A Sunny Tale for a Rainy Day

While cleaning my room today, I came across my travel notebook/diary, and of course, sat down to reread it, because it's no good cleaning a room if you can't sit down in the middle of the unresolved mess and read your findings.

I don't usually mix my personal diary, my travel notebook, and my blog, but sometimes I am possessed of the urge to write, and whatever notebook (or keyboard) that is closest receives the story.  On this occasion, I found a charming little journal entry in my travel book, though, and thought that perhaps it was just the thing to share. 

If you have been reading my posts since the beginning, you will know that Luxembourg was the first country I saw besides Belgium this semester.  But that time it was only the American War Cemetery, and then we drove almost immediately back into southern Belgium for Bastogne and the Battle of the Bulge.  In March, on one of the few lovely, sunny days that we have had all spring here, I went again, with the same study-abroad group but this time to see the European Investment Bank  (which was dull) and to ramble around in Luxembourg City.  I hereby provide you with a briefly edited transcription of my immediate account of that wonderful day:

Wednesday, March 21st, 2012
I am currently riding, reclining sideways, across two seats of a bus through Luxembourg!  I have spent the most wonderful afternoon with my friends here - beautiful photographer K., lone adventurer M, and charming sophisticate A. - skipping the guided tour (for once) to spend an afternoon wandering around this beautiful, beautiful place.  K's date lives here, so she knows some of the history and all the good views and a fabulous, delightful little chocolate shop right next to the Grand Ducal Palace, so really we did our own tour, with spontaneous excursions and copious romantic photoshoots.  

We ate fancy hamburgers outside on a wide, sunny-and-shady Luxembourg street, then we wandered at will through the golden city (so many of the buildings are soft, warm yellow), taking photos in archways, all rushing out of the way of cars, the nicest cars I've seen in Europe, plastering ourselves against the medieval walls, laughing.  The drivers always smiled, too; a rare and lovely thing in Europe.  Warm and weak after walking so much, somehow quite literally uphill both ways, we stopped in the top floor of the chocolate shop, cool but warmly lit by the rustic windows, for a chill glass of pinot noir rose, which was delicious. Then, I bought two little "framboise noir" chocolates, and ate them walking back to the bus in the late afternoon sun.  And we're still not yet done.  We're going to see a Belgian castle and another glorious old church, and then be fed a traditional Ardennes meal.


It is days - little escapes into paradise - like these that turn the grey, dull Brussels experience into something not only bearable but wonderful.  I feel so happy wandering the canal-streets of Amsterdam, photographing the other-worldly light effects of Delft, rambling over the hills of Luxembourg with three fresh, artistic friends!  For just a day, all the stress of school and grades and unhappiness with myself is gone - it's simply no use thinking about it, because it's left briefly at home and I can't do anything about it, here - only see and learn and laugh and relax and enjoy myself, and lie in the sunlight on a softly speeding bus, still tasting raspberry chocolates.  I don't remember being this happy - this content - this free - since Scotland.

I wish more days of my life could be like this.  I feel a little oddly like Jenny in the film An Education, when she says that she's been fabulous places and seen beautiful and exciting things.  Brussels was such a letdown, and I always have scoffed at Jenny for thinking academics were not equally interesting and alive, but...now I finally am going to breathtaking places and seeing things that I can see nowhere else, and may only see once in my life, and there is something so different about feeling the breeze on your skin and the sun on your back and the heart-deep feeling of satisfaction and glory that comes with such pleasant new experiences.  No essay ever gave me that, no matter how good it was by the end.

It does make one think, a bit.
~
Cara

Never fear, oh my friends - my academic will is a strong as ever, and my term papers are progressing.  But nevertheless, that, my friends, is why I shall never regret that I came on this otherwise somewhat turbulent abroad semester.