Why yes, I am American … how could you tell?

I’ve never felt more American in my whole life than I have in the last month or so.

My lifelong understanding that pizza is a finger-food and goes best with Coke has recently been demolished—apparently it is horrendously impolite not to cut your pizza with a knife and fork, and it’s only natural to accompany it with a glass of wine. Also, who knew that ranch dressing, sour cream, sweet relish, and authentic Mexican salsa basically don’t exist in Europe? Although I really am enamored with the cuisine of these countries, food and eating customs are the things that make me feel homesick for the cheap prices, large portions, and the broad belief that it is totally ok to take your leftovers home with you.

Although every day I’m getting better and better, the list of ways that I fail to fit into the European lifestyle grows continually. The first time I forgot to bring my own bags to the grocery store, I had to stuff my pasta, water, fruit, soup, and bread into my medium-sized purse. Every time I have to pay for a “toiletten,” I bite my lip as I hand over those precious forty Eurocents that could buy me half a loaf of bread. Then there was the day I accidentally wore flip-flops to class. I sunk my face into my scarf and heavy coat collar to try and hide from the searing stares of the locals, who couldn’t have looked more disgusted if I’d forgotten to wear anything that day.

The most large-scale of all the differences, though, is adapting to the work schedule of shop owners and grocery stores. If you forget to shop for groceries on Saturday, you’re stuck eating a piece of old bread and a package of peanut butter (which doesn’t actually taste like peanuts at all, depending on the brand you buy) on Sunday. In honor of the idea that living well means relaxing often, most all shops and stores close early each day, open late on Mondays, and are closed all day on Sundays. In America, if you discover late at night that you need paper for a project due the next day, you can make a midnight run to Wal-Mart (and you can pick up an energy drink and some new woolly socks if you’d like, too). But here, the city actually sleeps. Besides the slight inconvenience of not having an everything-you-could-ever-need store open all night long, this idea that relaxing is healthy for the soul is a concept I really wish America would adopt.

At least now I’m fully and openly aware of my past culture and habits; I realize how I’ve been both spoiled (gas prices…) and deprived (of a culture where life is more so about relaxation than working), and I’m so glad my eyes are being opened now so that I can fully appreciate both America and Europe for their distinctively different lifestyles and ideals.

s’il vous plaît apprécier

For a weekend of travel that almost didn’t happen, our time in Paris was spectacular! Our train tickets had been booked for the wrong day somehow, but Rachel quickly talked our way into new seat reservations, and we finally got to France on Friday afternoon. We arrived at a chaotic, urine-scented train/subway station, which overwhelmed us just as much as adjusting to yet another language and culture did. But we were ecstatic to even be in Paris, so we laughed off that panicky, disoriented feeling and moved forward in our newest adventure.

When we finally reached the artsy little one-bedroom apartment in Montemarte where we were staying (this is the section of Paris where it’s actually affordable to live), we were greeted by a tall, smiling man named Adam, who would be our host for the next two nights along with his roommate and long-time friend Madie. This was our first experience couch surfing, and we hid our nerves inside us as we walked into the tiny flat, tossed our bags aside, and made conversation about things like French food and cowboys in Texas. Adam laughed giddily when we explained that, yes, there are actually cowboys, horses, and farms in Texas. He also commented in broken English about our southern politeness and how we had a “special way of saying sorry” that was unlike any way he’d ever heard before.

Armed with the weekend-travel necessities of a map, a few Euros, a subway pass, and a Ziploc bag of peanut butter sandwiches, we headed out to see what we could of the city. After visiting the Pantheon and having flashbacks of freshman art history, we made our way to the Louvre, where we were shocked at the size and grandeur of the world’s largest museum.

If you give each artifact, statue, piece of artwork, etc. a full thirty seconds of attention, it would take you four months to see every piece in the Louvre (and this is without breaks for eating, sleeping, or using the restroom). We only spent a couple hours there and saw probably one one-hundredth of all there is to see, but we did get to see Greek and Roman sculptures, huge Egyptian statues, artifacts, and sarcophagi, famous paintings from around the world, and many, many more unbelievable masterpieces. After giving far less than the four months of admiration the Louvre demands, we regrettably bid au revoir to Mona Lisa and headed back to the apartment, where we were greeted by Madie with the traditional French hello, complete with two kisses on the cheeks.

