July 25th, 2025: Babes in Europe

After only a couple of weeks of living in Germany, I had the opportunity to go and travel around Western Europe with some of my best friends.

For those of you reading this who somehow don’t know this about me, I have a group of friends I’ve had my whole life. Hannah I met when I was 2 at an early childhood daycare. Maria, Coral, Terra, and JJ I met in preschool, when I was 4. We all attended the Carbondale Community School (CCS) for nine years together, all the way from kindergarten to 8th grade. Hannah, JJ, Maria, and I all attended CRMS together for high school (we still remained close with Coral and Terra during those years, despite them attending a different school). 

In college we all began to spread apart and find our own identities. There were times when some of us drifted away from the group, or there would be a rift between certain members of the group–but, eventually, we always found our way back to each other. There is an indelible bond between the six of us. We’ve seen each other through over 30 years of life together. We know all of the history, all of the embarrassing stories, all of the growth, all of the mistakes–and we have kept choosing to love each other through it all. In many ways, they feel more like siblings to me than friends.

Traveling around Europe together seems like something we would have dreamed of doing as children, although I admittedly don’t have any specific memories around such dreams. But who doesn’t dream of one day frolicking around Europe with their best friends?

The timing was perfect. Maria was living in France, working as an acrobat for Paris Disney. I had just moved to Germany. JJ already had plans to travel over to Europe to see other friends. With half of the group already over here, there was enough momentum towards actually making a trip like this a reality. 

We knew we wanted to visit Paris, primarily to see Maria perform in her role as a wall-jumping Mome Rath in the show “Alice and the Queen of Hearts: Back to Wonderland” (now running thrice daily at Paris Disney, if anyone gets the chance to go see). We also knew we had interest in seeing more of Europe than just Paris. We decided to start our trip in Amsterdam, then move our way down The Netherlands, check out Brussels, then finish our trip in Paris.

Coral, Hannah, and JJ booked their flights to Europe. Terra was, quite unfortunately, unable to make the trip. She had some things she needed to prioritize this early summer, including dealing with DOGE threatening the livelihood of both her and her husband (they both work as environmental engineers for the Army Corps of Engineers. Their job of dismantling American-made land mines–of which there are startling many just laying around–was deemed “inessential”. They had a higher-up tell them essentially that environmental engineering was in and of itself inessential for the Army Corps of Engineers, and that the organization had to focus on the “war effort”. What?!?! Fortunately neither took the deal DOGE offered them to resign, and so far both still have their jobs. Let’s hope that remains the case, uggh).

The Netherlands (Amsterdam and Delft)

Due to some scheduling confusion, I ended up making my trip out to Amsterdam a day earlier than the rest. I was able to take advantage of the wonderful European train system to make my way down to Berlin from Greifswald (we took many a train on this trip). I caught a flight from Berlin to Amsterdam that took about 40 minutes, and navigated my way to my capsule hotel for the night in South Amsterdam. My tiny room in the capsule hotel was actually quite nice and cozy. It had a perilously high bunk (I’m not sure why, there wasn’t anything happening under the bunk that I could see, just a wall), and its own little bathroom, which even included a little shower. There turned out to not be a lot happening–culture-wise–in South Amsterdam. I was near a university, and there were a lot of open spaces to enjoy nature.

I ended up taking a long walk through open spaces, along canals, and under giant sycamores that lined the streets to have a nice–though quite expensive–veggie burger for dinner. I then made my way back, enjoying checking out the nice homes along the canals, and had an early night in at the hotel, feeling very cozy in my towering bunk and tiny room. Despite each leg of the trip not lasting that long while traveling from Greifswald to Amsterdam, it all added up to a long day of travel. I knew it was nothing compared to what my friends were currently enduring on their way to Europe, however. I wanted to be fresh and ready to support them as they arrived the following day.

Coral, Hannah, and JJ arrived early in the morning that next day, after traveling for over 20 hours. They all had trouble sleeping on the flight, and so were very, very exhausted and jet lagged. I actually didn’t see JJ that first morning because she left first thing to visit another friend of hers that was living in another Dutch town outside of Amsterdam. As it tends to go, our AirBnB didn’t allow check-in until mid-afternoon. The AirBnB was a nice place in a small town just to the north of Amsterdam called Koog Aan de Zaan.

