Beach Vacation

A couple of months ago, I said over text with a couple of friends from my exchange program "Wouldn't it be hilarious to actually go to a German island?" Well this post will be about how that joke turned into a reality.

While the first time I mentioned traveling to a German island wasn't serious at all, every time my friends and I brought it up, it got more and more serious until we found ourselves planning out times, tickets, and ferry rides. Two weekends ago, all of our planning paid off into one of the coolest and perhaps the most random day trips of my exchange year so far.

It started early in the morning where we all met at the central train station. We rode a few regional trains until we got to the coast of the North Sea. From there, we hopped on an hour long ferry that floated us across to one of several German controlled islands in the North Sea. Once we stepped out onto the island, we headed straight to the beach. The weather for the weekend was thankfully beautiful, which meant that we spent the whole time outside. When I visited Bremerhaven, a city on the North Sea, the weather was cold and windy. (It also got dark around 4 in the afternoon there because it was December at the time).

Once we got to the beach, we fully embraced the feeling of a beach vacation. While all of the Germans around us were taking walks in coats and warm cloths, we set up an elaborate picnic on the sand and feasted while wearing swimsuits and t-shirts. You could easily tell who the tourists were. Another thing that my friends and I did was make an agreement that if one person goes swimming, everyone does, so after our beach picnic we all took a swim in the 40 degree North Sea. The cold definitely didn't feel amazing but it was well worth it.

After our ferry ride back, we had some down time in the port city on the mainland so we found a huge field that overlooked the water and played frisbee while the sun started to set. There was no wind, no bugs, and the temperature was perfect.

Of the things I expected to do in the month of March, going on a beach vacation was certainly not one of them. It was so cool to be able to go on this trip, and I hope I can embark on some more spontaneous and random adventures in the future.