That night I squeezed into the tiny kitchen with Adam and, after offering to help him cook but being turned down by his teethy grin and exclamation: “Ohhh but you are already helping me so much by being here!”, I settled for watching him prepare a massive dinner for us. He excitedly asked more about life in Texas, and I asked about things like French cheese and the French language; he tried to teach me key phrases, but we just ended up laughing at my poor pronunciation of even the simplest words. We all sat at the coffee table in the one open room and listened to kitschy American music as we ate and talked. He’d made salmon cooked four different ways: French-style, which was half-cooked in butter and served with raw mushrooms and Carré de l’Est (a popular French cheese), Japanese style (raw, with pickled ginger), and two other styles (which I can’t remember the names of) that consisted of a whole salmon filet cooked in oil with fresh mushrooms, and boiled salmon in a mixture of rice, broccoli, and mushrooms. If you’re wondering, the answer is yes… I did try what Adam called sashimi and then awkwardly pronounced in English as “roar sah-moan,” and the verdict is that the raw salmon was actually pretty decent. Amanda was brave enough to give it a taste (and then swallow it whole) after being urged to try it by our smiling hosts, but Rachel politely picked her way around it and stuffed her stomach with rice and broccoli.

We three piled onto a big mattress on the floor, where we shivered our way through the night and woke up early to get to the free walking tour, which we ditched halfway through because we couldn’t stand the rain anymore. With malfunctioning umbrellas and soggy socks, we made our way to the Palais-Royale, the Bastille Monument, the Arc de Triomphe, Notre Dame, and the Fontaine St. Michel, where we were surrounded by the grandeur of gothic and neoclassical architecture and the opulence of ancient statues stabbing their swords and staring dauntingly at us from their mounts.

We made it to the Eiffel Tower both in the daytime and at night, and we were lucky enough to see it sparkling for a few minutes against the dark sky. Postcards just don’t do the nighttime Eiffel Tower justice; in reality it is absolutely colossal and breathtaking. In the city of lights and the city of love, I stood beneath the landmark that combines the two and stared up, imagining that the lights twinkling in the beams were frantically exquisite love letters being sent across the city in Morse code.

The romance and beauty of the city really is surreal and quite unavoidable. We acted as if we were totally accustomed to the public displays of affection that surrounded us constantly, and we acted calm and cool even when there were kissing sessions taking place five feet in front of us. We felt immersed in the Parisian

lifestyle as we strolled across romantic arched bridges, and we gazed at the water and the picturesque buildings around us. Later I felt utterly absorbed in the Parisian lifestyle when we sat at a cute café eating crepes and actively doing nothing at all.

Now that was a lifestyle I could really get used to.

just a train ride away…

If I had to give you one word to describe this past weekend, I’d have to go with challenging. Our 5:58 AM train from Maastricht to Liege was supposed to take us to our reserved seats on the five-hour train ride to Aachen, which would take us to Berlin by about 1:00 PM. When early Friday morning finally came, we headed to the bus stop around 5:15 and discovered that the buses don’t even start running until 5:40. So, with fake smiles on our faces, we ignored the drizzling rain and marched our way in the direction that we thought the train station was.

There were six of us girls on this trip, and we tried to ignore the pain that our heavy hiking backpacks were already causing our shoulders by chatting about how lovely the five-hour train nap would be. A little less than an hour later, we were finally at the train station, but we’d missed our first train; this was the beginning of what we knew would be a day full of unfortunate events. For me, though, the most unfortunate had to be the long-awaited five-hour train ride that was spent on the cold, dirty floor of the train. Since we missed the train that held our reserved seats, we were stuck seatless on this train.

Both sleep and studying were out of the question on that bumpy, nauseating ride; Amanda, Rachel, and I piled into the one open floor space left, tangling ourselves and our backpacks into a little knot so as to leave a walkway for people heading to the restrooms. We were right by the doors of the train, so every time the train stopped we had to get up and let people off, then relocate ourselves back into the tangled mess and continue on the seemingly endless ride to Aachen.

We finally arrived in East Berlin a whopping five hours later than we’d hoped to, and we immediately set off to find our hostel. We were greeted there in our twelve-bed mixed dorm by three older men, the oldest and baldest of whom tried to woo Amanda with his guitar skills after calling her “cute” and watching her intently as she climbed up the ladder to make her bed. A few stained sheets and another creepy fifty-something, alcohol-scented, heavy-breathing, dark-cloaked man later and we were regretting not having paid a few more Euros to be in an all-female room.

Although I know we could’ve made it through the night alive and probably safe, a few of us had only gotten one hour of sleep (and some none) the night before and we desperately needed a peaceful night’s rest, so one of our travel mates decided to ask if there was room for us in the hostel to move dorms. Luckily there was, so we moved rooms and slept safely that night, letting our dreams wipe away any lingering bitterness about late buses, missed trains, dirty floors, stained sheets, and creepy men.