Coral, Hannah, and I met up that first morning and decided to head straight to central Amsterdam to spend our day touring while we waited for the AirBnB. We found locker storage near the central train station, and set off to go wandering. As soon as we were out of the doors of the train station, we were amazed at how beautiful Amsterdam was. South Amsterdam, where I had spent the night before, felt much like anywhere else in contemporary Europe. Central Amsterdam was distinctly its own thing, right away. Of course, there are all of the canals everywhere that Amsterdam is famous for–and then rising from the canals are these old, beautiful buildings, looking much as I imagine they have for hundreds of years. We actually learned that all of central Amsterdam is a UNESCO heritage site, and so the owners of the buildings are not allowed to tear them down or change their facades. We encountered several buildings–like hotels–that had gutted the interior to form the space they needed for their business, while maintaining the exterior. 

Hannah and Coral were true troopers that day, as we spent our whole day walking while they were exhausted. We had interest to scope it out and see where some of the attractions were. We discovered that the famous Red Light District during the day was almost indistinguishable from the rest of the city–except for a discernibly higher density of sex and weed shops (although shops of both kinds could be found everywhere in the city). We stopped only a couple of times to have small bites and coffee/drinks. Hannah and Coral found that as long as they were moving, they felt better–so we mostly walked.

Eventually, it was late enough that we made our way to Koog Aan de Zaan. A wonderful feature of the public transport throughout both The Netherlands and Belgium was that all buses and trains were tap to pay. As long as you had a card on your phone, you could easily board any public transit without worrying about tickets. However, as we discovered on that first day–make sure you always tap out as well. There were a couple of rides where I thought that I didn’t need to tap out and I ended up being charged for the maximum ride time (I ended up paying 40 EUR for what should have been about 7 EUR worth of rides). We still arrived too early at the AirBnb and loitered awkwardly on a nearby street until check-in time.

Our AirBnB was nice, but absolutely was designed without much thought for longterm stays. The host had warnings on the site about the showers, and how they tend to flood, but we didn’t really fully realize the extent to which that happened–which was every time someone showered. However, we were able to settle in. Fortunately there was a grocery store nearby and I went shopping to make everyone dinner. I knew well the feeling of extreme jet lag and how the last thing you wanted when you were that tired was to make decisions. I figured the best thing to do was just to cook a nice cozy meal at home, so that Coral and Hannah could go and crash as soon as they needed. 

The next day we set out to explore Zaanse Schans, a historic neighborhood in north Amsterdam that was actually quite close to where we were staying. We were able to navigate our way there via public transport again, this time taking a very little bus (more like a large van). We stopped to have a very pleasant lunch at Wolfsend before crossing over the bridge and checking out the windmills.

Someone on the bus let us know that this is the last year that Zaans Schans would be free and open to visitors. I’m glad we caught it in its last free year! It was fun checking out the old windmills (originally used as sawmills), clog shops, cheese artisans, and chocolatiers. It was a very pleasant way to spend a morning.

We then had interest to go and check out a completely different vibe and part of town. It was suggested by my brother to go check out the street art district, NDSM-Werf. When he had traveled to Amsterdam in his college days, checking out green engineering projects around Europe, there was an infamous event that took place in NDSM at the NDSM-Loods. The NDSM-Loods is a large maker and artisan space that was renovated from an old ship-building warehouse. Inside there were stacked shipping containers that were used as offices/workshops for artists, and sometimes were turned into giant art displays themselves. When Will went to check this out, he happened to go during a juggalo convention. As he tells it, the primary door (a very large garage-type door) began closing for some reason, causing the juggalos to panic and begin to riot. My brother was trapped amongst the rioting juggalos until he eventually found a side door and was able to scoot his way to safety. It was a dream come true seeing the setting for that story in person (also, it was just cool in its own right).

