Travels

Travelling is one of those things that I've always wanted to do. Growing up my family didn't travel much. Almost every family trip and holiday was spent at my grandparent's house, 2 hours north of the city where I grew up. Those remain some of my best memories to this day. When I think of childhood, I think of waking up at my grandparent's house, smelling my grandma cooking breakfast (like many grandmothers, her cooking was magical) and listening to the adults talk downstairs while I lay in bed.

The point is, my childhood was spent pretty close to home. I might have occasionally been frustrated when I heard about my friends and other people travelling, but looking back now I love the fact that I grew up so close to home and that I had places that meant so much to me, even if they weren't necessarily exotic or exciting.

The first time I left the country I was in 7th grade. I went on a service trip with my school, it was an annual trip that both of my brothers had gone on as well. We visited a nursing home and went to a poor village to hand out food and spend time with the kids, among other things. It was an amazing experience, and it expanded my horizons in ways that I didn't even know were possible. I went on similar trips every year up through my senior year of high school, when my class went on a trip to the Dominican Republic. That was the first time I ever flew on an airplane (we had always driven to Mexico). In my mind that's kind of when I became a "traveler". Travelling across a body of water somehow makes the journey seem more real and significant.

That trip began a deluge of further travels. I went to a college far away from home, which necessitates a lot of flying. (I'm from Minneapolis, and I go to school near Boston.) I went on trips to see my brother graduate from Marine Corps boot camp, to visit him at his new base, and to welcome him back from deployment. I continued going on service trips in college, this time to New Orleans. For the first time in my life I actually became the knowledgeable and experienced traveler in my family.

But still, all of my trips were organized by somebody else or had some specific purpose. To commute between school and home, to see family, to do service projects. I still valued every experience (except perhaps a few nightmarish trips between school and home). I became very familiar with the Minneapolis and Boston airports, the best places to sit and eat and go through security. Everything started to seem routine.

Changing the subject a little bit: another thing I have wanted to do for as long as I can remember was study abroad. I took for granted my whole time in college that it would happen, but it always seemed like the distant future. Until suddenly, it was the week before I was supposed to leave. I daresay I was a little terrified. I may say that I like to travel, but I am also not the best with transitions and new experiences. Especially when that transition involves me going completely by myself to live in an unfamiliar country for 5 months. I knew that I would run into new and strange situations (just look at this post!), and that scared me.

Anyway. This post became rather more complicated than I planned. What I meant to tell you about was a trip that a couple friends and I are taking. On Thursday we will be travelling to Copenhagen for a few days, and then to Amsterdam. (When I told my parents about the trip they asked why those specific places - honestly it was a little arbitrary. None of us have done much travelling in Europe, so we just picked some places that sounded cool and were cheap to get to!). I have been thinking about my past travel experiences because I think this trip will be different than any I have ever taken. We have no specific reason to go, no family to see, our parents didn't plan anything. We picked some places, found some flights, and just went for it!

I think this is what I always imagined travelling to be. Despite all the trips I have been on in the past, the anticipation of this one more than any other takes me back to those childhood dreams of travelling and exploring the world. It's a new and exciting experience, but somehow it has managed to stir up nostalgia. (I suppose that's probably influenced by homesickness as well!)

I believe there is absolutely a place for both well thought out travelling with a specific purpose and spontaneous travelling purely for enjoyment. I have experienced a lot of the first kind in the last few years - take my trip to Ireland for instance. Months of planning went into coming here. But, I'm excited to take a trip that my friends and I are figuring out as we go, with no agenda or even really any rationale for the locations we chose. I'm not a spontaneous person, at least with the big decisions in life, so I'm thrilled that this plan came together so quickly!