Tag: Europe

Paris, Part II: Walking the City and Choosing What Matters

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Forgive the brief interlude in my tale of Paris, but as you well know, I always sprinkle tidbits of wisdom between my stories of adventure. After all, I don’t just want you to go off and have fun. I truly hope this is a place where we can grow together and create lives punctuated by adventure rather than longing for it as an escape from daily misery.

Now, we left off, dear reader, with my arrival: tired and exhausted from a sleepless night but pumped full of adrenaline, the equivalent of five or six cups of coffee coursing through my veins.

I had already gotten thoroughly lost on the way to the hostel and had largely given up on public transit as a viable means of navigating the city. Honestly, that’s only a feat a young twenty-something can get away with.

Now, I’m not entirely certain what the rules are for crossing the streets in Paris, but they did not appear to follow the ones I had grown up with. There were multiple occasions when the light was clearly red and people were walking, and others when it was green and everyone simply stopped.

Both my travel partner and I were quite confused by this apparent inconsistency.

It was decidedly not like Germany, where people display an almost obsessive adherence to rules. Even if there isn’t a car in sight, they will dutifully wait at the crosswalk until the light indicates it is time to cross.

However, after one or two close calls with traffic, we simply looked at each other, shrugged, said “when in Rome,” and followed the Parisians for guidance, forgoing the lights entirely since they clearly could not be trusted.

Our first stop was the Louvre, which is a must for any lover of art and history. Not only does it house one of the most famous paintings on earth, it is also the largest and most visited art museum in the world.

Originally built as a fortress and later expanded into a royal palace, the Louvre now spans roughly 2.3 million square feet. Of its approximately 380,000 objects, around 35,000 are on display at any given time.

Considering it would take over three months to see the entire collection, we decided to focus only on the highlights and the pieces that spoke most to us.

There are plenty of guides that will tell you the “must-see” works at the Louvre. But if something doesn’t speak to you, skip it. Focus on the areas of art and history you genuinely enjoy.

I, for one, would recommend skipping the Mona Lisa.

All it really amounts to is a photo opportunity for social media. It’s tiny, placed behind thick glass in a poorly lit room with hundreds of people pushing and shoving for a better look. You’re honestly better off googling a picture for all you’ll actually see.

Any contemplative awe you might have felt is drowned out by the din of the crowd and the smell of raised armpits as phones are hoisted into the air for a better shot.

If you aren’t paying attention, your belongings might get nicked, and you could spend the rest of your Paris trip trying to recover stolen credit cards while cursing the day you were introduced to the pernicious lady with her sly smile.

After all, she too was once stolen. Why not cavort with thieves once again?

As I’ve said in other posts, don’t let other people’s opinions dictate what you do or do not do. So if you must see the Mona Lisa, I shall not judge you for it.

Just remember that the Louvre houses centuries of art, offering millennia of history to explore, not just stuffy Italians and pretentious French painters.

Its oldest piece is estimated to be around 9,000 years old and is well worth the trek to see.

Since I was traveling with an archaeology major, we spent most of our time in the Greek and Roman sections, along with some of the French collections.

My personal favorite was the sculpture Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss. Not because I have a particular fondness for eighteenth-century French sculpture, but because one of my favorite books is Psyche and Cupid by C. S. Lewis.

Art isn’t always just about what the artist intended, its place in history, or the techniques used. It is also about what it evokes in us.

I would argue that this is what art is most about: what we bring to the moment of encounter.

When I looked at that sculpture, I did not simply see the Greek myth. I saw it retold through a different lens. A revival not just of Psyche, but of myself.

Small tip: book your ticket in advance.

Prior to the pandemic, the best way to get into the Louvre was through one of the side entrances to skip the long lines. However, with its ever-growing popularity, daily visitor numbers are now capped, meaning the only way to guarantee entry is with a pre-booked ticket.

Sorry to all my free-spirited wanderers.

Having conquered a small portion of the Louvre, we ventured forth to the Lady of Paris: the Notre Dame Cathedral.

Walking through Paris instead of taking public transit allows you to experience the city in a completely different way. You breathe it in.

On foot, you notice the small shops and hidden corners that would otherwise blur past from a bus window or subway seat. The scent of coffee lingers in the air as you stroll by cafés, while the temptation of fresh-baked bread drifts from bakeries onto the street.

In early spring, the flowers spill across the sidewalks and painters emerge as if the season itself has burst through the concrete, refusing to remain buried beneath winter any longer.