We had some beers and delicious truffle fries next door (I learned there that Heineken comes from Amsterdam) before we navigated back to the AirBnB to reunite with JJ. We had some more grocery-store fare for dinner and stayed up late chatting and reminiscing with the expanded crew.

The following day Maria was able to join us. Her schedule allows her to take three days off in between her performing days, and so she was with us for the rest of our time in Amsterdam. After scooping up Maria from the central train station, we made our way into the city. We had an appointment to tour the Van Gogh museum. First, we stopped for a quick lunch where Maria tried the Dutch cuisine of bitterballen. We didn’t know what they were–turns out they’re breaded balls of beef gravy, essentially.

I was very excited to go to the museum. I love Van Gogh’s art, and I am very aware that it has influenced my own style greatly. The first time I remember feeling incredibly moved by a painting was seeing Van Gogh’s The Ravine at an impressionist exhibit at the Denver Art Museum. It was the view from his room in the asylum, that he painted over another of his works during his stay there. There’s something incredibly potent about seeing Van Gogh’s art in person, because it has such distinct brush strokes. I feel that I can almost see him painting each stroke, and am constantly struck by the reality that he actually created what I see in front of me. It was fascinating to learn more about his journey as an artist, and to see it as it developed at each stage. 

After the museum we found some delicious gelato and then made our way to a park. We enjoyed the sun (and didn’t enjoy the aggressive way that the local birds sought food from people). JJ headed back early to get work done, and JJ, Coral, Maria, and I went to a food hall for some dinner. It was a fantastic food hall and had so many tempting choices. Hannah and I opted for sushi burritos, and I tried a “Pornstar Martini”, which I saw offered almost everywhere. It was all very pleasant. From there, Hannah headed back to the AirBnB while Maria, Coral, and I ventured out to find some stroopwafels. A fresh stroopwafel is incredible–perhaps the most delectable part of it, though, is the aroma. They offer such a scrumptious, warm-honey, baked good smell. 

The following day we had an easy-going morning. We eventually made our way into the city around noon. We found an incredibly charming spot for brunch called De Laatste Kruimel–it was a tiny building with two levels for dining, and connecting the two levels (and the third level up to the bathroom) were tiny, steep stairs. On each level there were beautiful pastries, sandwiches, coffee and teas.

Following our cute brunch we went on a charming canal tour cruise. We had spotted several of the cruise businesses on the canals in our days before, and we had decided that Friendship would be the choice for us. Not only was it, obviously, poetically accurate for our current trip in Amsterdam–but they seemed to be some of the more relaxed, spacious, and comfortable of the boats we saw out on the water. 

We had opted for one of their “booze cruise” packages, and while we were treated to a very interesting tour of Amsterdam as seen from the waters, we were also treated to bottomless rosé. I kept getting awarded bonus shots of this super sweet alcohol as well because the tour guides would offer trivia questions (if answered correctly, one was awarded with the shot), and my Hermione-ass couldn’t help but try to get all of them right. I’m tempted to write out all of the fun facts and interesting history we learned while on the cruise, but then I think that would end up being a lot of text. So, instead, I’ll just urge anyone visiting Amsterdam to take a cruise yourself and learn it that way!

For dinner that night we had dinner at Oriole, a “Michelin Bib” (which I continuously remember as “Michelin Bag”) restaurant that Coral had found. As one might expect, it was a fantastic meal. Oysters are one of the only animals I eat (I’ll only eat mollusks, for various reasons), and so I had some oysters for an appetizer, followed by some beets cooked so well that they were tender like filet, and an incredible coffee mousse-type dessert. It was delightful.

Our last day in Amsterdam started out with meeting up with JJ’s friend, Max. We made a point to have our last breakfast in Amsterdam be poffertjes (mini puffed pancakes). They were so yummy, and the texture really was the best part. They were chewy and perfect.

