If I got a dollar for every time someone asked me where I got my love for travel, I would be a bazillionaire. Well not quite, but I would definitely have a few bucks. Truthfully, my Mom instilled a love for travel and encouraged my siblings and me to cast the lines from shore and set off to explore the world at early ages, and one of the most impactful moments in my teenage years was when she sent me to Germany at the age of 15.
As kids, our Mom enrolled us in just about every extracurricular activity a parent possibly could, so that my brother, sister and I could possibly find something we loved doing, and from there she would ensure we had the opportunity to nurture that skill. We tried everything! I was in karate, baton twirling, ballet, acting classes, swimming lessons, dive lessons, Brownies, Girl Scouts, played the flute, drums, piano, T-ball, softball, volleyball, basketball, dance team, ran track, and did a whole lot of different activities at summer camp. Some of them stuck and some didn’t, and I feel one of the greatest lesson she gave us was the encouragement to travel, explore, and try out new places and things.
Before my freshman year of high school I had to make a foreign language class choice: Spanish or German. Now most parents would tell their kids to choose the more practical language, and yet my Mom, because of who she was, encouraged me to take the not-so-practical German class solely because they were doing a summer abroad after my first year, and she wanted me to go. She always suggested experiences over practicality, and if you know me in real life, you’d understand me a whole lot better if you’ve also had the pleasure of meeting my incredible Mom.
It was an exciting time and a fun age, but I wouldn’t want to be 15 again. I had braces, bangs, and glasses, I was athletic and well-liked in school, but it was an awkward age when dealing with hormones, and boys, and first kisses, etc, yet it was these very things that prompted me to have an experience in Germany that truly changed my outlook on life.
Our School joined up with another school from Philadelphia and we spent the entire trip together. And in that group was a very cute boy, one who I developed a crush on, who also had a crush on me, and neither of us knew what to do with our feelings. Oh young love….
Our group had seen the Neuschwanstein, where I peed my pants running down the mountain bc I was laughing so hard. We’d been to the Black Hills in Switzerland, to Salzburg and tiny towns in Austria, drove the Autobahn, visited Dachau, had nights out in Berlin, slid deep down into a Salt mine, and this particular week we were in Munich for the 75th anniversary of the Glückenspiel, or Bell tower, in the main plaza called Marianplatz. It was a vibrant time to be there!
Sitting in the Hoffbraühaus (where I later learned my mom had also been in her younger years!) our school group couldn’t drink - ahem, underage Christian school kids, but the Philly school kids could! This cute boy (whose name is Joey, and I only know that because I wrote it on the back of a photo of him:) was sitting next to me, laughing, flirting, causing my 15 year old hormones to go way out of wack. I was giggling and smiling on the outside, but legit uncomfortable on the inside. So I got up and walked out to the plaza to get some fresh air.
It wasn’t terribly busy out there that evening, but I noticed a group siting in a circle near a fountain listening to street performers and I headed toward the music. I sat down around the circle, enjoying the night breeze and beautiful guitar playing and singing this couple was putting out - it was absolutely lovely.
They started to sing a very slow, soft version of Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Boxer” and it was then, in this moment, my life changed.
No, I didn’t get struck by lightning nor was I robbed, or beaten, or fall in love, or have a stroke, in fact there was no obvious and wild event that occurred. However for me, almost like a lightbulb going off, something changed within, and a pivotal moment in my life occurred that I have often looked back on, only sharing with a few souls over the years.
Writing about this moment in time I can actually feel the breeze, all these years later. I can hear the music in front of me and the distant laughter coming from the biergarten I’d just fled from. I can see the guitar player with his Lennon-style cap and his girlfriend with her long blonde locks. To me, they were so cool and embodied beauty that only those who have fully lived a wild life could.
He played and they harmonized so beautifully, and the 10 or so people listening sat as mesmerized as me. I knew I belonged in that place. I was meant to be there at that very moment, with those people, enjoying that music and the breeze under that night sky. Something inside of me clicked and cracked me wide open. I knew right then, right there, that there was so much more to life and that the world was so much bigger than what I’d seen and known my whole life, and that it could be accessed! I knew right then I was different than my peers, or anyone I’d met and that that was OK, and that I would somehow set out to explore the world every chance I was given. And well? I can’t say I was wrong!
Yes, many life-changing moments come to us as obviously as when a fierce storm rolls in, sweeping us off our feet and anyone around us can see that something has occurred. But not everything profound has to be dramatic. After all, it was in this quiet, peaceful moment in a square in Munich that I was quite literally introduced to myself and found out exactly who was inside that 15 year old girl. It was in that moment I knew I was setting out to see the world in my lifetime, that I would love deeply, and explore, and live many lives in one, and I’ve done a pretty damn good job of all those things thus far.
If my Mom could read this now I think she’d be pretty proud of me. She was my biggest fan and always, ALWAYS encouraged me to step outside the norm and be unapologetically myself. She knew I battled with low self-confidence and constantly reminded me of how the world saw me so differently than I saw myself, for which I am beyond grateful for her support right up until she passed away.
And for the sake of this blog topic, I am grateful she persuaded me to take German! Because of that choice I had the opportunity to go to Germany, Austria and Switzerland, to pee my pants at a castle, to meet that cute boy on the trip and nervously run away from his attempts to kiss me. I was able to sit in that plaza on a warm summer night listening to those two souls sing, and to have my young mind opened up to a whole new way of viewing the world and who I was in it.
I met myself that night, and saw a glimpse of the future I could create. And although life has had its share of bends and curves, I can honestly say that 15 year old Sara was a fairly smart and insightful young woman, for it was my openness that night that carved the very life that has brought me to today. And with my trail of loves and heartbreaks and wins and losses, certainly with more of each to come, I have to say my life is really, really freaking great.
Tchüss, bis später!
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