Everywhere is a riot of color and life. Musicians greet you with cheerful melodies, and you cannot help but sway your hips just a bit in time with the music.

It was on our way to Notre Dame that we stumbled upon an artist selling watercolor paintings of the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, Notre Dame, and the Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Montmartre.

For a set of four, it was perhaps forty euros, an absolute steal, and it was there that my habit of buying art as a souvenir was born.

Erika and I split the cost and decided we would determine who received which painting at the end of the trip.

Long before we saw its doors, the twin towers of Notre Dame rose proudly above the surrounding buildings, beckoning us closer.

The cathedral was completed in 1260, though additions were made in the centuries that followed. Like any church nearly eight hundred years old, it has seen its share of glory and hardship: wars, neglect, desecration, and most recently, fire.

Fortunately, we visited before the fire and the subsequent debates over the restoration of its windows.

As a Christian myself, I was fascinated by the displays of Catholic artifacts that told the story of the church’s role in medieval Europe. I saw relics carefully displayed and read about how the church intersected with everyday life in the heart of France.

However, much like the Mona Lisa room, it was not a place of hushed awe but rather a chaotic stream of tourists passing through.

Contemplation was not something I readily found there. (For that, I recommend seeking out some of the lesser-known churches.)

By this point my legs were beginning to feel the day’s journey, but that did not dissuade me from climbing to the top of the cathedral to take in the city below.

From there we saw, glittering in the bright spring sun, the white dome of the Basilique du Sacré-Cœur.

At the time, I must admit my ignorance. I had never heard of the church, and neither had Erika.

She suggested we should visit it.

I squinted across the grid of busy streets at what appeared to be an impossible distance to walk and declared quite confidently that there was absolutely no way I would trek all the way there.

Oh, dear reader, how the universe loves to laugh at the things we believe are beyond us.

For unbeknownst to me, I would indeed walk there.

But that is a story for another day.

And so, in the interest of time, I must pause my tale here.

You will have to return for Part Three.

Reverse Bucket List: A Weekend in Paris (Part I)

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“How do you feel about a weekend in Paris?”

I twirled in my chair, hair whipping across my face, and fixed my friend Erika with a look that needed no elaboration. Her response was immediate. A squeal. A clap. An emphatic, “Yes.”

After all, what else does one say to Paris in the spring?

Such spontaneity, dear reader, is only possible when you are determined to drink deeply from the cup of life while living abroad. For an American especially, there is something intoxicating about the ability to hop on a train and cross into another country before lunch. When you come from a place where a single state can rival the size of an entire nation, the idea feels almost illicit, perhaps even scandalous.

So without further ado, we secured tickets on the high-speed train from Frankfurt to Paris. Arm in arm, we walked toward the station, already breathless with plans: art, museums, music, culture, food, people. And what a people!

A sudden unplanned Paris in a weekend?

Madness. An affliction surely.

Which is precisely why we had to do it.

The true catalyst was a message from a dear friend who would be spending a week in the city and wondered if I might join him for a day. An afternoon in Paris with a friend who happened to be an artist of some renown? The answer could only be yes. After all, who could be the more perfect tour guide?

This was before smartphones lived in our pockets. Before we had google at our fingertips and the assuredness that comes with having all the answers tucked away. We packed lightly, wrote down the number of the American embassy, ensured we had our emergency contacts into our bags, and armed ourselves with a travel guide and a healthy dose of gumption. Travel then required nerve. Trust. If you got lost, you figured it out. If you mispronounced something, you survived the embarrassment. There was no digital rescue waiting in your palm. Which is honestly, what I miss most about travel these days.

The train hurled us across the countryside, fields bursting with early spring color flashing past the windows. I could not help comparing it to Pennsylvania. Lancaster County, in particular, bears a resemblance to parts of Germany, and for the first time I understood, in a small but tangible way, why so many Germans had settled there. Hiemweh melted away leaving a strange sense of coming home even across an ocean.

Three hours is long enough to plan a city and short enough to realize you cannot conquer it. We trimmed our ambitions to a few must-sees and a handful of hopefuls. The Louvre alone could swallow a week. Paris, we decided, would not be conquered. It would simply be experienced.

Crossing the border was almost anticlimactic. An announcement crackled overhead. That was all. No passport stamp. No interrogation. It felt like slipping into Ohio, except the anticipation hummed in your bones. No offense to Ohio of course, but really are we going to say it compares to France?