We then went to check out the Embassy of the Free Mind, a library of collected esoterica and mystical writings. I wish we could have spent longer there–it really is meant to be the type of place where you sit and do extended study for hours (or days). As a museum, it needed some help–there were a lot of descriptions of esoteric organizations and events that implied knowledge on behalf of the patron. For example, there was a lot about “Rosicrucianism”, but no explanation at any point on what that means. Regardless, I like the idea of spending some time there to get ideas for novels or stories. 

At this point we started to move south in The Netherlands. We had plans to check out Rotterdam for the later half of that day. Our next AirBnB was in the little town of Delft, located halfway between Rotterdam and The Hague. Maria and Max joined us on the trip to Rotterdam, where we met up with a couple of Maria’s friends who just so happened to be traveling up to Amsterdam on their own European trip. We had a lovely lunch right there next to Rotterdam’s central train station. After lunch, Maria and Max each went their own ways. Hannah, Coral, JJ, and I decided that we were actually too tired to try to explore Rotterdam. We just wanted to get to our AirBnB. 

We took a bus to Delft, and upon arriving, we were immediately charmed by the town. It had a similar feeling to Greifswald, in that it was a pleasant, mid-sized European city with some medieval charm. We navigated the cobblestone streets and canals until we found our way to our AirBnB–which was quite cozy and nice. We had decided that we were just going to spend the night in Delft. We all had interest in checking out the Hague, but left the decision to visit there until the next day. 

We found a highly-rated, tiny Ramen shop, and had a great dinner of noodles there. We then made our way to central Delft and an outdoor patio bar. There are many such places around Europe, with a bar or cafe setting out a huge array of tables outside where patrons can sit and relax. I have never been pressured by any waitstaff in Europe to release my table. Almost always one needs to ask directly for the check–otherwise, the waitstaff will let you sit as long as you like. This is true even after the check is paid.

At the bar we indulged in some of our favorite European beverages. Hannah was exulting in her new favorite beverage–the Aperol Spritz (which is ubiquitously offered everywhere I’ve been in Europe). Coral, with their vast knowledge of beverages accumulated over years of working in breweries and distilleries–introduced us to a favorite beverage of theirs, the kriek. Krieks are Belgian beers fermented with cherries. It tastes just like a cherry soda, and is quite delicious. 

The next day we woke up exhausted. We had reached a point where we needed rest. We debated in the morning for some time because we all genuinely had interest in checking out The Hague but also enjoyed the idea of spending more time in Delft. Ultimately, our exhaustion made the decision for us, and we spent the day in Delft. I actually had a bit of an emotional breakdown (read: I was a hot mess), and so the decision ended up being the best one. We spent the day in many of the charming coffee shops and little boutiques settled into the streets of Delft before we caught our train to Brussels. 

Brussels

Although still undoubtedly exhausted, we also definitely got a second wind when we arrived in Brussels. I was the most excited for this leg of the trip because I knew the least about Brussels. In many ways, I’m still rather ignorant about it. Although we had a very fun couple of days in the city, they were not the most informative in terms of its history or civics.

Unlike our two previous AirBnBs (which were located largely outside of the city centers in Koog Aan de Zaan and Delft), our AirBnB in Brussels was smack dab in the middle of the action, which was actually really great. We were staying right next to the palace, amidst a sea of bars, restaurants, and museums. Anything we wanted to do was only a few minutes walk away.

That night we got some yummy Turkish street food (in Germany it is called Döner) and meandered our way to the palace square. Unbeknownst to us there just happened to be a large, free jazz festival that weekend in the palace square. We had beverages in the square, enjoying them on the patio situated right in the midst of it all, surrounded by palaces. We then called it a night, excited to spend the night in our unique AirBnB.

The AirBnB itself was situated inside the walls of a church, although it was tucked into it from the side. It was three stories, and to get in we first had to ascend some steep, narrow stairs. Upstairs there was a comfortable kitchen, living room, and bathroom. Climb some more narrow stairs and you get to the level with two of the bedrooms. Climb one more ladder, and you got to the last bed, tucked away at the top in a loft. It was beautiful and felt modern, yet cozy, tucked into the church as it was.

