Germany 2009: A Look Back

Wow. I can hardly believe that it has been almost three weeks since I got back from Germany. I can also hardly believe that I spent my summer in Europe. I can't even begin to describe how incredible of an experience it was. I did more and saw more in nine short weeks than the vast majority of the world's population has a chance to in their life times. I took over 2,000 photos from more than a dozen cities in four countries. I walked more miles every weekend than I ever have before. And I spent more time on trains than any one person has a right to.

I want to take a moment and thank the University of Karlsruhe (TH), my host department: the Institut für Wasser und Gewässerentwicklung (IWG), and my supervisor, Brigitte Pfeifer. I also want to thank Melissa Woo for being an awesome travel buddy, as well as everyone else at the IWG and UK(TH)!

I had a blast this summer and I learned a lot, too. It was nice to see my family in Uettingen again and meet my two young nieces. I visited cities and saw things that I had only dreamed about seeing. It is still incredible for me to think that I climbed the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame de Paris, Prague Castle, and numerous other spire-toting monuments to the history of humanity.

For those of you who haven't had enough of my blog posts, I do keep another blog at: "http://techfortomorrow.blogspot.com/". And you are always certainly free to send me an e-mail at john.leland.mills(at)gmail.com!

Thank you again to everyone who helped support me and my trip this summer!

As a quick recap, here's a short list of some of the places I visited this summer:

+ Germany

- Karlsruhe

- Munich

- Heidelberg

- Würzburg

- Rothenburg

- Bamberg

+ France

- Strasbourg

- Paris

+ Austria

- Salzburg

+ Czech Republic

- Prague