark on how I think about history, memory, and the responsibility of not forgetting.

What I remember most is nature.

Germany is covered in forest – dense, fairy-tale forest that opens unexpectedly into sunlit meadows. One hike in Thuringia took us through thick woods for what felt like hours before the trees parted and there, in the middle of nowhere, was a small restaurant with tables outside and cold drinks waiting.

We sat there for a long time. No agenda, no end time. Just the wind in the trees and nowhere else to be.

If you've never been to Germany, go. Not for the castles or the beer or the efficiency – though all of that is real. Go for the pace of it. The way people work hard and then actually stop. The long tables, the slow evenings, the forests that seem to go on forever.

Go in summer if you can. Find a hill, bring a bottle of wine, and stay until the sun goes down.

You'll understand.

— Ivonne

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