The following day was Hannah’s birthday. It was a very, very rainy day. We wanted some Belgian waffles for breakfast–as you know, we were in Belgium after all. We actually learned that what Americans consider “Belgian” waffles are actually called something else in Belgium, and aren’t really considered Belgian waffles. Most Belgians actually get their waffles from food trucks, and I believe are eaten as a hand-held food. We never tried true Belgian waffles. Instead we were treated to a nice breakfast of savory “Belgian” waffles, most of us opting for an Eggs Benedikt on a waffle, with Bloody Marys. 

We did some shopping, buying Belgian chocolates and other goods for our loved ones. To spend the rest of our day, we decided on a couple of “museums” that seemed like unique experiences. 

The first one we visited was the Museum of Infinite Realities. We didn’t really know what we were getting into with this one, which was a huge part of the appeal. The best we could tell beforehand, it was some sort of interactive and immersive personality test. This turned out to be pretty much what it was, and it was quite a good time. You get escorted through several different stages, and by the end you’re promised that your spirit animal will be revealed to you (it can only be one of six: lion, bear, tiger, eagle, wolf, or fox). The first stage was a Millionaire-style multiple choice quiz–about yourself. We circled around a big device with buttons and were asked questions like, “What do you do after a big party?” or “How spiritual are you?” The results of the less intimate questions were revealed to the whole group (we were with about 20 other people). 

There were several rooms where we interacted with the “animals” in different ways, to see which one we resonated with more. My favorite room was where we chose, with no prior information, either “Everything” or “Nothing”. Just earlier that day I believe I was espousing to my friends the Zen teaching that “nothing” is “everything”–so we all naturally chose “Nothing” (it was the less popular of the two). We were treated to a totally psychedelic light show, appropriately accompanied by an Alan Watts narration.

In the end, JJ and Hannah were assigned foxes (the rarest of the types, we learned), Coral was a wolf and I was an eagle. I was surprised because I definitely thought I was going to get a lion. The eagle was pretty chill though–it seemed to be a pretty spiritual one.

The next “museum” was the Museum of Illusions. Just like the last “museum”, this was more of an interactive experience than a museum. It was a collection of visual illusions. There were some you just looked at, but most of them were interactive. We had our most fun with the stages they set up for people to take photos that are optical illusions. We were fortunate enough to have the place essentially to ourselves, and so we spent a lot of time laughing and taking silly pictures, like something we had done as teens. It was very fun.

We went afterwards for drinks at the rooftop bar above Belgium Beer World (which is I believe another interactive museum). We took some more fun photos in a photobooth here, and looked out over a rainy Brussels. We were determined to go dancing for Hannah’s birthday, and so after a dinner of some Thai food, we went back to the AirBnB to recoup. We were, yet again, exhausted. We had a day of a lot of fun. It had been a while since I have had to rally to go dancing at 10 at night. But rally we did. It was helpful that the bar where we wanted to go dancing was only a 1 minute walk from the AirBnB. We were intrigued by it because it said it was both an Irish Pub and a disco. 

We spent the rest of our night having fun at said establishment. We got there just as karaoke started–and although none of us performed, we had fun singing along with the performers. Most everyone was singing American songs that we were familiar with. In fact, most of the people in The Netherlands and Brussels we encountered were perfectly fluent in English. This is good, because none of us spoke either Dutch or Belgian. Dutch was very close to German, and I could navigate through some of it (not that my German was that excellent)–but as I said then, where as with German it feels like there’s too many consonants in the words, with Dutch it feels like there’s too many vowels. In Belgium it actually seemed like most people and signs defaulted to French.

After karaoke we indeed danced, and it was very fun. This was the only night of the whole trip where we had to deal with creepy guys, and even while clubbing they were mostly few and far between. It was something we noticed throughout our trip: In America–usually, especially, as a group–we would attract unwanted attention from men. However, for the most part we felt respected and unafraid while we were traveling. Generally, it seems that European men are less prone to being outward creeps, so that was nice.

