Don’t look at me like that, London. We both knew this had to end eventually.

I have been bracing myself for a couple weeks now to leave you tomorrow. My bags are packed, heavier than they were in January: heavy with souvenirs and sorrow. I am ready to go home after 5 months, but knowing I likely won’t be back for a long time… That still hurts my heart a little bit.

To think that I applied to study abroad on something of a whim, that I wasn’t completely hell-bent on going like others who plan this sort of thing when they start college, that I never actually made up my mind, I just let the decision deadline pass and make up my mind for me — that all means I might not have done this. That’s terrifying. I very well could have stayed in L.A.! I would have had a great semester, no doubt.

But I wouldn’t have had these months, isolated in the span of my life so far as unique, to live pretty much entirely for myself and no one else. I’ve had my fill of it and am ready to return to a life that involves obligations, considerations, give-and-take relationships with other people, but I’ll return having learned a valuable lesson:  It’s nice, sometimes, to be selfish, because life is a two-way street. (That sounds awful, but I hope you get my meaning.)

I wouldn’t have been able to visit so many beautiful cities across Europe.

I wouldn’t have met so many interesting and wonderful people.

I wouldn’t have had you.

I wouldn’t trade this semester abroad for anything.

Things I’ll miss, among others:

• The tube, even though it breaks down all the time.
• Underground stations — they each have a personality of their own! They’re like people.
• Buskers: musicians playing all kinds of music in tube stations. They have to audition for the part, so they’re actually really good.
• Walking, walking, walking. Looking up and seeing old Victorian buildings.
• Pubs & pub culture. Ordering pints/halfs of beer.
• Seeing Melissa and Marcos pretty much every waking moment. Viva Marlisha!
• People saying “Cheers!” for everything, including hello, goodbye, thanks, you’re welcome, when it hardly even makes sense…
• Groceries marked with a “V, Suitable for Vegetarians.”
• Afternoon tea. Especially the vanilla black tea and scones with clotted cream and raspberry preserves at Bea’s of Bloomsbury. Yummm.
• My split-level flat, and always having someone around, though sometimes 6 people in 1 flat got stuffy.
• Kebab shops with the friendliest Turkish owners ever (particularly Farringdon Grill). Falafels to curb middle-of-the-night hunger attacks.
• Newsagents.
• Accents.
• Knowing that at least one channel is playing Friends, no matter what time of day it is.
• Kellogg’s Crunchy Nut Clusters cereal, available only in the UK.
• How green/environmentally-friendly this place is!
• The River Thames.
• People who might seem standoffish to affable Americans, but who, if you talk to them, are cheery and helpful. I love people like that — people who prove you wrong, people you have to figure out.
• Ridiculous street & pub names, like Lamb’s Conduit and Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese.
• Constant use of the word “whilst,” which I’m particularly fond of. The use of words like “alight” and “query,” which are in danger of extinction in America.
• Banksy Bagels and the really nice Irish woman who works there.
• Portobello Market.

You’ve been terribly good to me, London. You taught me a lot about myself and you gave me plenty of room to grow – something I really needed. You gave me a lot of opportunities. You quenched my thirst for adventure, and in fact, you amplified it. I have every intention of exploring Los Angeles now the way I explored your streets and suburbs.

After all my travels this semester, I was always happy to come home to you. I was always glad I chose to study abroad here (despite your expensive British pound, which is my only complaint). There is nothing, really, that you lack as a great city.

I think you’re a million kinds of wonderful. Your diversity, your history, your humor, your cosmopolitan charm, your good-natured welcoming of tourists and transplants: these are the qualities that endear you to anyone who’s had the pleasure of your acquaintance. I know I am not the first, nor will I be the last, to have fallen unavailingly in love with you.

I sincerely hope one day we cross paths again. You’ll carry on without me, no doubt, and I’ll carry on without you… But at the risk of sounding desperately cheesy: you will always, always, always have a special place in my heart.

Yours truly,
Nimisha

P.S. I love you.