Now I’m just interested to see how our 32-bed mixed dorm in Switzerland works out…

The first glimpse I had of Germany was what I could see peeking out from above a tall, mossy rock wall at the train station in Aachen. There were vine-covered houses with tall, slanted roofs and twisted trees growing higher than I could see. I really had no idea what to expect from Germany at all other than maybe seeing a castle and lots of historical sites. Although we didn’t actually see any castles, Berlin definitely didn’t disappoint in the historical aspect. We went on a free walking tour the next day, where we saw the Brandenburg Gate, a piece of the Berlin Wall, the Former Nazi government district, both the Book Burning and the Holocaust Memorials, the site of Hitler’s former bunker, and even the hotel where Michael Jackson held his baby over the balcony. This tour alone made our travel woes worth the trouble.

Standing on both sides of what used
to be divided by the Berlin Wall

I have to say, though, that the most surprising part of the weekend was the food. We asked the workers at the hostel where we should go for authentic German food, and when we got to the half pub/half restaurant that they suggested I immediately loved it because of the mouth-watering plates of food on other people’s tables.

We squinted at the German menus that offered things like weiner schnitzel and thüringer roster. I was prepared to close my eyes and point to something random when the waitress brought over English menus that offered foods like weiner schnitzel and thüringer roster…

I settled for the description that said “German pork” and “fried potatoes” because, really, what could sound better after a dreary day of traveling? While we waited on our food, we watched the people around us and

eavesdropped in conversations we couldn’t understand. In a room off to the side, there was a family gathered around a huge wooden table; the little boys occasionally shook their fists at the television and the older men drank beers and shouted what I assumed were German profanities at the futbol players.

The next day marked the beginning of our journey home, and we didn’t expect anything to go any easier than on the way there. We dodged subway cops, embarrassed ourselves in front of a few only-German-speaking bus drivers, missed two trains, and waited out hour-long layovers in two train stations, making our trip about four hours longer than it had to be.  But what else were we to expect? The travel precedent for the weekend had already been set, and we were just along for the ride.

The former Nazi government building–
Built to look intimidating and feel overpowering

Another side of German architecture…

allow me to introduce …

Well, after a few posts on my journeys, it’s about time I introduce my travel companions. Depending on the weekend, our group grows or shrinks by a few people, but my two best friends and I make up the core of the group.

As a group, we three are open-minded, curious, hard workers, easy-going, and somewhat adventurous. After being best friends, roommates, housemates, neighbors, co-workers, teammates, and classmates, we three know how to live, laugh, fight, and learn together, so it only makes sense that we travel Europe together.

If you met Amanda, your first impression would probably be that she’s sweet, cute, and extremely kind. After deep conversation you’d see that she’s also very innocent yet non-judgmental and that she has a great sense of humor. After being friends with her for about eight years, I can tell you that she’s loyal, humble, and that she loves chocolate, old people, history, Pineywoods Camp, puppies, the color yellow, and that it takes a lot for her to not like somebody. What I love about traveling with Amanda is that she’s interested in the historical aspects of buildings and places, so when things sometimes get dull for me, her excitement makes me rethink my boredom and actively soak in all the historical glory of a place. I also like that she loves food and is a pretty adventurous eater like myself, so we’re willing to order something we’ve never heard of and take risks so we can fully experience the cuisine of a culture.

Rachel, on the other hand, who ordered a ham and cheese sandwich at an authentic German restaurant, is not a risk-taker at all. If you were to meet Rachel, you might cower at what you think is her rudeness, but that’s just her cold exterior. She has a dominant personality, and she likes to take charge and get things done—quickly (her walk is the speed of my slow jog). If you were to be lucky enough to have a few deep conversations with Rachel, you’d discover that she’s independent and really not mean at all but simply unscathed by others’ opinions. If you’d been friends with Rachel for about sixteen years like I have, you’d see that she’s extremely generous, mature for her age, confident, intelligent, opinionated, and is kind and compassionate at the core (example: today, Valentine’s Day, she woke up early to walk to the market and buy chocolates and a cute vase with a tulip in it for both Amanda and myself). Other than the problem of our different walking speeds, I like traveling with Rachel because she’s excellent with directions, maps, and navigating the city via various modes of transportation. She also has motherly instincts sometimes, and if need be, she’s willing to do almost anything for Amanda and me.

Amanda

Rachel

Me

in the UK.

Feel free to read this post in a British accent because I can assure you I’m typing in one.

With the aid of a bus, three trains, and two Dramamine, I reached London ready to explore and eat! All forty or so of us Baylor students crammed ourselves into the already-packed subway cars, our huge hiking backpacks poking at the innocent passengers who smiled and spoke politely in their beautiful British accents. The fast, quaky feel of the tube tunneling underground shifted my mindset into city mode, but we soon discovered that London is filled with a hundred more different atmospheres throughout the city when we split into our groups of friends and began walking the streets.

