Feeling Small, but it's not a bad thing...Blog 5

Standing at the base of a mountain will never ever make you feel big, that's just a fact.  And though I saw some amazing mountains today I want to write about another feeling, a feeling that is just like standing at the base of a mountain, but I didn't really feel small in size, I felt small in time...

I have discovered my favorite part of Europe.  I came here to learn the language, but that is not what captured my heart, it's the history.  I've never been a big history buff, but here it inescapable.  The past of this continent is built into the walls I live in and every single day it forces me to think about things that are bigger than myself.  I walk through a little German town and catch a glimpse of the ruins of a wall that used to surround the town in the middle ages and I am reminded to be thankful for safety.  It makes you think about what it is like to live a life that is so dangerous and fraught with peril (sorry, I'm reading Lord of the Rings, I couldn't resist) that you are confined to your city by stone walls.  And you have to trust those stone walls with your life.  Then I walk down the cobble stone roads that pave Europe and I think about what it must have been like to have to wear long dresses and heels all the time and not have the freedom to wear pants and tennis shoes like I do today.  I think about all the people that have walked those roads, what their lives were like, what they thought about, what they wished for.  Then I see medieval castles complete with torture dungeons and all, and I am shocked again and again by the atrocity that humanity is capable of.  But I turn around and see a cathedral, and wonder how people could be capable of such evil and such beauty at the same time.  The cathedrals are the biggest inspiration and attestation to human creativity that I have ever seen.  And still along the same street the memorials, monuments and grounds where massacres took place scream "Don't repeat this, learn from this place! Don't let the bloodshed be in vain."  In the time line of life, I feel so small, it is humbling to think that after everything that has happened here, I am walking on these streets that are soaked with history to get to school, trying to earn credits.