Hi, this is Dylan Thuris, and you have reached the Atlas Obscura podcast line.

I am not home right now, but please leave me a message all about your stories of traveling internationally for the very first time.

Tell me your story after the beep.

Hey, Atlas Obscura. The first time I ever traveled internationally, I was going to Germany.

My family was moving there. I was about to be a junior in college, and I was planning to just go over for a few weeks during the summer and then come back and go to school in person.

Of course, it being the summer of 2020, it didn't work out that way,

and I ended up having to rearrange my whole schedule and take all my classes online in Germany

with a seven-hour time difference.

Woo!

But the actual trip to Germany was extraordinary.

We were traveling together, so we got on a plane pretty early in the morning, But the actual trip to Germany was extraordinary.

We were traveling together, so we got on a plane pretty early in the morning,

and we headed out and we're on this really long flight. But I remember perhaps 15 or 18 hours into being awake,

flying over the French coastline and looking out and thinking, wow, the Atlantic Ocean is west of me.

Amazing.

And then by the time we landed at the second airport and got all of our luggage. It was so much luggage.

And we got on the bus that would take us to where we were actually going to be living.

I had been awake for more than 24 hours at that point. I was so tired. I was fully loopy.

And as we were on the bus driving to where would be home, I was looking out at the hills and my mind

started overlaying Van Gogh paintings onto this countryside and I'm like, wow, wow, it all

really looks like that. I mean, there were wind turbines and modern buildings and all, but the

countryside was there and it was just, it was amazing.

...