Emily Grant Privett

Year after year, Summit seniors depart on what they think will be the adventure of a lifetime.  Years of studying all lead up to this one, momentous event.  Despite what they tell you, the “Grand European Tour” is not as glamorous as one would expect.

We started our trip with a seemingly endless, 3-hour bus ride to Dulles International Airport in Washington, D.C.  Checking in to our airline gave us all our first taste of international experiences.  Being checked in by a French airline attendant made the idea of this trip a little bit more real to everyone.  Needless to say, I, along with the rest of my group, was excited to take flight to France.

Having never been into Dulles Airport, I had no idea what to expect.  We embarked on our first tram of the trip.  We made our way to our terminal and had a few hours to kill.  We walked the seemingly endless terminal a few times, investigating the stores and getting a snack or two.  Finally, it was time to board the plane.  Our group could hardly contain our excitement, as we would be landing in Paris in a number of hours.

Every year the teachers will tell you this, but every year they are right!  Try to sleep on the plane.  I know it’s difficult, but it would make your life so much easier.  We climbed off of our plane as it was dark and rainy in Paris, France.  We were all so excited and, despite our lack of sleep, we were pumped and ready to start the day.  This was the first time I had been to a place where English isn’t the primary language.  When you land, be prepared to have a major culture shock.  It’s different there.  Going through customs was an experience, as for the first time I wasn’t someone entering my own country.  The people working in customs didn’t speak English very well, so you basically have to just follow what everyone else is doing and pray that they know what’s going on.

After what seemed like a lifetime waiting in line, we headed to the baggage claim.  We all waited, hoping that none of our baggage had been lost.  Luckily, all of our bags made it.  Then we left to meet our tour guide for the next two weeks, Paula.  None of us really knew what to expect.  Without Paula, we would have been completely lost the entire trip.  She was our lifesaver!  It was once we met her that our jet lag began to set in.  She gave us all the opportunity to get money for the next few days.  We had no time to be tired.  It was go, go, go from here on.  We were finally there.  Everything was surreal.  This was where we had to push ourselves to carry on.

We then found our bus to the hostel.  Having never stayed in a hostel before, I had no idea what to expect.  My first impression of our Parisian hostel was that it was rather nice.  It has a modern feel to it.  The dining room overlooks a canal.  While we were there, we were to leave our things in the downstairs club, then to eat breakfast, and finally, hit the road.  When I heard the word “club” I had no idea what to expect.  I walked downstairs to find that in this hostel is an actual club.  My opinion of the hostel suddenly changed.  What once seemed clean, safe, and fun became dirty, loud, and smelly.  The stench as we walked downstairs was overwhelming.  There was obviously a party down there the night before, as a man was still passed out on the couch.  The floor was sticky and stickers of popular rock bands covered the walls.  This proved to me that Europe was going to be much different than anything I had seen in America.

After leaving our baggage downstairs, we had our first taste of a European breakfast.  There was hard bread, cereal, and a variety of spreads to choose from.  I decided to go for the bread with a pat of butter.  I found it rather delicious.  I believed that I enjoyed European breakfasts.  But after two days of eating bread nonstop, I would have given anything for a piece of fruit.  Still, to this day, I can’t eat bread.  I’ve had enough!  Also at this breakfast, I filled up my water bottle, as we had a long, strenuous day ahead.  It was at this point that I realized that the Parisian water made me feel sick.  When in Paris, buy the bottled water.

It was then time to head out for our first day of adventure.  We were all excited.  It was time for our first real experience in a foreign city — the Paris Metro.  When I say experience, I mean experience.  We walked down the road to the nearest stop.  As we walked down the stairs, Paula stated that we were about to enter Paris from one of the best ways.  When she said this, we all got a sudden burst of energy.  We could only imagine how we were going to enter the city.  Because of this, the dirtiness and smelliness of the metro seemed unimportant.  I was too focused on being in a new and exciting place.  After stopping at our respective stops and starting to get an idea of how the metro worked, we walked out into the reasonably fresh French air.  It may have been misty outside, but we didn’t care.  We then walked around a large building and caught a glimpse of the Eiffel Tower.  We were all stunned.  Everything felt so surreal.  We were no longer tired anymore.  We were in Europe.  After getting our pictures, we made our way under the tower to our bike tour location.

The bike tour is something like no other.  To tell you the truth, this was probably my least favorite part of the trip.  It was cold and wet.  We saw a number of really cool locations, but I found myself unimpressed with the French scenery.  Everything was covered with dirt; I saw very little grass on the trip.  The locals didn’t seem very nice, as one woman told us off for standing in her way.  I had heard that Paris was the least favorite, so I didn’t have high expectations, but with this bike tour my expectations were proved correct.  Everything in Paris looks the same.  The buildings are all grey, everything covered with dirt.  It’s all roads that all look similar, other than different-looking store fronts.  The Parisian scenery was reasonably unimpressive.

After our tour, Paula gave us free time.  With this “free time” she basically strongly encouraged we each tour some art museum.  I can’t remember what it’s called, but I know it’s part of the Louvre.  We saw Monet’s Water Lilies but other than that, I was too tired to really pay attention to anything else.  No one really enjoyed the museum as most of us were only interested in one thing, sleep.  It was at this museum that the jet lag really set in for all of us.  It was at this point that I felt myself slip into a different state of consciousness.  It was something I had never felt before.  Never in my life had I been awake for 36 hours, and never will I do it again.  I felt myself shut off.  I was living in a fog.  Everything just sounded like white noise.  It was the strangest sensation I had ever felt.  The pure exhaustion inflicted by this trip is difficult to push through.

