Two Weeks in Europe: Lessons Learned

This is Part 2 of 3 posts about my trip to Europe. If you haven’t read Part One, read that first! There’s a ton of great pic­tures of me in it 🙂

I’m all about learn­ing lessons in life. For­tu­nate­ly for me, this trip was chock­ablock with them. As a rel­a­tive­ly new inter­na­tion­al trav­el­er, I can tell I have a lot more lessons to learn before I get this glo­be­trot­ting thing down. Here are 9 lessons I learned while spend­ing two weeks in Europe!

Include downtime in the schedule:

In my nor­mal day-to-day life, I don’t get a ton of phys­i­cal activ­i­ty. Maybe I ride my bike, maybe I play some soft­ball or soc­cer. I don’t know why I thought I would be mag­i­cal­ly able to han­dle walk­ing 15 kilo­me­ters in one day. Not only that, but do that mul­ti­ple days in a row. My legs were SO TIRED. Then when I get tired, I get a bit grumpy and/or whiny. Then no one has fun. The les­son I learned here is, chill out on pack­ing the sched­ule so full. In the future, I might do one fair­ly full day, but the next day will be an easy day. I won’t have so many busy days in a row.

Trav­el­ing to and explor­ing a new city is also a fair­ly men­tal­ly stim­u­lat­ing activ­i­ty. I get a bit stressed out when pre­sent­ed with new things to learn (like get­ting on the cor­rect train, going to cor­rect direc­tion, and get­ting off at the cor­rect sta­tion) and need the chance to just sit and process every­thing. Same thing for nav­i­gat­ing around a new town on Google Maps while try­ing to take in all the new scenery. Overwhelming!

Museums are cool.…… ish:

After explor­ing the British Muse­um and walk­ing past tons more in Ams­ter­dam, I think I can safe­ly say muse­ums are not real­ly my thing. I like to go to a place, see one or two things, take some neat pic­tures, and then go. My sis­ter and her friend like to real­ly dig in deep and read as many dis­plays as they can. I get bored after a while. While not my first choice of things to do, I do think they are a great idea for rainy/cold/ucky days when you can’t or don’t want to do any­thing else outside.

Spending money on vacation:

It’s a dra­mat­ic men­tal shift while on vaca­tion. You’ve saved up for this trip for months and then bam! You’re on it! And you have all this mon­ey you can spend! Mon­ey that you’ve specif­i­cal­ly ear­marked for this vaca­tion. If you’re any­thing like me, you still have prob­lems whip­pin’ out the ol’ cred­it card and buy­ing what­ev­er is with­in your lim­its. Mul­ti­ple times I caught myself hem haw­ing over a pur­chase. I’m on vaca­tion! In Europe! It’s ridicu­lous to sweat the small purchases.

That being said, there are some things I learned.
‑If it’s a cool attrac­tion, I’ll prob­a­bly pay for it. Case in point: Punt­ing in Cam­bridge and the Hop On, Hop Off tour in Lon­don. Both are great ways to see the city with some­one else telling you what’s going on around you as you go by.
‑I will spend the mon­ey on things that make my life eas­i­er, like trans­porta­tion that offers a direct con­nec­tion or will be in the time­frame I need. Exam­ple: Spend­ing more mon­ey to fly on a KLM flight from Ams­ter­dam to Lon­don ear­ly in the morn­ing so I could make my sec­ond flight. (too bad that did­n’t exact­ly work as planned though!) I was­n’t going to take a cheap­er flight the night before and spend the night in the airport.
‑I don’t real­ly need sou­venirs. I bought some things, like a post­card in Lon­don and a hood­ie in Cam­bridge, but I don’t need shot glass­es or lit­tle knick­knacks that hang out on a shelf. It’s just extra clut­ter once I get home, and I rarely have peo­ple over who could admire my brag-shrine that show­cas­es shot glass­es from around the world. Most of the things I brought home are edi­ble. Hon­ey, mead, cher­ry liquor and a tasty gar­lic mus­tard sauce are what I brought home with me.
‑Final­ly, I also learned food is an impor­tant part of expe­ri­enc­ing a new place. I will hap­pi­ly pay for food while trav­el­ing that I nor­mal­ly would­n’t at home. Extra meals out, spe­cial treats (stroop­wafels made right in front of you or awe­some street mar­ket stall food come to mind). How­ev­er, I don’t see the point in spend­ing mon­ey on things like cof­fees or sodas dur­ing the day.

