The Grand Tour Part I

This is the first instalment of the Grand Tour series, where I discuss my month-long first ever trip abroad, where I spent a month travelling in Europe.

In the fall of 2005, I was in the first serious relationship of my life. It’s interesting to look back and see what came from this relationship, good and bad…

One of the things that continually came up in our relationship was that she constantly talked about her travels. While in high school, she had participated in a program to send high school kids abroad. Also, she had sung in a choir that had taken some trips to Europe. She’d been twice, and would not hesitate for a second to inform anyone of that. In fact, in her room, she had a huge mural of postcards of all the places she’d been. I can remember asking her if she’d ever been to Venice, to which she replied (in that haughty-but still somewhat cute) way, “Twice, hun.”

For obvious reasons, her continual discussion of travel (and all her engineering related talk) completely left me speechless. Not out of astonishment, but I simply had nothing to contribute. I’d been to Canada and Mexico once when I was a kid. I could speak Spanish, but only because of my grandparents. The most interesting place I’d ever been was Miami. She spoke of travelling to cities in Europe and seeing beautiful pieces of art. She saved all her ticket stubs from the great museums of Europe, the Louvre, the Orsay, and the Rijksmuseum. (A practice I continue to this day)

I couldn’t stand hearing her talk about her travel and how worldly she was. In retrospect, this was a terrible opinion on my part. But it spurred me to get out there and do some travel so that she no longer had the upper hand. So that year, when my parents talked about taking a vacation, I managed to talk them into going to London. Mostly, this was because I found an insanely cheap airfare on Virgin Atlantic.  So, London began to take shape. It’s the most logical place to start any investigation of Europe, because they speak English. So it was settled. London.

Around the same time, Josh and I began talking about what he was doing in Switzerland. He told me that he basically had the entire month of January open for travel. This was the perfect storm for me, and I began to formulate the plans for the grand tour. I had almost a month and a half off from classes at school, and what better way to use them than wandering around Europe? After feverishly researching hostel prices, I realised I could live for quite a long time over there, just taking the train from one place to another, taking night trains, whatever. So, using a combination of frequent flyer miles and internet sites, I began to set up my trip.

I would depart New York with the family and spend about a week in London, between Christmas Eve and New Years’. I would then fly out to Germany and meet Josh in Berlin on New Years’ Eve 2005. Then, Eurail pass in hand, I would traverse the continent. Josh and I would hammer out plans as the date drew nearer, but the fundamentals of the plan existed. Tickets got booked, and as Caesar said, “the die is cast.” I was going to live in Europe for a month, whether I liked it or not.

So finally the day came, and we were off. Waiting at the gate, boarding the plane, and the wonderful service that Virgin Atlantic gives you. I tried to sleep on the plane, but it was just too difficult. I was too excited. For the first time, I would be in a completely different country, where everything was done utterly differently. A country with a rich history that existed before even our own. People that lived their lives everyday without America. It was an incredible thought. As the plane descended over London, the first thing I noticed was that the cars were, in fact, driving on the wrong side of the road. This was the first time I was struck with the thought that “wow, they actually do that!” It’s very easy to just casually know that the British drive on the other side of the road, but when you actually see that an entire country operates, literally, the opposite of the way we do, it’s a reality check.

Stay tuned for the continuation of the Grand Tour in further articles…