Impressions

I spent three months trekking around Europe after college. These are some of the things I remember:

• Getting off the aircraft at Heathrow and the thrill of feeling utterly alone
• The joy of finding my pack in one piece
• The agony of having to leave the huge plastic bag that British Airways wrapped my bag in. I was sure that it would come in handy if it just weren't so bulky. (I never would've used it.)
• The gorgeous death march to the hostel in Glencoe, Scotland
• The beautiful Norwegian wood interior of the hostel
• The mousy Italian guy with his slinky girlfriend hanging off of him
• The shock of having the Italian's slinky girlfriend bend over to gather her bags and demonstrate her total lack of panties to me in vivid detail
• Cans of Scottish baked beans
• The Canadian women who were surprised when I could tell that they were from Canada
• Stumbling back from the pub, frantically trying to get in before curfew, and using my flashlight to help one of the Canadian women find a place to whiz on the side of the road (yes, I was a Boy Scout)
• Tramping through the countryside in which they filmed Rob Roy
• How damned friendly everyone was
• Picking blackberries
• The crazy Turkish au pere at the bus stop in Fort William, Scotland
• Eating wild blackberries for breakfast and lunch and dessert after a dinner of canned baked beans
• The insane death march from my hostel to the Frankfurt airport through the Black Forest and over a highway (wow, these access doors aren't locked!)
• The utter joy and relief of watching my friend walk out of the jet way at Frankfurt airport
• Walking past the S-bahn ticket validators in Munich and making a silly "ding" sound
• Learning much later that being caught without a validated S-bahn ticket usually means jail, especially for smartass American tourists
• Bemusement of learning that Frankfurt's world-famous apple wine is really popular with the area's street people
• The Turd That Wouldn't Flush in the hostel in Amsterdam
• The embarrassment of meeting the friendly hostel lady in the Oude Kerk red light district (no, she didn't "moonlight", just riding her bicycle home)
• Wow, I didn't know that a pig could do that.
• I wonder how much they paid that woman to let the pig do that?
• Dog shit, everywhere
• Frustration at reaching my future wife's residence in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland… just after curfew
• The cold of a Swiss night spent on the pavement outside my future wife's residence because the hostel is closed and I don't have the money for a hotel room
• Waking up to bag pipes in a Swiss hostel
• Tucking into spaghetti carbonara, bought by my future wife, after subsisting solely on hostel rolls
• How hostel rolls could be compacted down to one tenth their size because of their massive voids and air pockets
• Doing my belt up to the last notch and still having my pants fall off
• The exhilaration of being driven through Brussels in someone's private vehicle
• Having my drying laundry knocked down with dirt clods thrown by Belgian street urchins
• The skinny kitten in the hostel in Brussels
• Using toilet paper to chase corn-beer-flavored puke from the grout of the bathroom in my Brussels hostel
• Beer with fellow travelers on the steps of the Sacré Coeur
• Wine with fellow travelers at Versailles
• Rushing to make the Arche de la Défense before closing
• Having the ticket lady actually sell me an admission ticket even though she was technically closed
• Having the entire top of the Arche de la Défense to myself in the twilight
• The burrito bought by my dad when I got back home

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