From Brussels with Love [Study Ablog]

It’s time for a check-in from a SPA student studying abroad. Get ready for advice and adventures from SPA! Today’s post is written by junior Kerry Lanzo.

Hey guys, check out “Latest from Brussels” on my blog! What a weekend! 

Jokes. This singsong dominates every university junior’s Facebook news feed. Blogging every priceless experience of climbing Machu Picchu or taking the quintessential pop-Champagne picture in front of the Eiffel Tower is fun, envy provoking, and sometimes downright sad for those poor souls we’ve left behind in DC to contemplate leaving their trash on John Boehner’s doorstep on October 2.
I’m all for writing memories. Here’s a secret: I’m the oddball who dates all of her notes and papers so that if in the rubble following the apocalypse my notebook is found, future civilizations may know a bit about my world. Like Ozymandias’ statue colored with a bit of humility.  Maybe it would be cool if like in The Notebook my most beautiful moments of love were documented to relive eloquently at will before my death. So, Abroad blogs: the 21^st century autobiography for those with tons of thoughts, experiences, and good vocabulary but not quite the time to write a NYT Best Seller.
But out of some laziness and persistent denial, this is actually my first and only blog post of my Abroad days. How do I even begin to put into context everything I have learned for a single blog piece, especially with my unpracticed blogging skills? Spoiler alert: I can’t.
I’ve known I would write this post for months now, and alas the day has come to pass on the sagacity of my age and all I’ve got for a weekly theme is this V for Vendetta gif because November 5 is Guy Fawkes’ Day. (Editor’s note – Jared totally lost this so it never got posted when it was originally scheduled.  BLAST FROM THE PAST FUN!)

I stayed up all night on an extremely uncomfortable bus from Berlin to Brussels contemplating the perfect framework to convey my ultimate clairvoyance of the significance of my travels. It’s impossible. It doesn’t exist. I’m an Honors student without an insightful answer with which to raise my hand or just call out being the know-it-all I am in “Discussion-based classes”.  If I die tomorrow, all the UHP can have is one notebook of my expenses and a couple of vignettes I wrote in fits of extreme passion, desperation, or beauty. As well as about 8GB of photos, available on Facebook for your viewing pleasure.
But in fifty years, hopefully I will not need to remember every day of this adventure to know that I learned. I’ve come to think that my years are like cities built one on top of the other, always innovating and raising the ground level of society, but not always looking back until it’s time to examine fragments of the history of being. I’m a history major, too, after all. I have had recent moments of reflection that were heart-breakingly pure, un-foiled, and inexplicable in the present, and that’s enough. Here is one thought amongst millions that I did choose to document.
In a calm, crooning club called Jazz Dock on the Vlatava River in Prague, listening to modern swing from two sax soloists, I found myself so full of love and unspeakable serenity for and in my present life, just for a fleeting few minutes, unable to be controlled or reclaimed. Is this what it feels like to feel adult, or to feel real, mature gratitude towards life? Yet I still felt the pang of restlessness, to get up and walk, go outside, get to another club; I am the type that will always be in a hurry and sometimes have to fight it with every organ. But I realized in that first moment of indecision that I am alone and independent and free here, and I should choose whatever seems most blissful just then, without consequence. I walked outside and spent a few minutes on the outer dock swallowed by the frigid breeze over the water, utterly glad down to my toes. I waited until they froze to go back inside, just because I could.
I hope those moments will sneak up on me many times in the rest of my life so I do not have to spend all of my years reliving these ones.
I hope everyone finds those moments of freedom and beauty. Ah, perfection.
I may not blow your mind with my wisdom from the Occident, but that’s not to say I have not any advice to share to help you discover these moments yourself if you are just beginning. Some are common sensical and others some gems of discovery. Peruse my little seedling of a list, but underclassmen, don’t make the mistake of thinking being abroad will not still be jarring after you’ve packed the perfect suitcase (something that will not happen, by the way).
#1: You are wrong. I am wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. Wrong. I just don’t have a blog to constantly say it. Even if you are in a program surrounded by Americans, you will inevitably discover much of what you have learned, even in an oh-so-international university, is wrong. You eat the wrong things (no GMOs in Europe!); you are too wasteful (So. Much. Recycling.); your accent is not pretty and will never go away despite straight A’s in French-6,000,001; and your view of history is even more one sided than you thought as your intelligent-honors-nerd self. Don’t be offended. Be flattered that you are smart enough to know it.
#2a. Travelling smart: Always print multiple copies of your Ryanair boarding pass, just in case. They are scary, and so is their 150-euro fine.
#2b. Travelling smart: Always bring earplugs and a sleeping mask when you travel on long trips… European buses and trains can sometimes sound like slaughterhouses. And that’s just in countries in which farm animals are not actually allowed in public transport.
#2c. Travelling smart: Do wear a flat fanny pack or money belt, especially at night, no matter what you are doing, and especially on public transportation. Don’t worry – you can hide it under your clothes. People you know WILL get robbed. They will think they were being perfectly responsible and it was a freak accident that they lost a passport and got stuck in a foreign country with no money or phone. It’s usually not.

#3. Lastly, and in my best attempt at non-clichéd profundity:
Step 1: Don’t seek moments of beauty to validate your experiences. They are organic. Believe in serendipity. Let yourself get lost in a new city wandering with nothing but a vague idea of where to go, and when you stumble upon Notre Dame for the first time in Paris, the Furstenberg Gardens in Prague, or the Old Town of Stockholm, let it surprise you and fill you with emotion you would never feel if you had planned on it.
Step 2: Once you are there and the surprise passes, don’t pass by thinking you don’t have time to see everything else, too, or thinking of what you “should” be doing at that moment that is most efficient. Fight the urge to be your busy, #honorsproblems self. Leave your camera in your bag for just a moment more. Sit on the cold wood of Jazz Dock, give a coin to the man singing Neil Young under Prague Castle so he won’t mind if you sit and listen for ten minutes, or settle in with a brewery-special beer at the top of the hill to do nothing but look down for a long, long time. Don’t worry about remembering. Know you will come back. Know there is more to come. You may never have so little to think of or more to relish as being completely free to slow down and be grateful.