Where Have I Been?!

When my company downsized my department and let me go in March of 2024, I would be lying if I said I didn’t wallow for a little bit. It was my first job out of college, my first big time agency job. I had been with this company through the pandemic, restructuring and several “new bosses” and colleagues that came and went, and rebranding that grew with the people...that was no longer in need of us. So I sat there and thought, “Now what?”

My first thought was to throw myself back into work. Find another job as quickly as possible. Get back out there. I love what I do, and I’m good at it. But then I started thinking about how much of myself I’d lost in my job. I was really struggling with work/life balance by the end there, and was having a hard time connecting with my personal creative spark. Maybe it wasn’t a bad time to take a break after all…

And that’s when I remembered that there was something that I had been wanting to do for a long time. Something I had thought that I would do when I graduated from college. Since I had my final interview for this past job the day after I walked across the stage and got my degree, I didn’t exactly have the time then…but now, I was ready. I was going to go backpacking across Europe.

And backpack I did. I backpacked through 11 countries. 12 if you count changing planes in Iceland on the way home. I slept in a tent, hiked up mountains, drank beer at Oktoberfest, danced the night away at a techno club in Berlin, paid my respects at the biggest cemetery in Warsaw during All Saints Day, ate both kinds of Belgian waffles, rode through the streets of Genova on the back of my cousin’s Vespa, gave a mini lesson about cheese in a cheese shop in Salzburg, celebrated the Velvet Revolution in Prague, ordered my lunch in Romanian, English, and Italian all in one sentence in Venice, and…found myself again.

Over a period of 10 months in 1988 and 1989, my dad went backpacking through Europe. It was due to the stories of his adventure that I was inspired to embark on my own. For as long as I can remember, he has shared with me the adventures he had with the new friends he made, the kindness of strangers, the beautiful sights he saw (always saying, “I was there!” when somewhere he had been pops up on Jeopardy!), and the little moments that made the biggest of differences. And now, it was my turn to embark on my own trip and learn my own lessons.   

I learned to go with the flow more. The first time I had to learn to do that was my first week on the trip, and I was taking a series of trains to Schloss Linderhoff. Unfortunately, I boarded the wrong train. As the train kept moving, I found myself worrying (read: trying not to panic) as I had no idea where I was going, and it looked like it was going to take a very long time to get to the castle. I started to think that I might not even get to see the castle. But then I looked out the window, and saw snowy mountains. I saw horses. And I said to myself that I’m here. I’m going to enjoy the journey. It’s not every day I’m on a train in the middle of nowhere in Germany. It’s ok if I don’t see the castle today. Just enjoy being here. I did end up getting to the castle, and it was beautiful, but the journey there was exactly what I needed, precisely when I needed it.

I also learned the importance of timing. People say timing is everything, and I really understood the depth of that statement due to the incredible luck that I experienced many times throughout the trip. One such example has to do with my dad, and a particular connection I had with his backpacking trip. When he visited his father’s hometown, he was lucky to get off of the train with a gentleman who spoke English. This gentleman introduced him to a friend of his, and the two helped my dad find where his father (my grandfather) used to live before taking him to a local bar. After spending some time at the city hall to try to find any additional information, I was informed that the gentleman my dad had met had passed away, but his wife and friend were still alive and living in the area. After dropping off notes and pictures for them in their mailboxes, asking them to reach out so we could reconnect, I went to the bar that my dad had gone to with them. There, I, too, met a man who spoke English. I was very, very fortunate, as the people I had met thus far in this small town spoke little to no English. We talked about our families, and when I mentioned that my grandfather’s mother was born in a small town nearby, he was stunned. He only knew of 2 other people with family from there. Then he told me that his friend’s fiancée was the mayor of that town. He called his friend right then and there at the table and told his friend about me, and his friend said that he recognized my grandfather’s mother’s maiden name. He then told me he would ask his fiancée to get records and any information they could find for me. The man at the bar then encouraged me to come back to town with my dad when the weather is warmer, and he will show us around and we can stay with him and his family. So incredibly thoughtful! This reinforced in me about how timing really is everything, because what if he hadn’t gone there that night, or I had gotten to the bar earlier and he wouldn’t have been there yet? I’m so lucky. 

And lastly, I learned to really soak in and enjoy the beauty of the little moments of human connection. I remember when I was in Frankfurt, and, out of absolutely nowhere, it just started pouring rain. I caught the eye of a girl across from me at an intersection, as I was out on a walk and she was biking, and we exchanged a look of, “Where the heck did that come from?!” and both smiled. No words were exchanged, but we both knew exactly what the other was saying. As a writer who loves what she does, words are my life…and sometimes, that means knowing when you don’t need any.