Introduction

There’s no better way to title a post than by calling what it is. I wrote this introduction mostly for myself to help focus this blog, but if it also helps someone just stumbling around my blog to get interested in reading what I write, then I’ve killed two birds with one stone (not that I condone violence at all).

To begin with, welcome to my blog. I used to run three sites (one for running, one for more erudite posts about what I research), but now there is just the one: Wanderwolf or deutscherwanderwolf. It’s my main blog and continues to be where I post my musings, international or otherwise.

I started this blog summer 2014 to write about my  experiences abroad with the Federation of German-American Clubs (VDAC, if you want to look them up) scholarship program in Hamburg, Germany. When I got back to the States in fall 2015, I wanted to write about my experiences as a study-abroad alum permanently interested in Germany–where it’s been and where it will go–as well as my new perspective of the United States and its relationships to other countries. I kept it up alright, but was less inspired throughout the hum-drum of working life than I thought I would be. I went back to taking things for granted that surprised me about the US when I was fresh back. Still, my interest in Germany cannot disappear, partially because I continued to feel part German and speak it as my primary language at home. It’s what lead me to apply to grad schools abroad, hoping to add to both my language skills and experiences.

Thus, as of Fall 2016, I have been pursuing my PhD in (you guessed it) Germany; I was lucky enough to go back and write/work in Berlin. It’s a city I know very well and hope to get to know even better, but I took a break for six months to do a study-abroad (the joke is I was already studying-abroad) in Cambridge, England. Those posts are Jan-June of 2019.

After that, things got pretty serious with the dissertation, and now I’m trying to finish before my funding runs out, so I’ve been a bit neglectful of my blogging community. I had a few more adventures in Berlin, and maybe I’ll get to write those posts in the future.  I definitely look forward to catching up on reading posts in the future!

In the meantime, I’m back with my family in Florida because when COVID-19 was declared the cause of global pandemic, I realized that’s where I needed to be. So excuses if it’s always hard to tell where I’m writing from! Sometimes I forget myself.

Cheers!
Dorothea