And then we arrived.

First Things First: Find the Bed

Before romance, before art, before croissants on café terraces, there is one universal truth of travel; You must find where you are sleeping.

Armed with a folded map and confidence wildly disproportionate to our navigational skill, we set off to locate our hostel.

Now, in our defense, the streets of Paris are confusing.

Unlike the tidy grid systems Americans grow up with, Paris feels as though it was designed by someone who enjoyed curves, diagonals, and the occasional act of mischief. Streets fork unexpectedly. They change names without warning. A road that appears straight on a map somehow bends in real life. And the street signs? They are affixed to the sides of buildings, charming blue plaques that would be immensely helpful if they were not routinely obscured by graffiti, peeling posters, or layers of mysterious paper advertising concerts long since passed. It was an exercise in hopeless confusion and frustration.

More than once we stood directly beneath a sign, craning our necks and squinting upward, trying to determine whether we were on Rue de Something Important or merely staring at a band flyer partially concealing our destiny.

And then there was the metro.

For the uninitiated American traveler, the Paris metro is not transportation. It is an initiation ritual.

Lines spiderweb across the city in a dizzying tangle of colors and numbers. Trains are labeled by their final destination rather than the direction you believe you are traveling, which requires you to know far more geography than you actually do. Stops are announced quickly, sometimes swallowed by the metallic roar of the car, and the maps inside the train might as well have been abstract art for all the clarity they offered at first glance. Especially, if one has never traversed public transit before. Which alas, many Americans have never been on anything more than a school bus.

You descend into the underground with confidence. You emerge twenty minutes later into a vast plaza with six exits, each pointing toward a different arrondissement, blinking in the daylight thinking, This seems right.

It is rarely right.

One exit leads you in the exact opposite direction. Another deposits you onto a boulevard you did not know existed. A third leaves you staring at a fountain that looks vaguely familiar but is, in fact, not the fountain you were seeking.

Given these small obstacles, I consider it nothing short of miraculous that after a few wrong turns and some enthusiastic but misguided pointing, we found our hostel at all. 

Little did we know, this was only the beginning of our navigational adventures and given the amount of confusion the metro caused, we determined that the best way to get anywhere was by foot. Yes, you read that correctly. I walked Paris in a weekend. I estimated that I traversed at least 15 miles. Though as this was before the popularity of step counters, I only have my best estimates.

The hostel itself was functional in the most generous sense of the word.

If you have never experienced a European student hostel, allow me to clarify something, it is not glamorous by any stretch of the imagination. It is economical. And it is very much a young person’s sport.

The shower required physical encouragement. You had to press the button, and water would flow for approximately twelve optimistic seconds before shutting off again. Want to rinse shampoo from your hair? You had to keep pressing it like you were negotiating terms. The “hot” water hovered somewhere between hopeful and politely lukewarm.

Breakfast was included, which sounded promising until we discovered that “included” meant toast, jelly, and coffee. For Americans raised on sprawling hotel buffets complete with eggs, waffles, fruit, yogurt, and pastries, this was a humbling cultural exchange. There was no omelet station. No waffle iron. There was toast.

And you were grateful for it.

We adapted quickly. A stop at a neighborhood grocery store provided bread, cheese, and sliced meat. It was the perfect strategy: sustain ourselves during the day, conserve our funds, and reserve our modest budget for dinners out in the evening. For two college students, it was a masterclass in practical travel. Frugal by day. Indulgent by night.

The hostel was never meant to be the highlight. It was the launchpad. A place to drop our bags. A place to sleep. A place from which to begin.

And begin we did.

What followed was a blur of museums and miscalculations, attempted French and accidental detours. We wandered into neighborhoods we had only read about. We misread maps. At one point, quite unintentionally, we discovered that we had strayed into the red-light district. There is nothing quite like realizing you are lost in a foreign city and that the neon lighting is… intentional.

But that, dear reader, deserves its own telling.

Because Paris was not merely art and architecture. It was a lesson in courage. In frugality. In friendship. In the quiet bravery required to step into the unknown without guarantees and trust that you will find your way.

This is what I mean by a reverse bucket list. Not the grand achievements we hope to accomplish someday when everything is perfect, but the moments we dared to say yes to when they appeared. The train we boarded. The map we unfolded. The hostel we made work. The city we entered anyway.

A fulfilling life is not built by waiting until conditions are ideal.

It is built by saying yes before you feel entirely ready.

