Coming home
If anyone who reads this wants to run away to France with me, I know just the place.
I realize that I planned two weeks to play around in Europe, but even though I am coming home early (to save some money and hopefully see some concerts this weekend), this trip was everything that I expected--it was unpredictable.
I didn't know where I was going to sleep when I got to Germany (on the trains after the bars closed). I didn't know how I would find my friend Bryan in Rome (we met randomly around midnight in a hostel). I didn't have a guidebook. I only spoke German and English (though I found in Italy one can get by simply saying "prego" a lot). I didn't know where I was going but I hoped a train would take me there. From a wiser man's perspective, much of the planning (or rather lack thereof) I did for this trip was rather stupid.
But I'm 23!
I wonder how much longer I am allowed to be REALLY stupid. The kind of stupid that people talk about at Christmas ten years from now. The kind of stupid you have to hide from your kids when they are growing up so that they never realize you were reckless as well. I wonder how much longer I can be that stupid and still have people brush it off as humorous because "Hey, you're still young."
Despite the stupidity, I think I may have accidently learned something. I think I may have learned about independence and self assuredness and not fearing but simply respecting the unknown or different. I do not plan to return home a changed man, but if I do, I suppose worse things could happen.
Even with the lessons in independence, however, there was much more to this trip. I always had someone (not something, mind you) to look forward to. You cannot imagine how much was added to this trip by meeting new people in Munich, finding Bryan in Rome, getting to know Emma in Florence, and spending time with the Sipp family in the Alsace (wine country in eastern France...GORGEOUS!). People are not meant to be alone. While traveling solo added to the adventure significantly, the stories that make me smile without even telling them are the ones involving my friends.
I think it will be very nice to share a trip like this with someone very special later one, but I do not want to discount how much this trip meant to me. The independent aspect added the the uncertainty and adventure. Even so, the interdependent aspect turned all the pictures in my head from black and white to kodachrome.
All that in a week, and I didn't even pay for air fare! Das ist ja sehr preiswert.
It has been wonderful, and I look forward to sharing pictures with anyone who is willing to look.