The Value Of Being A Tourist

Going to a place where you don’t understand the language, can’t read a map, don’t know what you’re eating, let alone what street you’re on, can be very frightening.

While in Munich, Germany over the weekend for Oktoberfest, I realized how difficult it truly is to be a tourist, but how fun it can be when you finally figure it out. 

Lost in Iceland

Getting to my university in Scotland was a struggle to say the least, but it was an amazing journey full of unexpected twists and fantastic people who helped me along the entire way.

I had a 30-hour travel day departing from San Diego International Airport, then to Minnesota, then Iceland for a ten-hour layover, and then finally I arrived at my hotel in London.

11 Lessons Learned While Studying Abroad

When discussing time spent abroad, phrases like “life changing” seem to get thrown around a lot. I knew when I boarded my flight that I was about to embark on a transformative journey, but I didn’t realize just how much of an impact my time abroad would have on me.

I’ve tried to pinpoint just a few of the lessons learned while I was abroad, but the amount of change I experienced is truly indescribable.

72 Hours in Russia

Typically, entering Russia as an American citizen requires that you apply and pay for a visa, a process that can be very expensive and take months to complete.

Thankfully, there’s a loophole that allows foreigners 72 hours of visa-free travel in Saint Petersburg if they arrive by ferry and have a guided tour, a return trip, and hotel or hostel booked.

My Last Post: Vatican City

I am now back home in the U.S. and I am sad to say that this is my last post for Be International. It has been an incredible opportunity to document and share my Italian-European adventures.

For my last post, I wanted to share my last hurrah at the Vatican City.

I Need to See More

Well, I’m back. It’s been a while since I’ve sat down to collect my thoughts and feelings and transpose them into a thought-provoking blog post, but here I am, and here we are.

What a whirlwind it’s been. Six counties, 21 days, 43 new friends and a lifetime of memories. Not bad for a study abroad trip.

Coming Home: Expect the Unexpected

Adjusting back to Californian time has been difficult to say the least. I go to work in the evening feeling as though I have stayed up all night, finally sleeping in the early afternoon European time.

My internal clock is flopped, nine hours ahead of the world I’ve come back to. Over three and a half weeks I traveled to six countries in Central and Eastern Europe.

From Krakow to Buda-ful-pest

Sleep deprived and tired from lugging my heavy backpack around and through the train station, I think about the day before.

I imagined what it must have been like to be packed up as I was with my pack of clothes, necessities and special belongings, loaded onto a train with my family and friends in such a deceitful manner to later be unloaded to a horrible and terrifying death.

Untitled

I chose not to include a photo of Auschwitz because I did not feel the need to take pictures of the sites. I didn’t need a visual reminder of the pain and suffering, and felt that omitting a photo was the best thing to do, out of respect.

Picture a void. In that void, picture an apple. Now picture two, five, ten. Fifty. Is it starting to get a little difficult visualizing that many in a given space? Now try and visualize one hundred. Two hundred. Five hundred. One,.. two,… ten thousand. One million. Eleven million. Now imagine a fire wipes out each and every apple. Bummer, right? Now replace the image of those apples with the faces of eleven million humans.

Finding Solace From the Unknown

Prague is like something out of a dream. Its incandescence is almost impossible to describe with words, so I feel that a blog post just won’t do it justice. But I’ll do my best.

Prague was the second stop on our whirlwind trip throughout Central Europe. My goal was to write about it before I left for our third destination, but I was too busy living in the moment (apologies for the cliche) to pause and reflect. I had to take it all in after the fact.