BUDAPEST, HUNGARY: April 21-24

On Wednesday, after checking out Galileo’s finger at the Museo di Stella della Scienza (what, you wouldn’t?) and getting our last fill of Florence, Melissa and I boarded a train to Venice at 5:30 p.m. After a 2-hour layover there, we got on the second leg, a 14-hour overnight train ride to Budapest. Friendly advice: don’t ever take a 14-hour overnight train anywhere, if you can help it.

This was, without a doubt, the longest and most uncomfortable train ride of my life! We met some cool people in our cabin, but trying to sleep was a nightmare. Cramped seat. Cold cabin. Passport control waking you up every time you cross any sort of border (and we went through various Eastern European countries). Finally, we arrived at Budapest’s Keleti Station at 11:30 a.m. Thursday, April 22.

Photo Credit: Melissa Leu

We spent a couple hours getting our lives in order: booking hostels in Budapest and Prague, buying train tickets to Prague, exchanging money, and getting a late lunch because we hadn’t eaten in many, many, many hours. After lunch, we wandered. We knew nothing about Budapest – I didn’t even know what its currency is (forints) until we got there. All the other cities we’ve traveled to, we’ve done research beforehand. I went into Budapest pretty much blind. We saw the White Bridge, Buda Royal Palace (and its museum, which we got into for free!), and the Chain Bridge. We also ventured into the dark tunnels of the Buda Castle Labyrinth armed with nothing but a single lantern. Inside, it was wet and eerie and we actually did get a little lost… haha.

For dinner, we met up with Danny and his roommates Evan and Roy. It was really nice to see another DOZer abroad, especially sort of unexpectedly! I wish it had been a bit more planned so maybe we could’ve hung out more, but it was still nice nonetheless. After dinner, Melissa and I took a funicular (the second oldest funicular in Europe!) up to Fisherman’s Bastion, where we got a gorgeous moonlit view of the beautiful blue Danube River (:)) and the glowing Parliament building, which is huge. Budapest has its own sort of beauty, I think, but it is definitely beautiful. It is so very different from the other cities I’ve visited, but I don’t know that I can say how, really. It’s just… Hungarian! Despite the cold weather, I loved it.

Friday was our only full day in Budapest, so naturally, because it was me and Melissa, it was a packed day! We went to the National Hungarian Museum, had traditional Hungarian food at a restaurant called Rubens (I was sad I couldn’t try goulash – one of the few times I wished I wasn’t vegetarian!), took a Duna River Boat Tour, walked along Andrassy Ut, a street that’s another UNESCO World Heritage Site, and then – my favorite part of all of SPRING BREAK 2010, probably – we went caving!

Photo Credit: Melissa Leu

Apparently, the “Buda” half of Budapest (Buda sits on one side of the river, Pest on the other) sits atop a myriad of natural underground caves. Caving, or spelunking, involves donning a really attractive (not) suit and hardhat with a flashlight, then crawling/shuffling/running/climbing/squeezing through crevices for 3 hours! It was so much fun! We met some cool Australians and our guide gave us some interesting tidbits about Hungarians (who created Bic pens and Rubik’s cubes, FYI). Near the end, we all turned off our flashlights and climbed for several minutes in complete and utter darkness. We only had each other’s voices, hands and spoken instructions to trust. It was awesome! I came out of the experience with scratched elbows and knees and hair full of cave dust, but I loved every minute of it .

That night, we went to a Fedde le Grande concert at Café del Rio that Danny had told us about the night before. I’d never heard of this DJ, but he was really good! Even though I was exhausted, the concert was fun. We saw Danny and Evan there again and we were there from 11 p.m. to 3:15 a.m. when we finally got a taxi back to our hostel.

Then we did what probably no other tourist/traveler would ever do, besides me and Melissa, and probably Marcos if he’d been there. We crawled into bed around 3:45 a.m. and woke up at 5 a.m. just so we could go to a bathhouse before catching our 9:30 a.m. train to Prague on Saturday morning. Call us crazy, but we didn’t want to leave the City of Spas without having spent some time in a spa! We were at Szechenyi Baths just after 6 a.m., where we relaxed a bit and watched the sun rise over Budapest in a lukewarm outdoor pool and then sweated off the stress of the past week in the sauna. I don’t at all regret getting only an hour of sleep for that experience!

