In two days, I'll have been home for two months. Summer's been really fun, and I'm just now finally coming out of the financial hole I was in for a couple months, so that feels pretty good. Shoemaker, Garret, his girlfriend Sheena and my tons-o-fun cousin Patrick will be living together in the fall, and I'm pretty stoked for that. I get a whole basement to myself, complete with a den and weight room. I can smell the BBQ and man sweat from impromptu wrestling matches already.
I'll take the opportunity to answer a couple FAQ's about my trip to clear things up:
1. What was your favorite place?
Looking back on it, the best country I visited was Ireland. I know that served kind of as a base for my education and travel, but the atmosphere in that place is one of a kind and can't be topped by anything (although the UK comes in a close second). Greece was beautiful, Italy was historic, mesmerizing and a huge toll on the eyes and heart, Bruges had great beer, and the Prague was a great spot for a kid my age, but none of these places really hit me like Ireland did. When people ask me this one I usually just think to myself, Which place would I go back to in an instant? or If money wasn't an issue, where would I live other than the USA? and I almost always think Ireland or the UK. So there you have it.
2. How was traveling?
I wish I could just memorize the link to my blog so everyone who asks me can just read about the whole thing, but in a nutshell, awesome is the word to use, in the grandest sense. All encompassing meanings of the word were experienced during the travels. I was completely by myself in Italy and the Czech Republic for a week, and on my own to make new friends and learn new things the remainder of the semester. And that was great. I learned a lot about myself. I'm a traveler... a very outgoing dude, but I'm also still a home-body and love Iowa and America wholeheartedly. The 30 days I traveled Europe (and subsequent trips to the UK) was basically me trying to jam over 70 years of experience and centuries upon centuries of developed culture and history into a 3 pound Beamish-soaked, college-aged brain. So It's going to take a little while for that information to sink in. At least when I'm sitting in my office at age 30 I'm not going to regret anything I did in my youth, and maybe at least... what, 30% of that month of information will have been processed.
I still haven't had that "A-ha" moment where I realize what I just saw and the whole experience kind of seems like a dream due to the fact that although I was out of the States for 5 months, it seemed like I was only gone for a couple weeks. Now my summer is shrinking before my eyes.
3. If you could do it over again what would you do differently?
Let me make this clear, I ahd the best trip of my life last semester, and realize that it was probably a once in a lifetime experience, and have no regrets. But here's a few places I'd like to see that I didn't quite make it to. I didn't ever make it back to the EU to see Normandy, and I never made it to Germany to see the Reichstag, the the Hofbrauhaus in Munich. Being a huge WWII buff, seeing all this would have been icing on the cake, but it can wait for a later date. I'll get back there somehow, sometime... if it means not having kids till I'm in my mid 30's or something. Seeing more of the countryside in the UK would have been great, and the same goes for Italy. My trip was pretty urban-centered. Another thing I'd like to do is tour solely Eastern Europe. The Czech Republic was as far as I got, but I'd love to backpack through Romania (especially Romania-- don't know why, just looks cool), Croatia, Poland, Serbia, Istanbul and other areas of Turkey. It's cheaper and the natural spectacles are plentiful. Scandinavia wasn't touched either on this trip, and Norway would be cool as well.
4. What are you going to do now?
I'm going into my senior year at Iowa State, and hopefully will graduate in Summer 2010 after finishing up my required internship credit. I'm working on a presentation that I'll link to this blog crammed full of pictures (about 100 or so from Ireland and about 20-50 of each other country) while I sit in the Event Staff office at the Union with nothing to do, but I can't give an estimate on when that will be done. You can bet that I might have it done by the time classes start again. Aside of work, I'm also exercising and re-vamping my digestive system to perform like it did while in Ireland, writing music and drumming for a band that I joined at the beginning of the summer. Once school starts up again, juggling work, my band, class and my friends will be quite the deal. As far as long term goals go, Eastern Europe, Tanzania, Japan, New Zealand and Australia are other places I'm going to see before my youth is over. Well, that and when the slew of student loans finally get paid off.
Lastly, just want to thank everyone for following this all spring, and especially my parents for making all this possible.
Cheers
No comments:
Post a Comment