The next morning was a Sunday and I was awoken by the sound of the church bells above us summoning the people to service (it seems I was the only one awoken by the bells, but perhaps my body is especially primed for it after living as a monk and being awoken by bells daily). For our last morning in Brussels we had a weird breakfast at The Drug Opera (of course, we were intrigued with that name–I recommend actually clicking on the link for it and checking out their website. It’s also quite something.) It was a beautiful building that housed, what it turns out, to be more or less a Cheesecake Factory. It was a huge menu offering subpar food, but we were into the weirdness of the whole thing nonetheless.

JJ stayed behind to do a bit of work while Coral, Hannah, and I went to visit Mannekin Pis, a famous fountain that has the statue of a boy peeing. It turned out to be rather small. In fact, even though I was navigating us to it, I missed it, it was so nondescript. After this last bit of tourism, we caught our train to Paris.

Paris

We met back up with Maria at the train station for Disney Paris. Here we needed to stop and download the app for public transit in Paris. This app turned out to be frustrating, as was a lot of our public transit in Paris. During our time there we had several instances where everything should have been working, but wasn’t. 

From there we made our way to the little village of Lagny, which is where we stayed during this leg of the trip. It was a charming little village, complete with a small market square with a plethora of little shops–a boulangerie, patisserie, grocer, cafe. That night we got sushi takeout and ate by the river. There was an unhoused gentleman who came to ask us for a Euro and he was not at all deterred by the fact that we didn’t speak French–for you see, he could also speak English, and Russian. After regaling us with the virtues of Russia, he left us to our dinner. We all reflected on how in Europe, even the unhoused people spoke three languages.

We went to bed early because we had a BIG day ahead of us the next day. It was Disney day, baby. We had access to both parks with our tickets (Maria was able to procure guest tickets for most of us–we all had to split the cost of only one ticket). However, we needed to get into the park with Maria, which meant we either needed to go in early, when she started her work day, or at noon, when she had her lunch break. We opted for noon. We needed the rest. 

We started our Disney day at Walt Disney Studio Park, which is home to Maria’s show (“Alice and the Queen of Hearts: Back to Wonderland”). We had a quick lunch with Maria with sandwiches and salads she procured from the staff canteen. We had a little bit of time before her first show, so all together we chose to ride Aladdin’s Magic Carpet. I was not a fan. I get motion sick easily and was nearly done in by this first (rather tame) ride. Fortunately, I remembered I had some Dramamine in my purse, and that helped me get through the rest of the day. 

Maria left us to prepare for her show, and we were able to squeeze in one ride on The Avengers rollercoaster. I entered the day feeling pretty sure that I wasn’t going to go on too many rides, given my proclivity towards motion sickness and my aversion to that stomach-flailing feeling of a sudden drop that is so often elicited in roller coasters. That said, I gave The Avengers ride a whirl, and I’m glad I did. It was very fun. 

Maria’s show was spectacular (yes, for us it certainly was her show). Maria is a trampwall artist, which means she jumps off of a wall from a decent height onto a trampoline, doing acrobat stunts all throughout the up and down. It was so fun to see our friend fulfilling her lifelong dream to be a professional acrobat. She’s one of the few people I know who had an ambition at a young age to do a thing, and then set out in life to go on ahead and do it. She performs to hundreds of people three times a day. It was a fun show–not only were there the acrobats, but there was singing, dancing, drumming, and BMX. 

In between her shows (we saw it twice, of course), the other friends took a ride on the Tower of Terror. I passed on that one. After the last show, Maria joined us, done with her day of work. We switched parks. The other park is just like Disneyland in California, complete with Smalltown USA and Sleeping Beauty’s castle. Over in that park we rode Indiana Jones, Haunted Mansion, Pirates of the Caribbean, a carousel, and ultimately “Hyperspace Mountain” (which was my favorite one of the night). It was a whirlwind of a day, and thoroughly exhausting. It was incredibly stimulating, but a lot of fun! I ended up going on all of the rides but the Tower of Terror, which I’m grateful for.