We got on our train to Prague – the last train I hope to ride for a very long time – and fell fast asleep.

Photo Credit: Melissa Leu

PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC: April 24-27

Photo Credit: Melissa Leu

Prague is beautiful. Prague is adorable. Prague was the perfect way to end SPRING BREAK 2010!

We reached our hostel at 5 p.m. on Saturday, still pretty worn out from our utter lack of a solid night’s sound sleep. For dinner, we met up with Ariel, another DOZer (and my little! ) who’d come to visit me in London, who was studying abroad in Prague. I can’t really describe what a relief it was to have Ariel there… haha. By this point, Melissa and I had been traveling for 22 days, constantly on the move, running on very little sleep, our bodies and feet especially sore. Needless to say, our minds were worn out, too; we were in no shape to plan out each day and attack it with our usual enthusiasm. Thankfully, Ariel a wonderful tour guide and generous host, so we didn’t have to do a lot of thinking! And, as I’ve said before, it is always, always nice to see a familiar friendly face.

After dinner at a great vegetarian place and a glass of Staropramen, one of Prague’s famous beers, Melissa and I were clearly dying a slow and painful death by exhaustion, so we called it a night. For the first time in I don’t know how long, we got what could be legitimately considered a good night’s sleep. My body has never loved me so much (although it would hate me again by the end of the next night…).

The next morning, we went on a Sandeman’s New Europe free walking tour, which covered all of these main sites. Sandeman’s should make us their official promoters: Melissa and I have been on their free walking tours in Amsterdam, Dublin, Prague, Paris, and London! The weather was absolutely BEAUTIFUL, so we had a leisurely lunch outside in a beer garden, where I tried some Pilsner. We rented a paddle boat and lounged on the Vltava River (also known as the Moldau! The Moldau by Bedřich Smetana was long one of my favorite classical songs, so I was really excited to finally see this river that inspired Smetana’s piece) under the glorious sun. We spent the rest of the afternoon exploring Vyšehrad, an old castle on a hill near Ariel’s dorm. The cemetery there is home to both composers Smetana and Antonín Dvořák.

That night, the three of us went on the infamous Prague Pub Crawl, determined to make it all the way to the end. Strangely enough, we ran into another London study abroad kid who’d been in one of our classes! It was an odd turn of events. I won’t say much else about the evening except that 1) I have no intention of ever consuming absinthe again and 2) we didn’t make it past the second pub. But it was fun while it lasted, and I got a free t-shirt out of it!

Monday was a lazy day, and not nearly as beautiful. Melissa and I woke up late and had “smaz,” or fried cheese sandwiches that are all the rage in Prague. Czechs really seem to love their fried cheese. We tried to find Mozart’s house and failed, so we checked out the Franz Kafka Museum. Kakfa is a fascinating person… I’ve only ever read his The Metamorphosis, but it’s one of my favorite short stories. What I gathered from the museum is that Kafka was so self-aware it was painful. We met up with Ariel on the Charles Bridge and went to see the Lennon Wall. Apparently, when John Lennon died in 1980, a grief-stricken Czech fan graffitied a portrait of him onto this wall. Since then, all sorts of people have smothered the wall with Lennon portraits and Beatles lyrics and their own signatures. Of course we left our mark! Ariel and I even signed the wall on behalf of DOZ.

We spent a few hours meandering around the various parts of Prague Castle. I tried Czech potato dumplings at dinner and was incredibly disappointed. I tried very hard to like them, but the fact that I couldn’t finish them says a lot. I can usually finish all my food, but I couldn’t down these dumplings. We were definitely not up to another night out, so we had the most delicious milkshakes ever whilst playing Monopoly (I won! I never win) at The Globe Café.

Tuesday was glorious because it was the day we were going home, the day the month-long SPRING BREAK 2010 would finally come to a close. The singular image of my bed in my corner in my flat in London was enough to energize me for the day. Melissa and I had a gigantic breakfast at Café Louvre, the self-proclaimed “crowning jewel of Prague café culture,” then walked to Petrin Hill. Here, we took a funicular to the top of the hill and climbed up the Observation Tower there, which looks like a mini-Eiffel Tower. We walked back to Prague Castle to finish seeing the parts we’d missed the day before.

