I decided last week that I wanted to go to Europe as my graduation trip. And even though the trip is nearly four months away, I am so over-the-top in-your-face way too excited. If you’ve talked to me recently (or seen my Twitter), you’d think that I was leaving tomorrow.
I wish.
Anyway, my friends have been very supportive of my excitement (maybe they just haven’t gotten tired of me going on and on yet). I was shopping with a girl friend who I haven’t seen in literally two years, and when I started rambling about this Europe trip, she pulled out a few euros from her purse and gave them to me. I, clueless that I was, didn’t even know they were Euros.
“Here, for your trip,” she said, handing them to me.
“What are these? Are these like arcade game tokens?” I pulled out a game token for comparison1.
“What? No! These are euros!”
“Oh. Right. Of course. I knew that.”
And then last night, when I went out to dinner with some of the friends that are going on exchange (you know, the ones whose couches I will be crashing on when I go), they gave me some budgeting advice.
“When I went to Europe, I ended up spending a lot less on food than I thought,” one of my friends said. “For example, when I was in Paris for four days, all I ate was a baguette, some pickles, and a bottle of wine.”
I chewed on my rigatoni, considering this.
“Ohhhh,” I said, suddenly understanding, “So you replace food with wine, and you get so drunk you forget you’re hungry. Is that the idea?”
They stared at me incredulously and then burst into laughter. Was that not the idea?
My friend took a bite of her beef tenderloin, which looked a lot like salami. “Of course, I’m not a foodie like you, I don’t go out to nice places when I travel. I imagine you will be taking advantage of some of the ‘culinary sights’ on this trip?” She said, when they had finished laughing.
“Well, I don’t eat out that much when I travel either,” I admitted, thinking of my trip to California when I went to the grocery store on my first day in San Francisco, and lived off baby carrots, apples, bananas, and cereal for a week.
“But in Europe,” another friend piped up, “Oh in Europe, some of these places take their food very seriously.” She twirled a forkful of capellini, and after a thoughtful pause, she added, “It’s more like an art to them.”
I groaned in pretend ecstasy. “In that case, I may have to be a little looser with my food budget,” I said, taking a sip of merlot and looking over at my friend’s chicken breast with envy.
For the last 48 hours, other than food, my head has been filled with Europe. I have already planned out a good portion of my trip, for cities that I am definitely visiting: Prague, Vienna, Venice, and Florence. I have put my itinerary up here, although it is still a work in progress. Most of it is based on Internet research, so I will be waiting for feedback from Real Live People who have been there, or my friends who are going to be there over the next few months, before I finalize the itinerary. Or maybe I won’t finalize it, and just let myself travel a bit more spontaneously. After all, that’s what Euro trips are supposed to be about right? Spontaneity, recklessness, embracing flaunting the fact that we are young and alive. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt for me to stop acting like a 30-year-old and start acting my age.
- Don’t ask me why I was carrying around arcade tokens. I had some left over from last time I went out with friends and we played arcade games while waiting for our movie to start. [↩]
