I used to think Viking history lived mostly in movies. Horned helmets, dramatic sword fights, a lot of yelling into the fog. It took me a while to realize that the real story is stranger and better than the fictional one, and that most of the good stuff isn’t hiding in some far-flung place you…
I still remember standing in front of a painting in a European museum during my solo backpacking trip years ago, completely alone, completely lost, and completely unable to explain why I was crying a little. Nobody warned me that art could do that. I had booked that trip thinking I was going to see famous…
When I backpacked solo across Europe years ago, I was mostly chasing cheap hostels, night trains, and whatever pastry looked good in a bakery window. History was somewhere on the itinerary, but it usually meant standing in a long line outside a famous museum with everyone else. It wasn’t until later in that trip, in…
The first time I stood inside a centuries-old fortress, I wasn’t in Eastern Europe at all. I was climbing a section of the Great Wall in China, breathless, sweating through my shirt, wondering how people built something so enormous with so little of what we consider modern equipment. That feeling never left me. Old stone…
I still remember standing under a stone ceiling so high it made my neck hurt, thinking about how strange it was that someone built this by hand, without cranes or computers, centuries before anyone could have imagined what “tourism” would even become. That feeling, small and a little dizzy, is the one I chase now…
I still remember the moment I realized that “seeing Europe” and “understanding Europe” are two completely different trips. When I backpacked solo through the continent years ago, I had a running list of famous names scribbled in a notebook, cathedrals, squares, museums, all blurring together after a while. It wasn’t until I slowed down in…
I still remember standing outside a small stone chapel somewhere in the Austrian countryside during my first solo backpacking trip across Europe, completely unsure if I was even allowed to walk in. I had no group, no guide, and no idea what the etiquette was. I hovered near the door for a full five minutes…
The first time I saw a real medieval town wall, I was on a train somewhere in Central Europe, half asleep with my backpack wedged between my knees. I remember the moment the tracks curved and a stone wall came into view, taller and older than anything I’d grown up around in New York. It…
The first time I backpacked solo across Europe, I had a rail pass, a backpack that was way too heavy, and a list of cities I felt like I “had to” see. Paris, Rome, Barcelona, Prague. I checked them off one by one, and I don’t regret a single stop. But somewhere around week three,…