Then it was back to Old Town Square to see the Astronomical Clock, Prague’s pride and joy, strike the hour. It’s a very pretty clock, parts of which were constructed as far back as 1410, that chimes on the hour every hour. And when it chimes, so begins the “Walk of the Apostles” (video #10). After all the raving I’d heard about it, I was expecting something maybe a bit grander, but it was still cute. Afterwards, we checked out of our hostel and walked all the way to Ariel’s dorm for a last goodbye.

Then we were on a bus to the airport. Then we were at the terminal. Then we were on the plane. Then we were in London! HOME, SWEET HOME. It was truly a beautiful moment.  I thought I’d cry tears of joy. Somebody should make a movie about it. I never thought I’d be so happy to see our cramped little flat, or my squeaky bed that jabs me in the ribs every night with its metal mattress frame. But it doesn’t even matter. It’s my bed, not some hostel’s. And I could speak English. And I could take money out of ATMs without being charged. And I could do laundry! Sweet, blessed laundry.

I feel like I sort of rushed through the last few cities in these blog entries, but we just did way too much in these 26 days! All in all, SPRING BREAK 2010 was all kinds of wonderful. It was full of incredible sights, more history and culture than you could imagine, fantastic food, and plenty of curveballs. We had our fair share of transportation woes, group discrepancies and clashing personalities. But the way I see it, it’s those curveballs that make the experience just that: an experience. I saw a lot, I did a lot, I experienced a lot! And in some way, I guess I can say I backpacked across Europe… or at least across parts of southern and central Europe!

So concludes the saga of SPRING BREAK 2010: me, passed out face-down on my bed in London, wearing the dust, grime and heart of 5 different countries on my back, clutching my pillow like it’s the long-lost love of my life. End scene.

Photo Credit: Melissa Leu

GENOA, ITALY: April 13-14

Ah, Genoa, the birthplace of dear Christopher Columbus! Columbus, who is the reason I have to clarify that I am the dot-on-forehead sort of Indian, not the feather-on-head sort.

On Sunday the 13^th, we were up early to catch a train to Genoa, which was of course delayed because of continuing strikes. When finally we reached our hotel, we were greeted by a friendly, wrinkled old lady from some other European country who loved talking to us simply because she could talk to us in English. She told us all about how she used to live in London, how her sister now lives in Australia, how she sometimes forgets proper English because she rarely gets to use it. The woman went on and on, but she was extremely generous and warmhearted . Italy got off to a good start with this hospitality in Genoa, but in Pisa and Florence, it continued to slip from its pedestal in my mind.

After depositing our luggage in the room, we walked around the city a bit and quickly discovered that there is not a lot going on in Genoa, Italy. Its only claim to fame is its being the birthplace of Columbus, and while this is an excellent claim to fame, it doesn’t offer much in the way of entertainment. Somehow, we found ourselves playing UNO on the steps of the Palazzo Ducale. I lost, but not without a fight! I used to think I was too laid back to be a competitive person, but let’s be honest: I really like winning. After a rousing game or two of UNO, we were pretty much starving, but restaurants don’t begin serving dinner until at least 7 p.m. (another downside of Italy: you can’t eat meals whenever you want! Ok, fine, now I’m just nitpicking), so we killed some time at an outdoor bar before shuffling into a small restaurant for a bowl of the greenest pesto I have ever seen. The noodles themselves were literally bright green. Solid first real Italian meal! After dinner, we got gelato, which became a really bad, albeit delicious, habit for the remainder of SPRING BREAK 2010.

We hung out down by the port for a while afterwards, where we stumbled upon an incongruous statue of Gandhi. I am telling you, my people have left their mark everywhere!

The next day, we visited the tiny, cramped Casa di Columbo (Christopher Columbus’ house) and the Palazzo Principe. We split up after this because, as we often discovered, sightseeing with even as few as 5 people can get tricky. The thing about traveling is that everyone has a different way of going about it. It’s only natural to butt heads sometimes if your idea of a fun vacation is sleeping in until noon and mine is getting up early to see the sun rise over the mountains. Melissa, Marcos and I are pretty similar when it comes to traveling in that we like to experience as much of whatever it city we’re in as we can, we do a LOT of walking, we go to bed late and get up early, and even if we’re tired, we’ll keep barreling on because, after all, you can sleep when you’re dead! (After 5 months of this, we are all three of us pretty exhausted, but I’d say it was completely worth it .)

