Travel Ideas: Europe

When I was 23 years old I was working at a job that had me living in London, England as well as a short training session in Geneva, Switzerland. I was only there for 8 months but I was able to do fair amount of traveling throughout Western Europe. I didn’t have many vacation days but I was able to stuff a lot of travel in on the weekends as I didn't have to pay for an apartment. (I was lucky enough for my employer to pay for my corporate apartment because the length of time wasn't enough to warrant a full lease.)

I will go into more details in future blogs on the cities I visited, what I saw, the things that I was most impressed by, the fun places, the not so fun places, and any stories that I remember. But to give a quick recap of the main cities I visited.

I went over to Europe a few days before I had to report to work with two guys that I knew were working for the same company. We spent a few days including New Years Eve in Amsterdam before heading to Geneva, Switzerland to start our two weeks of training. Our training group went skiing in the Swiss/French Alps. After Switzerland, I moved to London. From there I traveled to see a friend in Rome, went to Paris in the winter and the summer, Dublin, visited a friend in Barcelona, took the train Scotland, went with a friend to Oslo, back to Amsterdam for work, and I also had many day trips and activities around London.

I know two quotes that have really stuck with me and while I was traveling abroad they came in handy. They gave me some motivation when I was feeling lethargic (read: hungover. It's London, they like drinking.) and also some guidelines as I was visiting all these new places.

The first quote is about traveling; "Don't be a tourist, be a traveler."

I didn't want to be the stereotypical American Tourist. I wanted to get to know cultures, people, language, food, and places that a tourist might miss.

The other quote is accredited to Mark Twain and is, "Let us so endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry." This leads me to try to do and see and experience all types of things before the undertaker comes to find me and hopefully when he does I'll have seen and done and experienced all that I have wanted.