Accommodations:

I learned as long as I have a place to sleep some­where safe, I don’t real­ly care about any­thing else. This trip I spent a week sleep­ing on a mat­tress on the floor of my sis­ter’s flat. I only paid 10 pounds per night for it, as my sis­ter was stay­ing in a place lent to her by a larg­er orga­ni­za­tion. 10 pounds was the sug­gest­ed price, so I could’ve spent less but as they’re a non-prof­it orga­ni­za­tion I decid­ed the mon­ey was going to a good place and paid it. This works just fine and dandy while I’m young, sin­gle, and trav­el­ing by myself. Were I trav­el­ing with a spe­cial some­one, I would’ve sprung for more pri­vate accom­mo­da­tions. The next trip I go on I will look into stay­ing in a hostel.

I also real­ly appre­ci­at­ed hav­ing a kitchen for meals. Being able to make break­fast in the morn­ing before going explor­ing, or being able to come home and make din­ner was pret­ty nice. This helped keep costs down and I felt bet­ter from not hav­ing to eat out every meal. They can be full of sodi­um and oth­er unhealthy things.

Speaking of food:

I love try­ing out new foods wher­ev­er I go (Ecuado­ri­an foods, amaz­ing Mex­i­can food in San Diego, native Dutch fare.…) but it can be dif­fi­cult to eat some­times. I’m gluten-intol­er­ant, so find­ing cheap easy food is even more dif­fi­cult than it nor­mal­ly is. Thank­ful­ly, Google and the recent gluten-free trend made that thank­less task a lit­tle bit eas­i­er. I tried a lot of new foods while in Europe- some were deli­cious, some were not, and oth­ers caused major prob­lems for me lat­er. Maybe eat­ing cooked cab­bage for the first time on vaca­tion was­n’t the best idea I’ve ever had. Sor­ry sis :/

A different kind of diet:

You know, Mr. Mon­ey Mus­tache might be onto some­thing with his low/no news diet. While over­seas, I was very much removed from every­thing going on in Amer­i­ca, and it felt great. The only time I thought about the elec­tion was when some­one asked me who I was going to vote for (which, to be fair, hap­pened a half-dozen times).

I did­n’t know what Black Lives Mat­ter was doing. I did­n’t hear about the lat­est celebri­ty gos­sip (although I did hear about Kim Kar­dashi­an get­ting robbed in Paris. Ugh.) It was very relax­ing to be able to step back and just con­cen­trate on hav­ing a good time with my sis­ter and her friend. I’ve vowed to incor­po­rate more of that into my every­day routine!

Social.… rhombus?

One of the hard­est things about being over­seas was being away from 99% of my social cir­cle. Life con­tin­ued on with­out me and I was acute­ly aware of that in the form of the buzzing mes­sages of sev­er­al group chats I belong to. Europe is at least 6 hours ahead of Amer­i­ca, and could be up to 9 hours off­set from the West Coast. Doing some­thing as sim­ple as send­ing a text mes­sage required me to stop, do the math to see what time it was for them, and con­sid­er whether they would be awake or appre­ci­ate a mes­sage from me that ear­ly. Most of my friends are in the Cen­tral Time Zone, so it was noon in Eng­land before most of them were even awake.

