Like many other young women with wanderlust, I have a deep appreciation for Anthony Bourdain and his outlook on travel. I’m drawn to many of his famous quotes; in a personal favorite of mine, he remarks about the messiness of leaving your home, saying, “Travel isn’t always pretty. It isn’t always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that’s okay. The journey changes you; it should change you.” But before this semester, I don’t think I truly grasped what he meant.Â
Sure, like anybody else, my trips have been derailed in the past. Once, it took my family and me forty-eight hours to get home after flights were cancelled due to a blizzard. On a trip to a lake, it stormed almost every single day, leaving us mournfully looking out the window at the tubes we had to strap down to the dock. And the most memorable was in my preteen years, when I read by flashlight under the luggage rack on a train so crowded you could barely stand. But these were blips. On all of these, I was with my parents, two people far more experienced at seeing the world than I am, and we had backup plans for the backup plans.Â
And, now, because time has a funny way of going by very quickly, I am living out my childhood dream by studying abroad in Europe. As I write this, I am sitting in my dorm at Kasteel Well in the Netherlands, situated right near the German border. Spring break has just concluded, and I have trips booked for the rest of March that I had previously only written about on my “Travel Checklist” hanging back home in my room in the Midwest.Â
But as Anthony Bourdain said, the travel I’ve thus experienced hasn’t always been “pretty” or “comfortable.” It’s been stressful, overwhelmingly joyful, and scary. I’ve found myself in the emergency room of a French hospital because of an accidental exposure to a nut, and I’ve waited outside at 4 a.m. on an eerie German train platform after our first train stopped short of its destination. I’ve narrowly succeeded in navigating foreign public transportation on a low phone battery, though I’ve sheepishly learned my lesson. But I’ve also met new people in every city who bring with them unique perspectives and a passion for travel that renews my own.Â
This quote of Bourdain’s sticks out to me the most when I’m packing up for the next journey. I’m incredibly grateful to have the opportunity and the means to explore Europe, but I am also learning to be grateful for the struggles that come with it. These adventures cannot be the vacations I vision-boarded in my teen years. If I want to experience the world, I need to keep myself open to the reality of the world—that it’s just as messy as Bourdain forewarned.Â
I think there’s something very beautiful about finding appreciation in a place just because you are there, rather than needing to associate it with the most legendary of stories. Bourdain had it right all along (to be fair, that doesn’t come as quite a shock). As I continue with the rest of this unbelievable semester, I want to remind myself and all my fellow wanderers that the perfect trip can also include imperfect moments. That doesn’t negate the experience, but rather adds to what you are able to take away. And the next time you visit a place, remember to save a new Anthony Bourdain quote to your Pinterest board, just to help get you in the mood.