In the foothills outside Florence, I helped devour a traditional steak the size of my ribcage – it was the second course out of seven. In Prague, I relished a heavy plate of Czech goulash (despite the stifling heat) and chased it down with the kick of a local cherry brandy. At a sidewalk café in Paris, we dined on crêpes aux citron and hard Normandy cider. Fresh tapas in Barcelona, savory Dutch pancakes in Amsterdam, pretzels and sausages in a Munich biergarten, and churros dipped in dark drinking chocolate in the cobblestoned alleys of Madrid.
But after eight weeks and tens of thousands of calories, all I wanted was a f***ing root beer float.
This past summer I spent two months backpacking through Europe with two old friends – we visited thirteen cities and eight countries, training from destination to destination with all of our gear strapped to our backs. We hiked through the Swiss Alps, climbed to the top of Florence’s Duomo, partook in less-than-wholesome activities in Amsterdam’s “coffeeshops,” and visited more museums and galleries than I care to count.
More than just learning to order a beer in Czech, we learned responsibility, independence, cooperation, how to be confident even in a crisis, and how to gauge a city’s expensiveness based on the price of a Kinder Bueno (just €0.80 in Prague!). It was a marvelous, exhausting adventure. But the real reward was in coming home.
Adventure is so easily romanticized, and I admittedly helped to perpetuate the fantasy of effortlessly traipsing across the continent, moving from one scenic escapade to another. Our joint Facebook photo album displays only smiling faces, beautiful vistas, and envy-inducing food pics. It doesn’t show the quarrels about which train to take to Berlin, and it doesn’t show us standing awkwardly, silently praying that someone else will do the talking with the ticket clerk this time. It doesn’t show us being catcalled and harassed in countries where a language barrier prevented us from defending ourselves, and it doesn’t show our Swiss dinners of graham crackers and peanut butter (all we could afford if we wanted to pay for the boat that would take us to the hiking trails.)
While these are the less-than-glamorous details, it’s all the little pitfalls, awkward encounters, and uncomfortable situations that made our trip a real adventure. It wasn’t the picture-perfect tale of three old friends wandering through two months of blissful exploration. It was simply life lived somewhere else for a little while. And there is no version of a life worth living that is totally void of conflict and the occasional run-ins with the mundane.
One reason we may become discontented with our everyday lives is the stubborn belief that a better reality lies out there somewhere: a place where we aren’t bogged down by school or work, where we read for fun and have interesting conversations with fascinating foreigners, where our everyday manages to be an exciting fairytale. We had moments and hours and sometimes even days that lived up to this fantasy, but for the most part the awe we felt was an active choice, not a state we lived in by default of being somewhere else.
We chose to let the history and size of the Colosseum overwhelm our irritation at being out in 100-degree heat for the entire day. We chose to put aside our squabbles as we silently gazed over impossibly turquoise Lake Lucerne from the peak of Mt. Rigi. I chose to be entirely present through every new encounter, smelling every flower in Monet’s garden, and trekking through every castle and museum and courtyard, despite our constant worries of funds, tickets, and schedules.
As we neared August, my two friends departed Spain to return home, and I met my older brother for a week in Paris. He and I did everything you’re meant to do in Paris: a picnic along the Seine, touring the Louvre, and climbing the Eiffel tower. We walked for miles in a city steeped in culture and history, surrounded by some of the world’s most stunning architecture and, most importantly, some of the world’s most incredible food. However, after indulging for days in buttery French cuisine, the only thing I wanted was a simple American root beer float.
My brother and I scoured every store within a few blocks of our hostel. We popped into every shop we passed and made a beeline for the sodas, fingers tightly crossed. After several days, we begrudgingly came to the resentful conclusion that the French do not drink root beer.
Over the course of our fruitless search, I came to realize that despite the compelling pull of adventure, there is a lot of value in the familiar. There is beauty in Saturday morning cartoons, reading on a rainy day, and late night study sessions with friends, as long as we choose to see it. Being away for so long forced me to understand how regularly I take for granted the small moments of beauty in my everyday life. I gained a new sense of appreciation for the world not just when hiking through the French countryside or boating across a shining Swiss lake, but in returning to my suburban Ohio home to find my mother eagerly awaiting our arrival, root beer and a pint of vanilla ice cream in hand.
Images courtesy of: Sarah Senkfor, Shankar Kurra, Kendall Hecker, and Huffington Post