The three of us walked all the way up to the allegedly highest point of the city to get a panoramic view. This became something of an obsession throughout this trip. I think we managed to get panoramic shots from high points in every city!

Little did we know when we hopped on a train to Pisa that evening that what should have been a straight shoot from one Italian city to another would turn out to be an hours-long ordeal (the first of many, it seemed) that involved us being stranded between Genoa and Pisa for a couple hours in the middle of the night. I like to think everything is an experience, so I don’t really mind that we ran into so many glitches, especially since we emerged out of all of this unscathed (except my feet, which have taken a beating this semester) – but if I had a choice, I’d really rather not repeat those few cold hours waiting at a semi-deserted platform in La Spezia for a train that we could only hope would eventually show up!

PISA, ITALY: April 15

The train we expected to take us all the way to Pisa instead stopped at La Spezia. I still have no clue where that is, except that it’s not Pisa. We were the only ones left on the train, and the conductor told us we had to get off because this was the end of the road. So we got off, and we ended up waiting in the cold for what must have been at least 2 hours. I am not going to lie and paint a pretty picture so I only have good memories: it was a little bit miserable. Italian trains are confusing and unreliable. Most of the people we tried to ask for help weren’t very helpful or reassuring. It was dark and cold and Giovanni, the guy at our hostel in Pisa, was angry with us because we were late arriving, even though it was all out of our control.  

When we finally got into Pisa at close to 2:30 a.m., we were greeted by a group of drunk teenagers hanging out in the piazza just in front of our hostel (“Welcome to Italy!”). Nothing like a drunken welcome, let me tell ya! haha. I went straight to bed because we had to be up early again to check out in the morning.

The next day, the weather was beautiful! Hot, even. We ventured over to the Field of Miracles, where we took the standard touristy photographs with the Leaning Tower of Pisa. I’m not really sure why the Leaning Tower is a Wonder of the World. I suppose it’s a wonder that it hasn’t fallen over yet, but really, the thing is just a big mistake. It’s not colossal like the Great Wall, eerily symmetrical like the Taj Mahal, or impossible to build like the Pyramids at Giza. The Leaning Tower is a miscalculation! haha

After lunch and more unnecessary gelato, we ambled around and saw l’Università di Pisa, established in 1343 and one of the oldest universities in Europe. Pisa is even less happening than Genoa – which is completely fine! You take a city for what it is, I think, and experience it the way it’s meant to be experienced. Claire and Britt took an earlier train to Florence, but Marcos, Melissa and I decided to stay back a bit and enjoy our only day in Pisa. We rented a 3-person bike/car contraption and peddled around the dusty streets of Pisa (video #9)! There wasn’t anywhere we couldn’t go, so of course we biked everywhere, meaning we ended up sandwiched between cars on regular roads. I’m sure we irritated the drivers of said cars… haha. Although we had several near-death experiences, it was a lot of fun!

At 6 p.m., we got on a short train to Florence, which gave us some gorgeous views of the Tuscan countryside. Florence is a great and beautiful city, but this was the point in the trip when I was finally starting to get tired of traveling – I can push myself to all kinds of extremes, but I do have a limit, after all… Thankfully, we only had a few more days before our return to London. Or so we thought. But we had no idea that a friendly neighborhood Icelandic volcano was about to throw stranded travelers all across Europe into a frenzied panic.

FLORENCE, ITALY: April 15-21

Florence! Oh, Florence. Firenze. It really is a wonderful city, but it’s definitely not my favorite place in the world. Maybe it was bad timing: so much in life is about timing. When things happen at the wrong time, they can end up a mess. But I was a weary traveler when I got to Florence — add to that the fact that I got a 45 euro fine, that the people were pretty rude, and that we were trapped there for a couple extra days with no way out when this volcano erupted, and maybe you can understand why Italy is not on my must-revisit-someday list.

