To cap off 2024, I moved out of my Resident Assistant suite in Plunkett Hall and went home, leaving campus and many of my closest friends and connections behind. I won’t be back in a while. I didn’t fall out of love with Mercer, nor did I decide to take a gap semester - not exactly, anyway.
On Monday, I leave for Bamberg to study at the Otto Friedrich University of Bamberg, a semester abroad for which preparations and Duolingo lessons have been ongoing since last summer. There will be mistakes made, however, because speaking the language is not a strength of mine. Perhaps the owl’s return to the land of the living may be the spark needed to master more German in the next few days.
Writing, however, is a strong suit, and in an effort to document the time I spend in Germany and to comment on my experiences abroad, I will publish a weekly (perhaps, at times, biweekly) column in The Mercer Cluster about my exploits under the title “The Bamberg Banner.”
On Saturday evening, tears welled and throats were cleared in a desperate attempt to not give away the fact that, for the next five months, bumping into friends on the way to the UC or being able to play spike ball on Black Field as the sun is setting will be an impossibility. I predict there will be more of the same over the next 24 hours as the wheels lift off the tarmac in Atlanta and the plane hurtles towards a new challenge but leaves behind everything with which I am familiar.
Yet, in all with whom I spoke about the upcoming trip, there was a sense of excitement for what may happen during the semester. There is something to be said for having the anticipation of a trip build for months, as the days count down everything seems to become more compressed. Purchasing power adapters the day before departure is a hassle. But, once the dust has settled and the suitcase is unpacked, the pre-trip rush will fade out of memory and the foretold excitement will again kick in. Certainly there will be issues, language barriers and times when another helping of kartoffeln und bratwurst weigh on me. But, with any luck, those moments will be few and far between.
Prost!
Gabriel Kopp '26 is majoring in Journalism and Law and Public Policy at Mercer University. He has written for The Cluster since he started at Mercer, and currently works as co-Editor-in-Chief. When he isn't studying, he enjoys going for runs and reading The New York Times or the AJC while sipping coffee.