In the next post, we will step fully into the city itself. The beauty. The bewilderment. The glorious inconvenience of getting lost in Paris.

And why, sometimes, that is exactly the point.

Tales from Abroad: Life Unbound

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I had the privilege of spending a semester abroad in my academic studies. For five months, I was halfway across the world, in a non-English speaking country for the most part on my own with limited support. This was a world before smart phones and easy roaming charges. I was for the most part armed with a local flip phone for emergencies, my wits and conversational German. It was just as daunting and fun as one imagines. 

I suppose it was this experience that really solidified my adventurous spirit. How many times have I thought to myself “If I can get lost in the middle of Paris and still catch the train back to Marburg how hard can this be?” It instilled in me a sense of confidence to be able to navigate foreign places, solve problems on the fly and still be successful. There were certainly challenges. 

There were the physical challenges that Germany presented me on day one. I thought I was a fairly experienced traveler having flown numerous times in the United States and I figured that Germany being another Western Country wouldn’t be too different. Stairs are apparently a thing everywhere in Germany and pose a much more serious problem than in the US when it comes to traveling with multiple bags. I had packed my bags anticipating the ease of traversing an airport with multiple rolling bags that I had in America, but Germany wasn’t as accommodating when it comes to rolling suitcases. Luckily, I did have some help in that I was traveling with a group of students, but they weren’t always the most helpful. 

First, getting the bags down the escalators was a nightmare. I distinctly remember one of our bags just tumbling down the escalator as a complete hazard. Second, the trains had stairs. I had never encountered trains with stairs. I don’t even think I had seen such things in movies. Now, it does seem that since I’ve been in the country the train system is not as ruthlessly efficient as I remember it being. However, when I went, the trains were almost always on time and they did not wait for you to finish boarding, you had to get on or you would be left behind and the staff would not wave to the conductor to hold for you.

So there I was tossing my bags up onto the train and trying to get myself on with probably less than two minutes to get myself on board. The stairs were more akin to ladders than stairs, so I was trying to frantically climb onto the train with my bags. Being a naturally clumsy person, in a situation where balance was particularly challenging, I of course started to fall backwards. Luckily for me, the train doors shut just as I was about to stumble back onto the platform. Had I fallen back sooner, I would have been left on the platform with my bags on the train in a strange country and no real way to contact anyone. Had I not managed to get my bags on, I would have been on the train with the bags left behind! Certainly not my best moment! The saga of the stairs did not end there, there were stairs everywhere with almost no elevators to speak of, my legs looked amazing my the end of the trip and I do recommend the Germany Stair Master 5000, 5 month workout plan to you aspiring models. 

My face at seeing that I had to climb yet MORE stairs!

I faced the challenge of navigating a truly arcane system for signing up for classes. I had never seen such a discombobulated, uncoordinated system in my life. Some classes you signed up for in person, some were online, some you had to practically hunt down like some sort of secret cult meeting. I’m still not exactly sure how I managed to actually sign up for my classes, but I somehow squeaked by with the requirements and managed to get myself in courses I felt i could handle with my level of German. Although Frankfurt in Mittelalter was more than I could chew since the first day they wanted me to read latin and I had to read 15th century German documents for a research paper. Essentially, it was like handing a non native speaker of English the original Canterbury Tales and telling them to have at it. I may have spent 3 days researching the history of the German language in order to translate what I was reading before attempting to write anything. 

While I was there, I independently traveled to Paris, Dublin, Nuremberg, Cologne, Frankfurt, and Rome. I planned every part of those trips from booking the plane tickets, navigating transportation to and from the airports, found the hostels and traversed the cities learning the unique public transit of each one. I went with a group of school students on a trip to Berlin and joined Brethren Colleges Abroad for trips to Vienna and Strasbourg. These trips did not involve how to get there or where to stay, but I did have to traverse them on my own, figure out which sights I wanted to see and ensure that I was on time for the checks in. 

While there, I bought my own groceries on a strict budget (most of my money went to my trips rather than to food). I cooked my own food learning how to use a gas oven which terrified me the first time I used it because I had never had to light an oven with a match before. I had to learn how to sort trash like the Germans and all the quirks of their culture. I learned to navigate a completely arcane university system as well as see the world a little differently. I met a fantastic travel companion, a fellow American who shared my love of reading. I wish I could say we stayed in touch and are still best friends, but sadly like many adult friendships it did not last much beyond our semester in Germany as we were from and returned to different parts of the country. 

