My wife and I spent a month in Europe this past summer. A few things kind of “fell into place” that made the trip possible, and we had several “excuses” as to why we should go on a big trip (a 40th birthday, a 15th wedding anniversary, and a graduate degree all occurred within a six month period).
I have previously written a little bit about the trip, but have been wanting to do some sort of big “recap” ever since we got back. The problem is, when I put the idea of doing some sort of all encompassing, extra-reflective project, I clam up out of some fear of failure or something … which means I never actually write anything.
I am trying to specifically not think of this (or any other writing/thinking about the trip) as the blog post about the trip, as my official “take” on the whole thing. I do want to somehow kind of make sense of the trip, but any time I sit down to do that, I get intimidated by the idea. So, instead, I am just going to (try to) chip away at my grand “exit interview” as I find the idea interesting and just kind of see where things go.
Right now, the idea of making a series of small posts about the trip and some of my thoughts about it (and the stuff it made me think about) is what sounds manageable, so that’s where I am taking this.
Overview
Black = our primary path (almost 100% on trains)
Red = overnight trips in both directions (also on trains)
Green = flights
We were gone for almost exactly a month (all of June, 2019). An entire month seems like a long time until you start trying to allocate how many days you will spend in any one city. The longest we stayed in any one city was only four or five nights, I think. We tried to cram a lot of stuff into those 30-ish days. The major cities we visited were (in this order)1 :
Brussels (and Leuven)
Amsterdam
Strasbourg
Munich
Salzburg
Vienna
Prague
Dresden (and Leipzig)
London
Normandy (not really a city, of course)
Paris
Antwerp (and Bruges)
From here, I think it makes sense to talk a bit about some of the “highlights,” “favorites,” and other such remembrances. Also, the trip rearranged the way I think about certain things, which I want to explore further. It also has me making future plans that revolve around finding a way to go back for a very extended stay—to take a semester, even a year—to really let certain aspects of what I loved about those places “become” part of me.
Stay tuned, I guess.
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The order seems a little weird, I know. We flew into and out of Brussels but also flew from Prague to London about ⅔ of the way through the trip. ↩︎