Education through Exploration: A Summer of Appreciating Local Cultures and Spontaneous Travel
About the author: Nadia Chung ’26 is a Global Studies/FSI The Europe Center intern with The Lisbon Council in Brussels, Belgium. Nadia is studying Political Science at Stanford University.
Now, at home in Los Angeles, preparing for a new school year, I can’t help but feel nostalgic for the evenings in July when I would sit out on our rooftop and watch the sunset at 9 pm in Brussels. As I collage train ticket stubs and cafe business cards into my travel journal, I am likewise overwhelmed with gratitude for all the unique experiences that living abroad afforded me. Both the daily routines I developed in Brussels and the spontaneous weekend adventures have made me love exploring new ways of life all the more.
With immigrants comprising almost 70% of Brussels’ population, the city’s appreciation for multiculturalism and diversity was immediately palpable to me. I noticed this multiculturalism present itself within and outside the office– in the plethora of cuisines that could easily be found all over the city, the commonality of multilingualism, and the widespread prioritization of travel as a meaningful form of learning.
In fact, when I first arrived at the Lisbon Council, I learned that many of my coworkers had pursued university and graduate school programs in countries other than their home, sometimes even utilizing the European Union’s Erasmus offerings to study in several countries while working towards the same degree. I also learned how commonly those involved in the “EU Bubble” collaborate with other countries and travel for projects and political events. One of the most inspiring moments of my internship was witnessing the Lisbon Council’s policy roundtable on Growing a European Govtech Ecosystem. With participants from Spain, Malta, Greece, Sweden, Lithuania, and several other nations, this roundtable fortified my appreciation for international cooperation and the dynamic process of developing solutions for stakeholders with varying needs and interests.
Beyond everything I was lucky to observe through the Lisbon Council’s events and international projects, I also learned about various countries’ customs and cultural history during my weekends, exploring new cities and wandering museums. During one weekend in Switzerland, my housemates and I stayed in the village of Ollon, which has a population of around 7,000 people and displays the beauty of a calmer pace of life. Looking for a market, we met the owner of their local meat and cheese shop and enjoyed a lunch full of products from local artisans. We also took the train into Montreux and learned that we had coincidentally come to the city during their annual jazz festival. Along the shore of the most breathtaking lake I had ever seen, we ate dinner and enjoyed the music and attractions of the second-largest jazz festival in the world, which has been running every July since 1967.
At the very end of my internship, I spent a few days travelling around Scandinavia with my housemate Jenna. In Stockholm, we explored the Archipelago and visited the Vasa Museum, experiences that afforded us an entirely new understanding of Swedish island life and the nation’s nautical achievement in building and restoring the once-sunken Vasa ship. In Copenhagen, we also spent a day at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. I have never before felt so much adoration for every aspect of a museum. I was inspired by how the museum employed a house and its natural surroundings as an immersive and interactive experience with art. Instead of merely walking into and out of a building, I observed locals coming to the museum to lay on the lawn and stare out at the sculptures interspersed across the property, sometimes even venturing down to take a swim in the nearby water. Across the world from Stanford, I was shocked to learn that one of the sculptures presented outside in the Louisiana Museum’s grass is an installation of spheres by the same artist who created the “Pars pro Toto” marble sphere in Stanford’s engineering quad. In this way, and due to the broader gratitude I felt for The Europe Center supporting my experience in Europe this summer, Stanford’s meaningful interconnectedness with the world was genuinely palpable to me.
After a summer full of new adventures, I am more excited than ever to delve deeply into understanding international perspectives — whether from our professors on campus, my peers, or the Stanford Bing Overseas Studies Program I am about to begin at the University of Oxford. My friends and family joke that I was supposed to come back sick of living abroad, but instead, I could not be more eager to learn through exploration.
