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| Kieran Waigel ('22) |
When I thought of travel, I did not think of exploring new places, eating new foods, or meeting new people. The places were new the first time I went, but then they were home. The food was the same food that my parents cooked at home, and the people I met were all relatives. Every year I found myself in a foreign land made familiar by my kin. This summer I decided to try and pop this long-standing travel bubble and go with two friends and to see something new.
After long deliberation, we decided to travel from Germany to Italy and France and explore. We were fresh out of high school and didn't have much money to spend, so we had to be efficient. It turns out the European train network can be very cheap if you book in advance. On the other hand, hotels were quite expensive, so we opted for the more traditional European “youth hostel.” With a click of a mouse our flight was booked and we were set for this journey, three high school nerds traveling through three foreign countries.
Youth Hostels are quite interesting. The basic concept is that you receive a bed and a locker in a room shared with 4-10 people. As a result you can stay the night for very cheap, however the catch is that you don't get to choose where or exactly with whom you want to stay. The upside of this forced rooming is meeting people from all over the world. What I learned culturally from all the people I spoke with was invaluable. A traveler I shared a room with in Salzburg was telling a story about her hometown in Belgium and all the little politics that go on in her town: The rivalries between her town and the neighboring town, conflicts over traffic and roads. Some disputes were similar to those here at home, but some were completely different. A Swedish traveler I met was a graphic designer that went bust and decided to pack a backpack and set out on an indefinite journey through Europe to, “find something.”
My favorite interaction, however, had to have been the person we met on the night train from Italy back to Germany. His name was Sam, and we met him on the train platform in Rome and shared our woes with the Italian train system, a perpetually delayed and unresponsive service. He told us, in broken English, that he was moving from India to Düsseldorf. We glanced at his person and saw that all he had with him was a small carry on bag and asked if he had his things already shipped over there. “No this is all.” We asked if he spoke German. “Some Italian and English, very very little German.” He was moving to study and something about that struck me. Here was a man who didn't speak the language, had nothing other than a carry on bag of things, moving to a completely different country to start a new life, and he was excited about it.
The people we met, the stories we were told, and the experiences we shared we will never forget. I find my self routinely pulling on these shared experiences, whether through self-reflection or actual application. I would have never been able to hear any of these stories had I not picked up that backpack and hopped on that train departing from my familiar bubble.
Kieran Waigel of Louisville, Ky., is a member of the McConnell Scholar Class of 2022. He studies computer science and political science at the University of Louisville.