Looking out of her window, all German teacher Ashleigh Stall could see was darkness. The sun wasn’t up yet, because the ride to Berchtesgaden, Germany was six hours long, and she and her group of four friends had to wake up at five in the morning to catch their train.

“We only had three and a half hours of sleep,” Stall said. Her group planned the trip to Berchtesgaden to visit Hitler’s Eagle Nest on their last day in Germany. “We missed our bus to get up there, and we could only be there for three hours. We tried to take a taxi, but they could only take four [out of the five] of us.

When they finally got there, her group only had 30 minutes in the nest but “it was the most incredible feeling in my life, it was an eerie yet beautiful place,” Stall said. It started to rain, but we were so high up we were in the rain cloud. I really felt the presence of God. That day was crazy, but definitely worth it.”

“That was the first time I really got to put my German skills to good use too, because all of my friends were beginners [in speaking German],”Stall said. Stall has been teaching German for two years now. She was born in Germany and is fluent in the language, although she and her family moved to the U.S. when she was six months old.

“My ancestors are from Germany, but I don’t have any relatives that live there anymore,” Stall said. As a college student, Stall studied in Germany twice. Once was for an entire summer, which was Stall recalls as her “best memory of Germany”. The other was on her school’s German exchange program. Stall is actively working on the JC German exchange and will go back to the country with students in 2014.

Lauren Fabiszak is an In- Depth Editor for The Patriot and jcpatriot.com.