After backpacking throughout Europe with my best friend soon after graduating from college, I did something that felt fairly audacious (in a good way.) Less than a year after returning from that journey – which took me through France, Germany, and Italy – I went back across the Atlantic with another Eurail pass in hand for a second backpacking jaunt that took me to France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Spain, and Greece. The second trip was much more of a whirlwind, where money was saved by planning routes that were intentionally long so we could get a night’s sleep on overnight trains rather than pay for a room in a hostel. (Notice I didn’t say a good night’s sleep; after many weeks of traveling this way, we arrived in Avignon, France, checked into a cheap hotel around 3:00 or 4:00pm and decided to take a nap. We slept until the next morning.)

When I pulled out this trip’s journal, I flipped through a few pages until I found the one above, showing our route with a few small highlights from each city visited. I had forgotten about the funny waiters in Brindisi, Italy but will never forget the drizzly afternoon spent walking through a cemetery in Florence. Arles, France gave us bright sunny weather and hours to explore the Amphitheater and in Verona, Italy we listened to Sting perform a concert here. On a train ride to Barcelona, I ran into the woman I rented an apartment from the summer before in Berkeley, California and I sobbed my eyes out the night our train pulled out of the station in Wurzburg, Germany, having just said good-bye to a friend I met on my previous backpacking trip (“Visiting Wurzburg was difficult, leaving it again was nearly traumatic. I was overwhelmed by all of the memories and emotions saying good-bye…”) All in all, sixteen cities in four weeks, including almost an entire week in Corfu, Greece.

My final entry in the journal says this:

{17 June 1991, United Airlines Flight 915 from Paris to Washington, D.C.}
“Another good-bye…but this time not to any particular person or any particular place…to a feeling, to an experience, to a way of life.

Tonight I will sleep in my own bed, tomorrow I will probably drive a car…I won’t hear a foreign language, I won’t look at a train schedule, I won’t use any money that isn’t the color green. I won’t eat Catalonian sausage, stuffed vine leaves, or pasta with pesto. I won’t drink sangria…wine from Wurzburg, or Fanta soda.

I cried on the plane today, but…this trip is ours. We don’t pay a fee for it, it is not taxable. Our memories will never depreciate…we have only gained from this trip – memories, love, optimism, strength, and unity.

When I think of this, I don’t cry.”

This was only the second overseas trip I had ever taken, and I was 22 years old. I knew then it would not be my last (“For now – but not forever – my overseas travel is over, and I stress BUT NOT FOREVER.”) I knew it was just the beginning. Sitting here more than two decades later with a colorful passport and memories from all over the planet, I still feel that giddy excitement of feeling like I have only just begun. With so much in the world to explore and experience, I doubt I’ll ever lose that excitement – of beauty, of wonder, of all the possibility that exists when I set foot on new soil.