Travel is about meeting new people. My semester abroad taught me that if you travel halfway around the world, you can make friends with all sorts of people who go to the same college as you.
Studying abroad showed me that Europeans have a real work-life balance. In a typical day in Europe, you wake up, eat lunch, go to a museum, and then hit the town. Nobody is stressed about their job. That’s the benefit of a strong welfare state. Everyone is young and has lots of free time.
Europeans always wear high-quality shoes. On an average day of guided tours, museum visits, and pub crawls, a European can walk over ten miles (sorry, kilometers!). All that walking keeps Europeans thinner than us Americans.
Europe has better restaurants than the United States. Nobody cooks at home in Europe, because there are so many fun restaurants. Dining out is more affordable in Europe because everyone uses their dad’s credit card.
Alcohol is another difference. In Europe, they have beer with lunch, cocktails in the afternoon, and wine with dinner. Europeans do this every day, and they never have a hangover. Drinking that much is considered a problem in America, but in Europe, it’s a healthy way to enjoy yourself, like smoking cigarettes.
Oh, and the language! In Europe, learning the language is easy because most conversations are with waiters, bartenders, and shopkeepers. Once you learn how to say “I want,” “How much is this?” and “No, another group of students must have thrown up in that booth,” you’ve pretty much mastered everything you need to know.
In Europe, the weekend is sacred. Every weekend, Europeans go on fun trips with their friends. They go to castles and clubs and little rivers that have cute boat rides. We can’t do that in the US, because we care too much about work.
Public transportation is more developed in Europe. This allows Europeans to take more weekend trips. For short trips, they’ll take a bus, but for longer trips, they’ll take a train. Subways come in handy for everyday trips, like going from a café to a bar, or from a museum to a bar.
Museums are very popular in Europe. Europeans spend two to four hours a day at museums, especially art museums. That’s why Europeans are more sophisticated than Americans. By the time they leave high school, they’ve spent over ten thousand hours looking at oil paintings.
Time management is important in Europe. Lunch takes another two to four hours, so Europeans know how to balance their lunchtime and their museum time. If their lunchtime overlaps with their museum time, they will have a quick ninety-minute lunch in the museum café. This can be useful, since dinner takes between three and five hours.
Americans have boring professions, like nursing, engineering, and plumbing. Europeans have more exciting job opportunities. Europeans can work as tour guides, winemakers, cab drivers, or even street musicians.
Things are simpler on the other side of the Atlantic. Ever since I returned to the States, my life has been all about work. That’s not because I left school and got a job, it’s because I don’t live in Europe anymore. In Europe, everyone is studying abroad.