I nev­er real­ized how impor­tant it is to me that I get some feed­back at least right away. I would wake up to tons of noti­fi­ca­tions in the morn­ing, but go almost all day with­out hear­ing much of any­thing from home. That kind of delayed acknowl­edg­ment was tough at first before I adjust­ed. Just goes to show you how addict­ed I am to technology/social media. I would like to change that, but ingrained habits/lifestyles take a lot of time and effort to change. Still, if I don’t start now, I’ll nev­er improve.

Flexibility is Key:

When trav­el­ing, you need to exer­cise a LOT of patience and flex­i­bil­i­ty. Pub­lic trans­porta­tion can be flaky, so don’t depend on it going exact­ly right and def­i­nite­ly don’t depend on catch­ing the last train/bus/flight of the day.

Peo­ple are also like­wise liable to change plans. We had ten­ta­tive plans to vis­it my sis­ter’s friends in Biar­ritz, but they end­ed up being in New Zealand so we had to change our plans. I had plans to hang out with a friend in Ams­ter­dam for the two days I was there, but he end­ed up hav­ing to come in late and leave ear­ly due to work call­ing him in. Did it put a slight crimp in our plans? Sure. Was it a huge deal? Nope. There was­n’t any­thing either of us could do about it, so no need to make a fuss and make it worse.

There could also be unwrit­ten rules that no one tells you until you run afoul of them. We attempt­ed to do our after­noon tea on Sat­ur­day. We called Fri­day morn­ing to make sure they still had avail­abil­i­ty. They did. We called back lat­er that after­noon to book the tea, only to dis­cov­er there was a 24 hour cut­off time. They def­i­nite­ly could have men­tioned that when we called ear­li­er, but they did­n’t. So, we changed our plans and booked an after­noon tea some­where else on Sun­day instead. It end­ed up work­ing out great!

Family Vacations:

Ini­tial­ly, this trip start­ed out as me going over­seas to London/Paris/Amsterdam by myself. Then, as fate would have it, my sis­ter and her friend would be in Lon­don at the same time as me and would we just want to go on hol­i­day togeth­er? Absolute­ly! I love my sis­ter very much, and don’t get to spend enough time with her as I work 4 hours away from my home­town and she trav­els the world as part of her work.

What I failed to take into account was our fam­i­ly dynam­ic. Some­times when you’re around fam­i­ly you slip into roles. My sis­ter is 10 years old­er than I am. She loves to take care of her baby sis­ter. She did change my dia­pers, after all. How­ev­er, some­times she wants to take care of me when I don’t need it. I am a grown adult, but that fact slips her mind occa­sion­al­ly. That can lead to rifts when I feel like I’m get­ting smoth­ered or not allowed to have a say in the con­ver­sa­tion/de­ci­sion-mak­ing process. I also have a ten­den­cy to revert into help­less baby sis­ter mode, or heav­en for­bid, whine occa­sion­al­ly when I think it will help me get my way. For­tu­nate­ly, as time goes on we’re both get­ting bet­ter at not slip­ping into our big sis/lil sis dynam­ic and work­ing out a new dynam­ic as sis­ter friends.

Com­pro­mise is also key. We both have dif­fer­ent inter­ests. While she might be inter­est­ed in explor­ing the British Muse­um from a Bib­li­cal aspect, I might be more inter­est­ed in check­ing out cool old archi­tec­ture or try­ing out new hard ciders in real­ly old pubs. It’s a push and pull. Some­times we did some­thing the oth­er did­n’t want to do, but we did it because we love the oth­er per­son and want to see them hap­py. I end­ed up not going to Paris, as our sched­ule real­ly only left two days to do so and that’s not near­ly enough time. If I want to do every­thing on my trav­el buck­et list for a trip or city, I will go by myself, as that’s the only way I will get to do every­thing I want. That view, how­ev­er, is pret­ty self­ish and tends to be lone­ly, so I’m hap­py to com­pro­mise with my loved ones if it means I get to spend a lit­tle bit of extra time with them.

What are your biggest take­aways from trav­el? Any­thing I could learn with­out hav­ing to suf­fer for it?