Maybe it was listening to a girl from Jerusalem argue with a German girl over the aftermath of the Holocaust. Maybe it was meeting Maria Calleja from Malta, the vice president of Aiesec, who offered me a job in any city in Europe. Maybe it was seeing crazy Czech people bouncing around the dance floor to ska music. Or maybe it was having the freedom to make any turn or go in any direction that I wanted at that exact moment. Whatever it was, something about traveling alone opened my eyes and gave me a completely new perspective.
It wasn't until the freezing cold day of Dec. 3, at the end of my semester abroad, that I had the courage to travel alone.I found myself in the airport outside of Prague. I had an unprecedented feeling of intense anxiety equated with a joyous liberation that I've never experienced before. Not knowing a single word of Czech and having no idea how to get into the city, I began to wonder if this time I really had gone off the deep end.
What was I thinking when I left my comfortable Paris apartment and the friends I'd made there? My gag reflexes were about to kick in. I knew nothing for certain about my immediate future. There were no plans, no guarantees and no one to help me or be my friend along the way. Despite all these anxieties, I was completely free.
Two days later, I had survived and was alive to board my Ryanair flight back to London. I had met people from all over the world and experienced the city all on my own. I met two girls from SMU who were studying in Madrid, who I might as well have known for years, and ended up having a blast with them. I had figured out everything for myself and had had the best two days of my life. I couldn't believe it had gone so well, considering the fact that three months ago I wouldn't have eaten a meal alone if my life had depended on it.
I decided to do a semester abroad in Paris during my second year, feeling stuck in Charlottesville in the midst of my highly competitive and seemingly fake social scene. I was also uncertain about my future plans in life. I was unhappy, restless and desperate for a change. My conversations were a broken record. The same "How are you? What have you been up to? Just hangin' out, blah, blah, blah ..." I felt trapped, and I knew instinctively that I had to get out. Go somewhere, go anywhere. I needed time on my own and decided to go to Paris alone, which was one of the best decisions I ever made. I learned more in three and a half months than I did in the previous 21 years of my life.
Having been raised in my conservative niche in Richmond, Va., I was scared of being different. I did what everyone else did. Within my group of friends everyone acts the same, dresses the same, talks the same. Everyone feeds off of each other's ways, so the more you conform, the better you fit in, the happier you are. People go to ridiculous extremes, exerting considerable amounts of energy to be like everyone else. Given these circumstances, before I went abroad, I was completely unaware that I had any freedom at all.
Just like many other girls studying abroad at the time, I began traveling with friends. I was afraid to travel outside Paris alone and not confident enough to trust myself. In each city, my friends and I were herded around like a pack of sheep. We were constantly being told what to do and where to go. Finally I realized I had the rest of my life to deal with groups of girls.
A few arguments and frustrating trips later, I had had enough and began to explore cities on my own. I started venturing away on my own while in Barcelona, and had a great time. I met several local artists, cute shopkeepers, and interesting people to talk to. I found great restaurants, neat shops and discovered nicer local areas of this city, far from the touristy Las Ramblas area. Exploring alone was easier and so much more fun.
Walking around Europe became a type of meditation. Time to see the cities, and time to reflect on anything I wanted. I would spend hours, sometimes entire days, just walking alone. I would never in a million years have had the opportunity to do this in Richmond, Va. It was these long solitary walks discovering the hidden treasures of European cities that gave me the desire to travel alone. And once I finally mustered the courage, I went alone to Prague and discovered my freedom.
I found a whole different lifestyle in Europe. Some things in Europe just make more sense. Not only is public transportation more efficient, but, as my friend Tyler Brown put it, "Europeans work to live, instead of in America where we live to work." They work six hour days instead of 60-hour weeks. They have longer lunch breaks and take more vacations than Americans. In Spain, we had long, late lunches around three, then took siestas around five, and went out around eleven. So much more laid back. Americans stress and work all the time to make good money, but forget to enjoy themselves along the way.
European lifestyle and France itself was a 180 degree turn from America. When I got off the bus from the airport and met Madame Hétier, my French mother, she spoke nothing but French. English wasn't allowed. All my classes were in French. Getting a cell phone, ordering a crepe and buying train tickets were no exception.
The first month was the most difficult. I had taken eight years of French and knew the vocab and every grammar rule in the book. Yet after a month, I still couldn't communicate comfortably with people.
At an apartment party one night, my friend Anna and I found ourselves surrounded by fast-speaking Parisians. Being from Geneva, Anna speaks fluent French and fit in fine. I, on the other hand, had absolutely no idea what was going on. At that moment, I would have given anything to be back in Charlottesville, nestled into a tall wooden booth at The Virginian, surrounded by all my friends. Not wanting to ruin Anna's fun, I hid in the corner and called my friend Emily bawling. I didn't think I would ever be able to speak French.
Ironically, it wasn't until I relaxed and stopped trying to speak French that I became fluent. Each sentence didn't have to be grammatically correct. I surrendered my desire for perfection and felt out each situation. Having an effortless conversation with a hairdresser one day was when I knew I had conquered my struggle with the language.
Not only was communication difficult, but things didn't always go as planned. On the train ride from Munich to Florence a dormant bomb from WWII was found along the tracks and our train was delayed. Sixteen hours after my departure, I arrived in Florence. Despite the miserable delay, I had met three girls from New York who were studying at a design school in Florence, and spent the last half of the trip with them. I then unexpectedly ran into them in Madrid three weeks later and again in Interlaken a month after that. My trips were full of coincidences, and it was the times that I didn't plan that were the most fun.
Because plans changed so often, I had to be patient and content wherever I was. With huge language barriers and difficulties in navigating large, unfamiliar cities, getting upset and complaining accomplished nothing. Finally, I stopped worrying when things went wrong, and just accepted whatever situation I was in. I just let things happen, and all of a sudden my life seemed to be unfolding right in front of me. I focused on each moment, not worrying about the future or dwelling on the past. As soon as I started living this way, my problems ceased to exist.
It was the funny unexpected situations that I miss the most. When a Chinese lady threw her arms around me for a snapshot in front of the Duomo. When I picked up a maraca from an African man's vendor table and sporadically participated in a five-minute dance to a Bob Marley song with him. Or maybe it was playing soccer with a group of middle school-aged boys from Madrid during their recess break.
Of course, there's no guarantee while you're abroad that you will be happy all the time. Sometimes I got lost, or I felt alone, or was frustrated when communication was impossible. I missed some trains, took the wrong metro lines, and at times definitely fit the prototypical American tourist profile that caused foreigners to be extremely rude to me.
However, every difficult experience was surprisingly followed by an amazing stroke of luck. I got the stomach flu on a night train to Rome and was on a bumpy, smoky sleeping car vomiting in toilets that didn't flush. I woke up the next day to meet up with friends and unexpectedly joined their Lorenzo de Medici school tour. I stayed in their four-star hotel and got an all-inclusive tour of Rome in one weekend. We wandered through the Forum, were awed by the Coliseum and the Pantheon, threw coins into the Trevi fountain and made it up and down the Spanish Steps. Not to mention gazing up at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and catching a glimpse of the Pieta in St. Peter's at the top of Vatican City. The stomach flu on the train, the language barriers and all my frustrations were worth it. They brought out a side of me I might never have discovered and I now can't imagine living without.
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