An Insubstantial Blog

I know I haven't explained much about me yet. One major thing is that I like to travel. The summer before my senior year of high school, my parents saved up for me to go to Europe with some classmates (who didn't like me all that much) and some older (way older) yet more fun people. I visited France, Czech Republic, Austria, Italy, and Switzerland all in 16 days. I saw more than I could process. My parents assumed that would be a once in a lifetime trip.

However, in my freshman year of college I fought to get into a seminar on Buddhism. Thanks to a wonderful grant, I got to spend 12 days in Kyoto, Japan with my classmates and a professor who is one of the leading scholars in Japanese forms of Buddhism. We visited well over 20 Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples in Nara and Kyoto. Japan was so different than anything I had ever experienced. It was culture shock to the extreme. I couldn't even find my way home there I was so disoriented. Large flashing shopping streets would have a thin little passageway leading into a quiet and peaceful shrine. I never knew where I was or where I was going. I just followed and attempted to take it all in

That summer, I put my graduation money from high school to good use. I went to France to take language classes for a month in Paris. I did not learn a whole lots. I'm really awful at languages. But I visited every museum and did almost everything Paris had to offer. I made friends from Japan, China, Taiwan, and Australia though we hardly ever spoke the same language or really knew what was going on. But we laughed and took pictures and spoke bad French to each other. I lived with a host family, which was an experience I would care to forget but such is life sometimes.

Having been scarred once, I opted away from the host family experience when I studied abroad in Denmark last year. In hindsight, living with a Danish family probably would have been a good idea. Danes are reserved and often shy. They can be hard to meet especially as I was going to a school of American and some Chinese students. Denmark was dark and a tad bit depressing. I didn't hate it but 4 months was long enough. My travel break was a breath of fresh air. Actually, I take that back. I visited Russia and breathed in the most polluted air I ever have. Russia was an insane experience. One that I loved and hope to never have again. 2 days in Vienna made me fall in love and reaffirm that Austria may be the greatest country on earth. Budapest was not all it is cracked up to be. I found it beautiful on the outside but sleazy and cold on the inside. Perhaps I need to spend more time there. Ireland was beautiful, had beautiful books and was everything that Ireland is supposed to be. North Ireland was naturally beautiful while also providing an important history lesson.

The weekend I spent in Amsterdam, it poured. Continuously. It was miserable. I also came down with a cold. Everything was against me. I need to go back because somehow, I still fell in love with it. I loved the gritty feel of downtown and how you can imagine it is still the 17th century with sailors pulling into port for tattoos and hookers. I love Van Gogh. And I will admit, I loved the coffee shop culture. I spent most of the time cursing myself for not studying abroad in Amsterdam instead.

With my parents, I traveled to Berlin. It was stressful. They don't travel much. It was cold. We stayed in a hostel which wasn't their idea of a vacation. We stayed two days. Due to bad luck, the second day we seemed to miss the opening times for everything. However, my favorite part was hopping on a bus and taking it through the center to the end of the line. The end of the line were old communist apartment complexes. Berlin, for me, is a place to visit and not to stay. My first impression was negative but Berlin gets under your skin. Every inch of the capital has so much history packed in, most of which your parents or grandparents lived through. In one second, you see a memorial to the past while the next, a new modern building rises.

In Denmark, I climbed into stone age burial tombs, hung out with hippies and drunk Greenlanders in Christiania, and sat through some of the most mindnumbing classes ever. I spent a weekend on a remote island in the Baltic sea, rode the oldest operating roller coaster, and walked home 4 miles home at 4am mildly drunk and was never harrassed once. I discovered: Danes really do make the best butter, their bagels are also delicious but you can't buy them in a grocery store, just speak English because no one can pronounce Danish, as an American "nej tak" is the only Danish phrase you need and it can go with any situation, going green is easier when the government mandates it, and Carlsberg beer won't begin to taste good until you arrive back in the states and somehow miss Denmark even though you thought you were sick of it.