The following day we made the trek to Montmartre, a neighborhood in Paris famous for its indelible fingerprint in art history. It also happened to be the setting for two of my favorite movies growing up: Moulin Rouge and Amelie. As kids we were all obsessed with Moulin Rouge and knew the “Elephant Love Medley” by heart. Another childhood friend, Adrienne, joined us for that day. She was in Paris working on a film project. It was fascinating listening to her life working on these lovely indie films as a screenwriter, as well as getting updates on her music and standup comedy successes. 

The six of us found several points of interest in Montmartre. The modern day Moulin Rouge did not have the same splendor as the one in Baz Lehrman’s early 20th century Montmartre. I believe the original one burned down in a fire a while ago, and so the one now is only a replica–and boy did it feel like it. When we first saw it we thought it was just a themed gift shop for the real thing. Never meet your heroes.

Some more compelling points of interest were “The Love Wall”, where “I love you” was written in (I believe) every language. We hiked our way to the top of the hill to visit the Basilica of the Sacred Heart (Basilique du Sacré-Cœur de Montmartre), which was indeed spectacular. There is a very memorable scene in Amelie that happens around the Basilica, and it was fun for me to visit the setting of that beloved scene that I had watched many times growing up. 

We then made our way via metro down to the river, where we had some drinks and played some petanque, a game that is quite similar to bocce ball. Adrienne left us after a few games of petanque, and we found our way to a cozy little restaurant with an excellent menu for dinner. 

On our ride back to Lagny, we were on the most packed train any of us had every experienced. JJ and I were able to stay together, but we got separated from other friends in the squished fervor. The train was, no exaggeration, wall to wall, door to door, crammed with people. There was no room to move limbs. I couldn’t get my phone out of my pocket to look at it. All we could do was stand crushed up against strangers for quite a while, before enough people leaked out of it to give some space.

For our last day in Paris, our only real plan was to visit the Catacombs, something that Coral very much wanted to do. It was a fascinating experience, and an interesting context in which to learn about Parisian history and, honestly, infrastructure. The Catacombs were massive, and it turns out that a lot of Paris is sitting on just straight-up chasms. There’s a whole department in Paris that takes care of just the immense amount of chasms under the city (the result of early mining), to make sure they’re structurally sound and won’t collapse. They’re also deep under the city–well below the metro.

As you might imagine, being in the Catacombs was incredibly eerie. It was sobering to be surrounded by the bones of thousands of people. The walls were made up of skulls and femurs. The rest of the bones were tucked back behind. Again, there’s an extensive interesting history around why the Catacombs exist that I won’t go into here. I am glad we went, it was certainly a unique way to tour Paris.

After we arose from the Catacombs, we found a yummy crepe street vendor. We ordered some Crepes and enjoyed them in a nearby park, underneath a large statue of a naked woman. We initially had wanted to go do another river cruise after this (and from this cruise glimpse the Eiffel Tower), but it was again ruled that we were too tired. Instead, we made our way back to Lagny.

That morning, before we had left for Paris proper (Lagny is about an hour outside of Paris by train), we had gone shopping in the little town square. We visited the farmers market for fresh cheese and veggies, and we also picked up some unreal bread and pastries from the patisserie. For our last meal together we convened at Maria’s place and enjoyed a home cooked meal together (prepared by Maria’s partner, Zach).

The next day we separated ways–Coral and Hannah woke up early to make their way to the airport. I woke up less early to make my way to the train station. JJ stayed behind one more day before continuing on her galavanting around Europe. I navigated my way to the train station so I could catch my ICE (intercontinental express) back to Germany. It was a lovely trip for me–very comfortable and easy (until the end, when I missed my train to Greifswald in Berlin. I was able to navigate close enough to Greifswald via train for Michael to be able to pick me up before all the train services to Greifswald ended for the night).

It was a special trip, and one that I feel strengthened our friendship and our bond. It was truly a dream come true, and I am so grateful for the experience. May it be that all people get to travel for 12 days with their friends, enjoying life, building memories, and strengthening love.

Reading now: Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi , The Well of Ascension by my boi Brandon Sanderson, and We Are Three by Rumi (translated by Coleman Barks)

Listening now:  I’ve found a great Celtic Music playlist on Spotify that I’ve been listening to a lot while I write.