Tell Me How You Really Feel

Six weeks ago, I was in Paris.
Five weeks ago, I was in Berlin.
Four weeks ago, I was in Vienna.
Three weeks ago, I was in Venice.
Two weeks ago, I was in Korcula, Croatia.
One week ago, I was in Slovenia.

Now, of course, I’m in London, still reeling from everything. I actually got up and went to work this morning. I’m sure they were pleased to see me turn up in obscenely wrinkled clothes (gotta get an iron) with a dazed look on my face. The inevitable question was posed:

“How was your trip?”

I knew it would happen, but I didn’t have an answer. How was my trip?

I met what seemed like hundreds of people, some crazy or suspect, most friendly and incredibly fun. I went whitewater rafting in Croatia, canyoning in Austria, tobogganing in Slovenia, and hiking in the Czech Republic. I touched the Berlin wall, toured the Red Light District, and gawked at the Basilica San Marco. I ate baby octopus, pork knuckle, and genuine Belgian waffles, not to mention countless pizza slices and gelato cones. I drank steins in the beer halls of Munich and Austria, sampled walnut brandy on a Croatian sailboat, and toured a brewery in Bruges. I spent hour after hour on busses, trains, boats and planes, missing the city I left behind but looking forward to the next one. I sang karaoke, pub crawled in the rain, and stayed up way past my bedtime. I added numerous destinations to my list, stamps in my passport, and random foreign words to my vocabulary.

That’s how my trip was. So if you ask me that question and I say, “Great,” know that my answer is a gross understatement, because until you do it yourself, you can only imagine. And doing it yourself will far surpass your imagination, so my advice is to start planning.

So that’s what I’m going to do. Plan the next trip. Starting now.