Student Bloggers

Each semester, Arcadia Study Abroad programs give students a weeklong break to spend as they wish. When the time came earlier this month here at Arcadia in Rome, we scattered across Europe. Groups went to Croatia, Berlin, Amsterdam, Dublin, Greece, Barcelona, and more! Together with four other Arcadia in Rome students, I travelled to Budapest, Vienna, Munich, and Paris. The mission was to get a comprehensive view of Europe from East to West, starting in Hungary and ending in France—four cities in four countries with ten days and very little sleep.

We started in Budapest and after a grueling experience battling cabin pressure, we began the trip looking and feeling haggard. But we rallied! Budapest ended up being not only the most laid back city we visited, but also by far the cleanest. The cleanliness, I think, had something to do with the lack of tourists in the city—really, its a city populated almost entirely by young filmmakers and photographers who are constantly filming bridges (the cars on the bridges, the people on the bridges, the lights on the bridges—you name it, they have the casually cool insta-worthy footage). It’s the type of city that’s excellent for wandering without a plan. You’ll run into beautiful palaces, excellent street food (caution: eat with restraint. Hungarian food is very heavy and will likely cause constipation), as well as a plethora of Wes Anderson set props. Those tiny wooden elevators that go up and down mountains in Grand Budapest Hotel? They’re real!

Next, we were off to Vienna to visit the land of Mozart and Wiener schnitzel. Though we didn’t know it, we booked our day there to coincide with an Austrian national holiday and ended up wandering into a full-blown food festival on palace grounds. There, we uncultured Americans got a lesson in what real cotton candy was supposed to be—it was bigger than my torso and twice as flavorful than the pink dirt tutus Americans try to pass off as cotton candy. It was so good I almost regret eating it—my Fourth of July experience will never be the same now that I know what candy floss can truly be!

More trains, this time a long one all the way through Austria to Munich! Munich was by far my favorite city we covered on the trip. Maybe it’s because I drank a whole beer stein and I was seeing things through rose-colored glasses, but everything in Germany seemed both magical and hilarious, like a fairy tale town had come to life. In the tourist district, there are at least a dozen shops that only sell clothes that look like they belong on mountaintop yodelers. There are gnome statuettes everywhere, and don’t even get me started on the cranium-sized pretzels. Incredible.

From there, we made our final stop in Paris, where I visited the location of my favorite Disney movie (shout out to Quasimodo!), ate two full baguettes in one sitting, and rode a carousel at the base of the Eiffel Tower that was very clearly meant for children. I also got to stop by Shakespeare and Company, an English bookstore that James Joyce wrote and worked from in the early 1920s. As a writer, Joyce has had an incredible impact on me, and I won’t pretend I didn’t freak out a little standing on that hallowed ground.

A huge European trip like this was incredibly fun as well as incredibly challenging. There were moments where, even as they were happening, I knew I would never forget. I also learned a lot about the world and myself, so I thought I’d compile some of my tips and life lessons here.

1. Don’t go near rivers. At least, don’t let yourself climb down the mini staircase just so you can touch the Danube. You’ll be lucky to escape falling in.
2. Experiment with train travel. They’re faster than cars, a thousand times more comfortable than airplanes, and there’s always a weird guy sleeping in a fully buttoned trench coat to make fun of.
3. When in Vienna, don’t allow yourself to be scammed by costumed weirdos outside cathedrals. If a man winks at you more than twice during a sales pitch, it’s a scam—it’s a super scam if he’s also wearing a lace cravat and poorly tailored bloomers.
4. Don’t be afraid to allocate large chunks of time on the schedule for small day excursions. Dachau and Versailles were both last minute day trip ideas, and they were both mornings I’ll never forget.
5. Play spot-the-President Bingo. I found Kennedy in Vienna and Munich, Roosevelt in Paris, and a life-size bronze statue in Budapest that I made fun of because it looked exactly like Ronald Reagan. (Spoiler alert: IT WAS RONALD REAGAN.)
6. Buy as much as you can carry. My total for the trip was three scarves, two full size beer steins, several small music boxes, two sweaters, key chains and postcards galore, and five James Joyce novels. Who’s to say I’ll ever be back in Budapest again? In Munich? In Paris? I say: Buy everything you can carry. I know I won’t regret it.
7. Learn at least “Hello”, “Goodbye”, and “Thank You” in every language you’re going to encounter. Not because you’ll need it, but because kindness and gratitude gets you everywhere. Plus, it’s worth it to see an elderly German woman’s face light up when you greet her with “Guten Tag!”