My trip to Dublin

While I was in Germany, I took advantage of the relatively cheap travel through Ryanair and checked many things off my list. I will say that for the most part I was unable to savor the cities that I visited as I often only had 1 ½ to 2 days in which to see them. That did require me to at times semi-race through places focusing on the absolute “musts” rather than casually strolling through as I may have liked. The Louver itself is a whole day affair if one is to truly take it all in. Sadly, I only saw the highlights rather than everything it had to offer. Which is really what can be said of several of the places I visited (Paris, Dublin, Berlin, and Strasbourg) other places I like Vienna and Rome, I had an entire week to see which allowed me to do much more. I even took a day trip to the beach while in Rome, so I can say that I swam in the Mediterranean. It is unsurprisingly much like swimming in the Atlantic, at least just outside of Rome it is. Also, after Paris I was much more able to navigate the foreign public transit system as I had very little experience prior to coming to Europe 

Through all my adventures, I was required to bring a “can do attitude” and resourcefulness. I managed almost all my mistakes or set backs with grace under fire with one exception. But even that turned out well. 

I got to know so many people in my travels. I listened to their perspective and saw how the different parts of the world views America and by extension me as an American. Some of them were harsh criticisms, others were high praise. I was baffled by the Spaniard who was insulted that I hadn’t chosen to learn Spanish rather than German. I was embraced by a very drunk Irishmen who was just thrilled to death about Obama’s recent election after George Bush. I got to witness a student protest over tuition which blew my mind because back home we all just sort of shrugged with a “what can we do?” when faced by yet more college fees. I listened to young and old shared their lives, their hopes and their thoughts. 

Traveling abroad expanded my horizons, strengthened my character and taught me resilience. It reinforced my spirit of adventure and voracious appetite to learn about places, experience things and know new people. 

Myself and my travel buddy Erica whom I met in Marburg

How can you live abroad?

For many people this is a Bucket List item. Although, I suspect it was mostly put there by people who are much richer than the rest of us. If you aren’t a college student, this is a much more difficult prospect as the semester abroad only cost me $600 more than staying at college (not counting the extra trips I took). To me it was well worth the $600 extra investment on top of the investment I was already making in my education. Otherwise living abroad can be quite costly without gainful employment and how many of us realistically are going to find jobs where we can work in another country? I have seen some groups which advertise house sitting in Europe which would help take care of your accommodations, but there’s still pesky things like food that you need to pay for and if you’re house sitting you can’t really travel around all that much. Plus, what about your own house back home and your job?

That doesn’t mean that all is lost. One of the principles of the thing is that you’re willing to put yourself in a fairly unfamiliar situation, with limited access to outside supports forcing you to navigate unique challenges and overcome. A solo road trip through the United States where you just jump in the car and go, may present you with similar challenges.

The other principle is that you’re interacting with a lot of different people from around the globe with a willing and humble spirit to be shown their perspective. I continue to do both things in my life. Taking a short week backpacking in Mexico or Peru can be just as challenging if not more than navigating a semester in Germany. Talking to someone online who’s from Beirut may expand your understanding of the world far more than talking to someone you met in France because of the greater cultural differences. 

Just living abroad does not necessarily confer these challenges either. It is easy to wall yourself off in an English speaking enclave and never leave depending on where you go. Had I gone to Germany, only hung out with American students, taken classes in English and never left my dorm, would that have given me the same experience? No, I may as well have stayed in America for all it did for me other than give me some social clout to say “I spent a semester abroad”. Remember, dear readers, we do not marry the principles of what we desire to the thing itself. Our desires can manifest in many forms and be just as satisfying if not moreso. 

Still if you truly desire to do so, then my recommendation is to learn another language and start applying for jobs abroad. You obviously don’t need to learn another language, but it is certainly helpful. As of this writing the best jobs abroad are teacher, volunteer, medical industry, tour guide, yachting, au pair, scuba dive instructor, yoga instructor, working for an international company and obtaining a working holiday visa. As you can see many of them are easier said than done and do require some sort of specialization. So do your market research and consider what it would really mean to go abroad. After all you only live once, why not live it a little unbound?

Completed: Spring 2009

Cost: $600 

Miles from home: about 4,000

Full disclosure: As stated above, it was only $600 in addition to my college tuition, so I’m not counting the cost of tuition as I would have paid that one way or the other. I also didn’t include my additional travels but all told they probably cost me about $1500. Two of those trips were covered in the cost of my studies.