Gabriel Nigrovic , Contributing Writer April 12, Gabriel Nigrovic reflects on his year spent in Germany and the experiences along the way. I have been invited to private art exhibitions in Florence, and I have been offered an internship in Oslo. I have dined with the sommelier to the princess of Liechtenstein and had authentic home-brewed Turkish coffee. I have heard Russians and Ukrainians singing in unison and experienced the organ of the Cologne cathedral.
I have skied into Austria and hiked in the Swiss Alps among mountain goats. My paternal grandmother is German and my father can speak the language. This side of my heritage has always interested me, and the ability to speak with my grandmother in her mother tongue was particularly exciting. In this light, I spent two weeks at a German immersion summer camp in Minnesota after eighth grade.
Two years later I went back, this time for four weeks. Having gained a sense of the language, we started reaching out to contacts in Germany in an effort to find someone who would take me for a summer. One family responded with a counteroffer: to spend the next year with them in Stuttgart, Germany, where I would attend a local high school.
The prospect intrigued me. Instead of turning it down, as was my first instinct, I decided to mull it over for a while. It did not take much thought to reason that it was the right decision: an unprecedented opportunity for personal growth and language learning. I did not, however, rapidly accept the offer. The immensity of the endeavor and its harsh costs weighed heavily on me: I would have to leave friends and family in Brookline while delaying my graduation by a year.
Despite these unfortunate downsides, it was logically clear to me that I should go to Germany. It took me three months to finally agree to the challenge, and I am very glad that I did. A study done by economist Steven Levitt has proven that, when facing a major change, people almost invariably end up happier when disrupting their routine. This fact has greatly affected my decision-making process. Since I arrived in Germany, I made the effort to be as spontaneous as possible and accept every opportunity offered to me.