Our first day there, we hit a lot of major tourist attractions, including both the Uffizi Gallery, where we saw works by Botticelli, Da Vinci, Rembrandt and Michelangelo, and the Accademia, where Michelangelo’s original David lives. Both places were beautiful and definitely worth a visit. I didn’t understand why David is such a big deal until I was standing in front of it, amazed by its size and details and perfection. It really is awe-inspiring. We walked along the Ponte Vecchio (“Old Bridge”) on the Arno River, which is interesting because it’s one of the few (maybe only?) still existing that has shops built on it.

At various points during our stay in Florence, we also saw several other museums. I wish I could remember the names, but it was about this time that I’d been traveling so much that museums, palaces and churches were all sort of starting to blend together. I also stopped fastidiously recording everything we did each day (I am not writing all of this from memory… haha).

The next day, we went to the Medici Chapel. The House of Medici was a politically influential family that rose to prominence in 14^th century Florence. The family tree includes no less than 4 popes – now that is a pretty intense family. The Medicis were never monarchs, but they might as well have been, as they dominated Florentine government. Florence wouldn’t be what it is today – a huge historical art house, really – if not for the Medicis and their encouragement of the Italian Renaissance.

Later, we went inside Santa Maria del Fiore Cathedral, more commonly known as Il Duomo, and its accompanying museum, Museo dell’Opera del Duomo. We climbed the 414 steps to the top of Giotto’s Campanile (an arduous task when your daily sustenance consists of pasta and gelato), from the top of which we could see all of Florence spread out before us, and some of the Tuscan fields on the edges of the city. I could have stayed up there forever, watching the miniature people below me, whose umbrellas made them nothing more than colorful blotches on cobblestone, wander between weary old buildings that have seen and weathered so much but are now just buildings.

Also in the Piazza del Duomo and opposite the cathedral, we saw replicas of Lorenzo Ghiberti’s Gates of Paradise, the gilded bronze doors of the Florence Baptistry. Some of the door’s original panels, along with many other artifacts and pieces of the Duomo, are now in the Museo dell’Opera for preservation purposes.

It was on our way to the chapel that Melissa and I got tickets for not having a bus ticket. We were waiting directly behind the bus driver with money in our hands to pay for our tickets, but these bus drivers look at you like you’re annoying when you try to pay them. They just usher you onto the bus and start driving before you’ve given them you’re money. You really have to go out of your way to pay them, and I think it’s because they want us tourists to get caught so they can fine us. Which is exactly what happened. The 2 policemen who talked to us pretended not to speak any English, so we couldn’t even explain ourselves. We went to the station’s police department when we got off the bus to pay, and even there, suddenly nobody spoke any English. We couldn’t argue our case at all, and these officers and our bus driver (who was apparently in training, looked like he was 18, wore fancy sunglasses and giant studs in his ears, and might very well have been a cast member of Jersey Shore) were pretty much laughing at us. It made my blood boil. I am normally a calm person and it really takes a lot to genuinely piss me off, but in this situation – excuse my language – I was ready to flip a bitch.  I thankfully didn’t because I was dealing with foreign police and wasn’t particularly in the mood to get arrested or escorted away… haha. But clearly, this put a bit of a damper on my Medici Chapel experience.

It’s a sorry thing that this is one of my more prominent memories of Italy, because it’s a great country. This, and the incredibly rude salesman at a stall in one of the markets who refused to sell a purse to Melissa. This, and the messed up, inefficient trains. This, and rude Giovanni in Pisa (though he redeemed himself a bit by apologizing for his attitude the next morning). This, and the woman at one of the clubs we went to who shortchanged me 10 euro for my ticket and then refused to listen to me. This, and the fact that people were curt, they didn’t smile, they seemed perpetually irritated by any kind of tourist. A city can be full of the most beautiful things in all the world, but if its people are rude, that city is no longer beautiful to me. Dublin is significantly less attractive than Florence, but Dublin’s people are the absolute nicest people I have ever met, and for that reason alone, Dublin ranks higher than Florence in my mind. I miss the warm people of Dublin; I miss nothing in Florence.

Well, that’s a lie – I miss the 45 euro I had to cough up for that ticket.