what i've learned in europe

"you can't depend on people, E. i realized that it's so hard to trust people more and more because people will let you down and they'll disappoint and it fucking hurts. i've felt it before, but you just gotta say, 'fuck it' and  move on. because we're still young. we don't need other people's mistakes and bullshitting to govern how we live our lives."
-S

notre dame, paris, france

july 2011

i've learned a lot about myself while i was in europe and changed as a person. sometimes, you just have to be selfish and have to think about yourself in certain situations. if you don't, you end up getting really hurt. i've learned to put all of my trust into family and the few close friends who i know are there for me. no one else really matters that much. yeah, i sound heartless but i am a much much much happier person now than before.

other things i've learned in europe:

1. how to find what you need in a foreign grocery shop by using pictures and hand gestures,
2. how to appreciate ice and free water at restaurants back at home in America,
3. how not to trust street gamblers, especially the ones that make you find which of the three cups the ball is under,
4. how to hold your bladder until you get to a free restroom facility,
5. how to pack five days worth of clothes and toiletries into one book bag in under twenty minutes,
6. how to keep warm on cold European nights by sleeping in a telephone booth as opposed to outside of a train station huddled with random Hungarian people,
7. how to sneak onto trains that you don’t have reservations for and slip past the ticket-checking conductors by sleeping in luggage compartments and restrooms,
8. a club is a discotheque, the subway is a metro (with the exception of england, where it is "the tube"), a restroom is a water closet, and a line is a queue,
9. disappointingly, british people don't fancy harry potter as much as we do,
10. how to talk comfortably to strangers, become friends with them instantly, and rent a car together to drive six hundred kilometers to your destination when you miss your train,
11. and most importantly, how to always have a pressing urgency to live life to the fullest.