The European Experiment.
Reflections on 22 years of life and 36 days abroad.
“About the world, I learn a bit. About myself, I learn a lot.” -Derek Sivers
Graduated College.
I graduated college in May 2023 with a degree in finance, a minor in computer science, an ambitious, kind, fun-loving group of friends, and more questions than I’ve ever had.
Enter second person. By traditional standards, pre-college Grant was pretty good at the things he did. He was an all-city baseball player. He had close friends. He had a high GPA, and he had co-produced a critically-acclaimed instrumental album (okay, far from it).
But (and this is an important but), he never spent time fully answering his biggest questions, and sure wasn’t trying to figure out the questions that he didn’t know yet to ask. He didn’t feel the urge to explore. To read. To meet new people. To learn about the world.
He had contracted the hard-to-notice disease, notKnowingWhatYouDon’tKnowitis.
Let’s get to know him.
What are you going to study in college? “I’m not sure yet, probably something in business.”
Why? You’ve never really expressed an interest before. “You can do a lot with a business degree, it’ll leave me open to choosing something in the future.”
Who do you want to be? “I’m not sure, but there’s plenty of time to figure it out.”
What do you want to do? Again, I’m not really sure, but I’ve got time.”
What’s most important to you? “Um, baseball and music?”
The here and now were front and center. He made occasional attempts to pin things down. But without a systematic way to answer those questions and the experiences needed to test his answers, they often floated away to live another day. He was okay with that. Life seemed good.
Then high school ended. Pre-college Grant became in-college Grant.
His worldview expanded three hours south to include the small town of Champaign-Urbana.
And at first, life felt exactly the same, albeit with a surprising number of Napervillains and slightly more humidity.
But little by little, things began to change. He got heavily involved in a few clubs, started to spend his free time reading, learned to love thinking, began to look forward to grappling with hard problems (sometimes NP-Hard), started a podcast, worked at making friends, and…it was just getting good!
In the blink of an eye, college had come and gone. In-college Grant became post-college Grant.
So what was next?
36 days abroad. Iceland, Amsterdam, Norway, London, France, Italy.
Welcome back to first-person. **I traveled through Europe.
At first with eight friends. Then on my own. And finally with family.
The speed of the trip surprised me. Even though I started off in a bigger group, I soon found myself alone with five days worth of slightly damp clothing, five books, and a laptop.
Before we get there though, the first 21 days were spent with close friends from college across Scandinavia and western Europe, and holy! A lot happened.
In Iceland, we packed nine people into two RVs and survived for ten days on pasta, beans, and ground beef. I can still fully see the constantly shifting scenery. I still fully feel the goosebumps from the hike up Kirkjufell. And still fully hear the Icelandic pop-icon Pall Oskar.
In Amsterdam, we cycled, partied, and cruised the canals. Bicycles dominated the city and swimming in the (semi-clean) Amsterdam canals with hundreds of Europeans was humanizing. People truly do love the same things all over the world.
In Norway, we scootered, toured the fjords, and interacted with the fun-loving Nords. There's nothing quite like watching a searing sunset over the red tile roofs of Bergen’s harbor.
In London, we partook in teatime, explored Camden Yards, and spent an entire night playing in a ball pit (you heard me, a ball pit).
But before any of us knew it, the three weeks had come to an end, and I found myself alone on the way to France.
Let’s just say that I didn’t exactly feel warm and fuzzy traveling by myself, let alone landing in Paris in the middle of the night with a dead phone and nowhere to stay. But this discomfort is what made my experience so enriching, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
If I was going to sleep in a bed that night, it was on me. Simple but powerful. The weight of the next five days had settled squarely on my back.
So I went to a restaurant, charged my phone, and found a place to stay.
Deciding what to do each day with limitless possibilities was often overwhelming. But I talked to locals, poked around dusty bits of the internet, and figured it out.
Talking to strangers (especially the sometimes hostile Parisians) was initially distressing. But I imagined them smiling, asked them genuine questions, and figured it out.
If I had to summarize this bit of the trip - it was defined by the retraining of an atrophied muscle, the comfortableBeingUncomfortablicep. Now that I’m home, I’m uncomfortable being so comfortable. Life isn’t half as exciting!
Returning to the trip though, I finally made my way to Italy, meeting my family in Venice. We slowly toured the country, eating more pizza, pasta, bread, and prosciutto than I’ve ever had (and hopefully ever will again). It was exactly what the doctor ordered.
What were my takeaways?
When deciding whether I wanted to travel in the first place, people consistently repeated that travel makes you appreciate what you have and that there is a lot to learn from different cultures.
In my experience, instead of making me grateful for what I had, living out of a backpack for a month made me want to live with far less. And at least in Europe, people live pretty similarly to Americans. The history was appreciable, but it was far from life changing.
Much more than just these points, and to the quote at the top, I learned a lot about myself along the way.
Here’s what I would tell you right now if you’re thinking about traveling:
It was beautiful to be able to do things knowing that I was never going to see the people I was with again. This subtle mental shift left me free to develop different parts of my personality and do things that would otherwise feel scary.
Side characters and side quests along the way made traveling special. Thinking about collecting those during the trip made me more likely to try to find interesting people and fun plots.
It completely broke my frame and introduced a healthy dose of caring less about sleep, nutrition, and exercise—all things that are important but that easily become toxic with too much concern.
Changing scenery put me in better touch with what is important. Some worries (like the need to constantly be productive) faded during the five weeks. Some (like my love of reading, my love for other people, and my interest in technology) ended up even stronger than before.
Traveling for extended periods of time was relatively cheap. A pervasive myth is that we need to work for a long time, save up our money, and then finally travel. But it’s now so clear that we can do it at a young age.
Being in a completely new setting made me more likely to embrace random serendipitous moments. That feeling has persisted post-trip.
And finally some miscellanea - staying in youth hostels is tremendously fun, it’s difficult to wash clothes in Europe, French croissants are delicious, Italian wine is beyond cheap, Iceland has massive built-in trampolines in their parks, and the Eiffel Tower is overrated!
If I had to express my single biggest takeaway, though, it’s now clear to me how little I’ve experienced, and how much there is to explore. My appetite has been whet.
This is not a goodbye, this is a see ya later.
When people reminisce about the golden age of exploration, they are missing the point. Sure, collectively as a species, we’ve stepped foot everywhere on earth. But you haven’t! And more to the point, because humans are everywhere, there are so many beautiful, constantly evolving cultures and places to see.
So what’s the plan moving forward?
I still have 6 months off before I start my full-time job. In that time, the only pin I’ve dropped is San Francisco. After that, I’m only sure of one thing: that I’m heading back out on the road. Where? For how long? I haven’t quite decided. Spending a week at a time in a city, or even a month sounds tempting, and Spain and Vietnam have been calling for quite some time.
As for what I’d like to do differently next time around, I’d like to spend more time savoring the places that I go to, staying with locals, playing sports, going on a date or two, becoming more familiar with local languages, exercising, and collecting as many stories as I humanly can.
As the Italians say, arrivederci!
Thanks to Rohan Hirani, Neel Khare, Madhav Aggarwal, Luke Clancy and my mom for reading drafts of this!
Do that!