Month ten was my last official month of exchange, and in this last month I have been traveling for 31 days, been to 12 countries, spent 48 hours in a bus, traveled Europe for 19 days, and saw my family for the first time in 10 months. Below you will ready all about my Eurotour adventures as well as photos from my travels with my family. At the very end you will find my final reflection on what exchange has meant to me. Read on!
EUROTOUR
We fit so many things into those 19 days of Eurotour that if I were to tell you every single detail of the trip, it would probably take another 19 days to explain it all. So below you will find one sentence for each day of travel (which may be some crazy run-on sentences) and my favorite pictures from that day!
Day 1: Travel day
Day 2: Paris
The first real day of Eurotour was spent in Paris starting the day at Notre-Dame, seeing the flooded rivers, outside tour of the Louvre, and going to the top of the Eiffel Tower.
Day 3:
Day three was our second day touring Paris in which we did a walking tour of Montmartre where we saw the Mulin Rouge, Vincent van Gogh’s apartment, Picasso’s favorite restaurant, the Basilica, inside tour of the Louvre (reopened after flooding) where we saw the Mona Lisa, and we ended the day with dinner accompanied by an accordion player.
Day 4: Paris/Brussels/Amsterdam
Breakfast in Paris, lunch in Brussels and dinner in Amsterdam, today was quite a full day. We got an early start leaving Paris, in Brussels we stopped for lunch where we had a scavenger hunt (Marina and yours truly were the winners:) and we saw famous sights such as the Atomium and the Manneken Pis (the fountain of a little boy peeing), and of course ate a bunch of chocolate. We reloaded the bus to Amsterdam where we finished the day.
Day 5: Amsterdam
Day five’s itinerary included visiting Anne Frank’s house, a 4 hour bike tour (which was very stressful considering there are twice as more bikes than there are people) and finally a boat tour through the canals.
Day 6: Travel day to Berlin
Leaving Amsterdam, it took us 10 hours to drive to Berlin.Upon arrival we headed straight to the hotel to rest up for the following day.
Day 7: Berlin
We started the day doing a walking tour all morning seeing things like the parliament building, a section of the Berlin wall, the corner where the East Berlin Uprising took place, the Holocaust memorial and Checkpoint Charlie. We stopped for lunch in a market where we purchased some very cool items and even spoke in Spanish with some vendors who were from South America. In the afternoon we went to see the most famous section of the Berlin Wall.
Day 8: Concentration camp/Prague
We spent the morning seeing the Sachsenhause concentration camp.This was by far the most difficult part of Eurotour and I would prefer not to go into very many details about this experience, however I would recommend it to everyone to go see it and have an awareness of it to ensure that history never repeats itself like that ever again.
After the tour we loaded the bus heading towards Prague. Upon arrival we did a walking tour of the city and saw the beautiful night lights.
Day 9: Prague
To begin the day, we toured the castle, which happens to be the largest castle in the world. Considering all of the cathedrals I have seen (which include the Vatican and many more that we will get to later), the cathedral in Prague is by far the most stunning cathedral of all. It has many mixed architectural styles which makes it even more unique, and the stained glass were the most intricate and beautiful pieces I have ever seen. We ended our tour in the castle and headed into town where we broke off for lunch. I purchased some amazing jewelry that was being sold on Charles Bridge and we later headed to see “Europe’s Third Most Disappointing Attraction” which is the clock in the main square. Luckily we had a tour guide who explained the very complex clock so luckily we were not one of the very many confused and disappointed tourists.
Day 10: Prague/Bratislava/Vienna
Today was another day in which we were in 3 different countries. We arrived in Bratislava, Slovakia around noon and we broke off for lunch before the tour. During the tour we saw the most important buildings including a blue cathedral, before heading towards Vienna.
Day 11: Vienna
Our first day in Vienna included a walking tour in which we saw two of the palaces in Vienna, a rose garden, the parliament building, and was followed by a tour of the Mozart Museum which was where one of his apartments is, later we rode in horse drawn carriages through the city center, and finally a few of us headed to an opera with an orchestra and ballet dancers.
Day 12: Vienna/Budapest
We began the morning touring, among the other 10,000 visitors, the Schonbrunn Palace in Vienna. It was very interesting but as the time dragged on, our interest slipped away. We ate lunch in the incredible gardens (they are so pretty you feel like you are walking in a dream), before heading towards Budapest. Upon arrival we headed to the Buda Hills where we overlooked the city.
Day 13: Budapest
Day fourteen included yet another walking tour of the city. We entered the parliament building which happens to be the second largest parliament building in Europe, and the most expensive in the world. We stopped at the huge market place where w bought souvenirs and some yummy fruits. After a long morning of touring we headed to the thermal baths where we enjoyed the afternoon before heading to a traditional Hungarian restaurant with live music and dancers.