There’s the ritz and glamour of towering glass-walled hotels, where you can have tea time for about £52 (around $100). One street over are clubs that have dress codes, where music pounding from behind the white doors overpowers the street’s soundtrack of heels clicking on the sidewalk and classy black taxis swishing by. Wisps of warm air filled with pungent spices rush by your nose on the streets with Chinese, Arabic, and Lebanese influences—as you pass by restaurants you can almost taste the raspberry smoke from street-side hookah. There’re the ancient settings within the city, where you can step behind the floodgates of a castle and trek your way through its cobblestone village, learning about the warriors and prisoners who once lived and fought there. The dodgy/lively parts of the city lie buried past other sections—bags of rubbish lie discarded on the streets, and drunken blokes smile at you and hobble their way to the next pub. Scarves and purses rule the department store shelf space in the trendy parts of London, and enough shoppers make their way to this arcade (outdoor mall strip) to keep over sixty shoe stores within one square mile in business. There’s royal London, where the beloved queen resides; bobbies guard the surrounding streets, and the queen’s royal guards stand frozen (in more way than one) past the tall golden gates of the palace.

There are so many more aspects of London that I haven’t even seen… but four days is just not enough to experience every part of the city and visit most all of the tourist spots.

When you go to London, a few of the must-do things on your list are probably take a picture in a cute red telephone booth, ride a Double Decker bus, eat fish and chips, and maybe meet Prince Harry and convince him you’re his future wife. For me, other than visiting Platform 9 ¾, on my must-do list was seeing the Changing of the Guard ceremony at Buckingham Palace. We were lucky enough to navigate our way straight to the palace early enough to stand in the right spot, see the guards marching while playing regal tunes, and to get a close up of their staunch, straight faces under those furry black hats. Then we piled up close to the fence to watch the actual changing of the guard occur. We waited and waited for the special moment to happen, and meanwhile we listened to the surprising musical choices by the royal band (“The Circle of Life” and the upbeat theme song to “Hawaii Five-O”). Behind us, the royal guards with flowing red robes and tall golden hats rode past on horses, which was much more interesting than the motionless guards within the gates of the palace. I turned around to watch the red-robed men for about five seconds, and within those five seconds, the guards changed places—and I missed it. So I made it all the way to Europe, all the way to England, all the way to London, all the way to Buckingham Palace, all the way to the gate where I have a decent view, and I miss the guards actually changing places. I also didn’t get a picture in a telephone booth, didn’t ride a Double Decker bus, and didn’t convince Prince Harry to marry me. I might as well have just edited my must-do list to eating fish and chips…

But we did get to see many, many of the tourist spots! Here’s what we did:

–Tower of London (one of my favorite parts of the trip!)
-Saw the play Billy Elliot at the Victoria Palace
-Did the London Eye (a huge Ferris-wheel type thing where you get to see the entire city from up extremely high)
–Big Ben
-Saw a Scottish man playing the bagpipes
–Westminster Abbey (went to a service)
-Westminster Cathedral
-St. Paul’s Cathedral
–Wimbledon
–Stonehenge
-Went to Bath, where we saw the
-Roman Baths, the
-Bath Abbey, and went to the
-Jane Austen Centre

So, right when we’d almost mastered the tube, adjusted to looking the right way when crossing streets, discovered the deliciousness of fish and chips, and began thinking about money in pounds instead of dollars, we were uprooted and put back into life in the Netherlands, where pounds are just what you put on after eating too much fresh-baked bread and creamy butter.

You can look forward to meeting some of my travel companions in one of my next blogs!

Cheers, mates!

PS: Here’s a story for you. While we were touring the outside of Buckingham Palace, we heard an interesting (and very true) story from our tour guide about a man who once climbed the fence of the palace, climbed into a window, found the queen’s quarters, drank a bottle of her wine, and sat on the edge of her bed smoking a cigarette—while she was in it. When the queen woke up and saw him sitting there, the man calmly said, “I just want to chat.” She picked up the phone and frantically said, “Bring me cigarettes and an ash tray, now!” You’d think this would be an odd enough request from the queen that somebody would immediately go to check on her, but nobody answered her request for fifteen minutes. Needless to say, many people lost their jobs over the incident, but the funniest part of the story is that the man who broke in was only charged with stealing a bottle of wine. The queen didn’t want to bring attention to the crime and didn’t want to be a witness in court, besmearing the royal image. The man later went to jail for one year for committing another crime, but he is out now and has written a book about his experiences. I’ll let you decide what you think the moral of this story is…