A pasture with cows, unending acres of corn, a small town in the distance. They were familiar to me, a different arrangement of the sights I knew from my home town. As I looked out the window I could almost convince myself that I was driving down Route 102. But I wasn’t. In fact, I was technically farther from home than I’d ever been. I was in Germany, on a train between Memmingen and Augsburg. It was just past seven in the evening when Maggie, Alex and I arrived in Augsburg. Back in Barcelona, we commented, the sun would still be an hour away from setting. Here, though, we stepped out of the train station into the last few minutes of sunlight. It was getting colder, too, which only increased the strange-yet-familiar sensation we’d had ever since we’d arrive in Germany. We looked at maps and tram schedules and compared them to the directions to the hostel. The signs held the unlikely and, in some cases, impossible combinations of letters and sym...