Casual Dating

I'm casually dating the world. While it doesn't provide the same daydreams of a future and can often be troublesome to communicate with, my relationship with the world is one of the best I've ever had.

In the past week and change, I have been to four countries. Total, I have been to six. I have officially been to more countries than I have full days of class.

On Friday I left for Utrecht, Netherlands. It's the most ancient city in Holland and captured my heart right away. While I can't say I loved it for it's gloomy gray skies and unforgivable wind, the culture, the people, and the sparkling canals were enough for me. Utrecht was a class trip and I spent time at the local university learning about how women in Utrecht are handling sanitation issues globally. We also toured the streets, climbed Dom Tower, went to a nightclub and had high tea on the canal. I took some time to walk by myself (in the daylight, mom) and wove through the street markets, watched an old man play his accordion on the street corner, and pretended the persistent mist and frozen wind wasn't bothering me. I was sad to say goodbye to Utrecht, but I knew it wouldn't be the last time we saw each other.

Tuesday morning the class let out for Carnival break and myself and a friend took a train to Amsterdam. There we braved the rain and walked miles through endless souvenir shops and "coffeeshops". We saw the red light district, which broke my heart but is as much a part of their culture as the stones that made up the street. After that...we went back to our room, didn't do anything else. Real boring place. Moving on...

Wednesday morning we caught our flight to Venice. Venice was everything I hoped it would be and so much more. We met up for three other friends, making our group an even six, and wandered the streets looking for cheap pizza. We saw San Marco square and the Ducal Palace and bought the freshest strawberries I've ever eaten at a little farmer's market by the sea. On our last day in Venice we wandered down by the water and decided to throw plans to the wind and just sit for awhile, dangling our feet over the sea. We sat there for hours and watched the sun go down over the water, talking and drinking juice out of plastic cups. When the sun slipped below the horizon, we got up and went to find pasta for our last Venetian meal. The next morning we awoke before the sun and lugged our bags through abandoned streets. We said a painful goodbye to Italy and boarded a plane for France.

Nice, France was our last official destination. Most of what I experienced from Nice was from the sun-soaked terrace that came with the apartment we stayed in. We spent two days watching the streets below, eating homemade pasta, drinking more cheap wine (that's a theme of this adventure) and soaking up as much vitamin D as we could to get us through a week back home in rainy Luxembourg. By that point in the trip we were sick of museums and walking and just wanted to take advantage of the vacation portion of the trip. We peeled ourselves away from the balcony to dip our feet in the ice cold sea and to participate in a wild Carnival celebration. Essentially it was a large parade featuring obscure, intricate and unexplainable paper machete floats, featuring confetti, silly string and loud American music that the French knew each word to, despite not speaking English.

We went through Brussels to get home, and saw only what could be seen from the window of a train. The train ride home featured lots of headphones time, a bit of homework, and lots of laughing as we played our favorite game, "Drink and tell". We rarely participate in the drink portion and the game morphs into someone asking a question followed by passionate discussion until someone says something funny and we all forget what we were talking about to start with.

I got home and collapsed in my bed, only 9 hours to sleep before school.

I only spend a few days with these cities. I don't have time to see their flaws and dirty underbellies. I am permanently in the honeymoon stage with each place I go. By the time I fall into an almost boring comfort, I uproot myself and move on to something else. I couldn't ask for better friends to travel with and although I'm happy to be home for a short 5 days to reflect on the craziness that was this past week, I'm already growing itchy to see more things.

Off to Paris on Friday, Au Revoir.