1,440 Hours in Europe

People who know me know that I am not the most socially comfortable human. I often feel out of place and frequently wish I were invisible (cue Clay Aiken). The reason I bring any of this up is because I've noticed over the past few years that one of the few times I feel completely confident and in my element is when I'm traveling. I love solving the puzzle of a new city and figuring out public transportation in another language. And I especially love eating mysterious foods. Somehow, when I'm thrown completely out of my comfort zone, I feel pretty dang comfy.

When I met Matt, I had just gotten back from spending the summer in Uganda. Just a few hours before our first date, I had an interview that ultimately led to my study abroad in Spain. Two months on the Equator and four months in the Mediterranean made me seriously consider selling everything I owned and becoming a nomad. I found myself floating down the Nile daydreaming about becoming certified as a river rafting guide and chasing rapids the rest of my life. In Madrid, I once thought about joining the circus. (Why do all of my fantasy lives require feats of strength?)

Matt and I had been dating for a few months before I went to Spain, and while I was there I was terrible at journal writing, but I was exceptional at email writing. In between professing my long-distance love, I'd wax poetic about mosques and ice cream and museums. At least once a week, I'd make Matt promise that we'd go back together someday.

Last year, when winter was raging along with my wanderlust, I sat down by the only window in our basement apartment and thought about where I wanted to go. Obviously the answer was the entire world, but that felt a bit broad so I temporarily shelved my plans of trekking around South America and Asia and instead focused on Europe. I wanted to get back to Spain, Matt wanted to get back to Italy (where he served his mission), and we both had long lists of European dreams. Who doesn't?

We talked about our plans all year, asked for travel gear for Christmas, and now we're set to blow part of our savings (and some graduation gifts from our parents) and hop on a plane the day after we both graduate from BYU. If I were telling you about this in person right now I would be talking really fast and loud and you would be fully frightened by my enthusiasm. I've already burst into excited tears twice (I'm crazy) since we booked our flights and bought our train passes.

You might think we've lost our minds when you see how much we're trying to pack into an eight-week backpacking trip, but we both decided that now is a good time in our lives for a whirlwind sampler tour. We know that a few days in each place is hardly enough to even break the surface of a culture—and that's a bummer—but we hope that someday we'll get to go back to some of these places. Hopefully this trip will help us narrow down our favorites.

This is the path we're planning on taking:

Turkey: Istanbul
Greece: Santorini
Italy (Our Italy plans are pretty up in the air. We've both been there before and Matt speaks the language, so we kind of want to just take it day-by-day once we're there.)
Czech Republic: Prague
Austria: Vienna, Graz
Croatia: Krka National Park, Split
Morocco: Tangier, Marrakech
Spain: Seville, Granada, Madrid, Barcelona (We'll hopefully be stopping in some smaller towns too along the way. I'm super excited to brush up on my Spanish.)
Southern France: Arles, Marseille, Chamonix
Switzerland: Geneva, Interlaken/Lauterbrunnen, Lucerne
Southern Germany: Neuschwanstein, Munich
France: Paris/Versailles
Belgium: Brussels, Bruges
Netherlands: Amsterdam
Germany (This is still pretty un-planned.)
Denmark: Copenhagen
Sweden: Gothenburg
Norway: Oslo, Bergen, smaller fjords near Bergen
Iceland: Reykjavik, Blue Lagoon, etc.

We're feeling really fortunate and grateful that we get to do something like this, and we want to take advantage of it as best we can. We've already done quite a bit of research, but we'd really love suggestions from anyone who's been to any of the places on our list or has suggestions for nearby must-sees. Even though a lot of our itinerary includes bigger cities, we really want to spend days and half-days in smaller towns as we move from place to place. Especially as we travel north toward Scandinavia we're not really sure which towns should be at the top of our list.

We're traveling primarily by train, with a flight and a bus ride thrown in here and there. And we'll be staying at hostels and the occasional Airbnb (this one we're especially excited about!). We've got a pretty strict budget in place and even though cheap is basically the antithesis of Europe, we're going to do our best.

Honestly we're pretty flexible, and very few of those destinations are absolutely set in stone at this point. So help some peeps out and give us your best European advice! If it's really good advice I might make you cookies.