5 Things I Learned From Traveling the EU
Get off at the Concorde metro stop, take a stroll through Jardin des Tuileries with the Musée de l’Orangerie to your right and the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel your compass north, and end your evening at the Louvre, all in the span of two Star Wars movies and the cost of a pair of Beats headphones.
And that’s all it takes. A few hours and some cash you saved up from a birthday gone by and you can find yourself across the Atlantic and learning more than you ever thought possible.
With my Spotify playlist on shuffle, bag secure on my shoulder, water bottle filled, the first thing I do when I arrive to a new city is download the city walk tour on the Rick Steves Audio Europe app. With local history on my mind and a few restaurants in my back pocket, my days are filled with exploring, getting lost, and finding my way in an unfamiliar city filled with new cultures, foods, sounds, and smells.
Before traveling around the EU, I had not thought much about its vision for a unified, peaceful, and thriving Europe or how it would impact me as a foreigner. Here are 5 things that I learned while traveling around the European Union:
1. There are no borders, at least when it comes to getting your passport stamped. Within the Schengen Area zone of 22 EU member countries, passport and border controls have been abolished, making traveling within the EU as easy and seamless as taking a weekend trip from Washington D.C. to New York.
2. Food: as the EU’s motto states — United in Diversity — and the cuisine could not be a better example. The soft wake up of a cappuccino in Paris could not be any different or equally as amazing as the dark richness of an espresso in Rome.
3. Multilingualism and multiculturalism is at every corner: overhearing lively French conversation in Lisbon at Confeitaria Nacional with an order of café pingado and pastéis de nata or going on a late night Kebab run in Florence.
4. Art and history: I learned about the power of civil action, the Velvet Revolution and how it shaped the Czech Republic on my walk down Charles Bridge, I learned about the eccentricities and genius of Antoni Gaudí on the front steps of the Sagrada Família.
5. Get prepared for the magic of the Eurozone: for an East Coaster like me there is nothing more global and magical as using the change from a late night €4.5 döner in Köln to buy an early morning €5 petit pain au chocolate and cappuccino in the corner patisserie in Paris the next morning.
Traveling alone can be scary and intimidating, but there is nothing more freeing than a road trip across Normandy with local radio on full volume, and nothing as unifying as running into students from every part of the world on the 44 bus to Trastevere.