Day 14: Budapest/Slovenia/Venice
Day fifteen was yet another day in which we were in 3 countries (four including Croatia along the ay). We stopped in Slovenia where we toured the second largest cave in the world (24km long, but we only saw 3km). We saw all sorts of stalagmites and stalactites. We ended the day in a small town where we stayed near Venice, Italy which was right on the beach.
Day 15: Lido di Jesolo
Today was a day of relaxation (FINALLY) in our little beach town in Italy. We spent the day by the beach playing ultimate frisbee and I even lead a yoga class 🙂
Day 16: Venice
Today we started the day with a walking tour (because all wheels are prohibited on the island) of the city. It was followed by riding gondolas through the canals and later a boat trip to another island where we watched them make glass.
Day 17: Travel day to Rome
We loaded the bus early in the morning and began our 9 hour drive to Rome. Upon arrival we did a two hour tour in the city before heading to the hotel.
Day 18: Rome
Today was our last day of Eurotour (day 19 was a travel day returning to Spain). We began the day touring the Vatican City where we visited the incredible museums, Sistine Chapel where we saw Michelangelo’s The Last Judgment, and finally St. Peter’s Basilica. We later headed to the Colosseum where we baked in the heat (I don’t remember ever being hotter), and we saw the place where Julius Cesar was burned.
Day 19: Final Day
Today was the most emotionally challenging day of my life because on this day I said goodbye to my 63 best friends. These people, I consider to be, firstly my family, and secondly one of the sole reasons why my exchange was so amazing. I hope with all of my heart that we can all see each other again someday.
This day was also the day I saw my family for the first time in 10 months as they had come to Madrid for a family vacation! We visited places like Barcelona, San Sebastian, Picos de Europa, and finally my town, Aranda de Duero. I showed my family around the town I have been living in for the past 10 months and they got to know my friends and families!
FINAL THOUGHTS ON EXCHANGE
I think I’ve been writing and rewriting this sentence for this blog post in my head for at least a couple of months. That is because it is quite a difficult task to sum up 10 months of your life into a single blog post/opening statement. Through out the months and the past few weeks I’ve been playing with some possible adjective options to describe this year. It has shifted from “The Best Year of my Life” to “The Worst Year of my Life” to the most amazing, the most confusing, ect. Even though all those adjectives would be perfectly fitting for this title, I have selected one particular word that encases all of this possible titles and put into a sentence it would look something like this: This year has been the most rewarding year of my life.
How so? You may ask. Well, there are the obvious rewards: becoming fluent in a second language, expereincing a different culture, making new friends from your host county and from all over the world, expereincing new things…You’ve heard it all before probably on a pamphlet with smiling exchange student faces. It is all good and very true and my life has become that much more enriched. I can now say that I am now bilingual, multicultures and I have friends I can visit in 18+ countires in the world. Just look how nice and pretty that looks written down! However, on a job application I couldn’t write down that I have survived three (or more) months not being able to commnicate my basic wants and needs, I endured 10 months away from a place I really like to be in with people I really like to be with, I know how hard it is to make new friends, and now I’ve had to say goodbye to 155 of my best friends I may never see again.
That sentence is pretty daunting and if my past self had read that before boarding my flight to Spain, I would have ran right back home, thinking I wouldn’t be capable of doing such a thing. Being able to say I was mute for 3 months does’t have that many obvious rewards other than when my brother says “No one ever listens to me,” I’ll be able to tell him that he’s got it easy. But during that proccess of learning a second language in a foriegn country, I have learned and improved countless and priceless virtues such as patience and perserverance that I wouln’t have learned or manifested on such a profound level, maybe during my entire lifetime. I’ve encountered, learned from and overcame many challenging cultural differences and that alone is not a single feat, because in that process of being faced with situations that maybe I didn’t have any control over or had a diffent significance because of the cultural differences, the “survival skills” I applied and practiced have become a set of skills I can use in any situation in the future.
One of the biggest rewards this year has brought/ build is stonge self-awareness and a boosted self confidance. Ten months ago I left behind a version of the Anne who had a strong sense of place and was maybe a little too comfortable with my life there. The moment I stepped on that plane, I flew right out of my comfort zone and the process of building an Anne who lived outside of that comfort zone began.
Exhange has always been my dream. My exchange started in September 2014 at the very first interview. Ten months ago that dream began, and as I write this on the airplane I may be approching the “Official End” of my exchange. However, I know that this experience has been too emense, life-changing, and rewarding to just simply end. My exchange has formed who I am, how I see the world and how I know the world. The friendships are too strong and too numerous to simply dissapear from my life. The things I have seen are simply so memorable, it would be impossible for them to stop being a major part of my life. And maybe this is the most rewarding part of them all: exchange may only begin once, but it will never have a true end.
Postcards from Spain 