Finally we were back at our hostel and in our rooms.  The rooms were nice and reasonably clean.  At that point, I didn’t really care what my room looked like.  I woke myself up by taking a nice shower, as we were all covered with dirt and felt disgusting from our bike tour.  We were forced to go to dinner, which was definitely not worth going to.  It was a strange beefy substance covered with a strange sauce, all served over rice.  Everyone ate only enough to be allowed to leave.  We all hurried off to bed not long after dinner was served.

The next day was definitely my favorite of the days in Paris.  The weather was much nicer, and it was a bit warmer.  After having a little more sleep, I had a bit more appreciation for the country we were in.  This day we met up with our fabulous tour guide, Malcolm, and went on a tour of the Louvre.  For those who haven’t had the opportunity to meet Malcolm, he is an elderly British man.  He was full of life and so much fun.  We had fun listening to his “ghastly” jokes about random artwork in the museum.  He was definitely one of the highlights of the trip.

While we were at the Louvre, I was stunned by its size.  It is huge!  Our guide said it has over 8 miles of galleries.  We had a tour that lasted a little over an hour and we saw many a quarter of a wing of the museum.  There is no way I had enough patience to make it through the entire museum.  It was really cool being there.

Later that day we had the opportunity to spend some free time shopping.  I, along with 3 others from our group, walked from the Louvre down the Champs Elysees.  We got to spend the afternoon exploring the street and investigating all of the expensive designer shops that reside there.  It is like the Time Square of Paris.  It is really long; trust me, I walked the entire thing!  It was during this afternoon of shopping that we had our first experience with pickpockets.  A girl on the metro tried to reach into a member of our group’s pocket.  If she would have thought through the situation more, she would have been successful, but she decided to try it on a reasonably empty train.  Paris was the only place we experienced issues with pickpockets.  Everywhere else had much more respectful people.

That night, we made our way to the Eiffel Tower.  After waiting in line to buy tickets, we boarded the elevator-like lift to the first and second levels.  We stopped at the second level, as several members raced up the stairs to meet us.  We got our pictures, and then got in line to make it to the top.  Once we made it, it was pretty amazing being able to see the entire city from one place.  Everything seemed so small.

It was while we were on the third and top level that an alarm started going off.  Not being able to speak French, and unable to understand what the English voice was saying, we didn’t panic.  We continued our business as usual.  No one was moving as if there were a real emergency, so we didn’t really worry about it.  When it was time for us to find our way down the tower, we stopped at the first floor.  To our surprise, it was like a ghost town.  There was absolutely no one there.  The alarm was still going off, and there was no one in sight.  Struck with confusion and panic, we didn’t know what to do.  Luckily, we discovered that the restaurant on this floor was still open, the place where we were all to meet.  Otherwise, we would have been stranded on the ground.  From this restaurant, we watched the sun set over the city before heading down to watch the Eiffel Tower sparkle in the darkness.  It was at this point that Paula handed us a strange pair of glasses.  These glasses split the light into different colors so every time the tower would flash, bright colors would erupt from it.

The next morning we went on a tour of several churches in the area.  It was sad that churches there had become places of tourism instead of places of worship.  I realized here that Europe wouldn’t be the same as America, in the sense of Christianity.  You don’t encounter churches everywhere that people regularly attend.  Churches in Europe were mostly historical locations.

That afternoon we embarked on our second real experience of the trip — the overnight train to Rome.  I definitely did not know what to expect going into it.  In my cabin was Julie, Emma, Emma’s mother, Emma’s brother Drew, and his friend Stephen.  It was definitely an adventure.  After arranging our luggage, we sat down and tried to relax in our small room.  It was three bunks tall, and I probably could have touched both side walls at the same side.  The widows didn’t open, and it was poorly air conditioned.  The boys claimed the top bunks and immediately began to set up their room for the night.  They decided to have a “mixer,” consisting of only the two of them of course.  Our rather peaceful ride through the countryside of France and Italy was interrupted by strange techno music and a flashing strobe light.  Luckily, their party didn’t last long, as both of them were asleep in a number of minutes.

It was also interesting walking on the trains.  You never know when you will hit curves and bumps and be easily thrown off of your feet.  Good balance is necessary when spending a long amount of time on a train.  When you enter these trains, make sure you are with people that you don’t mind spending a long amount of time with, because you are basically trapped with them for about 16 hours.  Luckily, my group was a rather fun clan to spend so much time with.

We stumbled off the train, after having been relatively motionless for the past day.  The weather was perfect — the sun shining, the temperature warm.  We arrived at our home for the next few days.  We stayed at a convent.  The nuns were really nice, and they had delicious breakfast!  Although, when you climb in the elevator to your room, you can only have one person and her luggage.  A friend and I climbed in the elevator at the convent with both of our suitcases and it dropped.  It was definitely one of the scariest moments of the trip.  After that experience, I didn’t ride in another elevator until it was necessary.  After dropping our things off, we climbed on our bus to “seize the day” — a phrase Paula used quite often.  We stopped at the Coliseum.  It was amazing!  Being immersed in so much history was a phenomenal experience.  We walked through the Forum and saw so many ancient buildings.  Being surrounded by structures that were several times the age of our country was so amazing!  It was almost a feeling unable to be expressed by words.  All of those buildings could only leave you with awe.  It was just amazing!

That night we walked around the city.  We saw the famous fountains of Rome as well as the Spanish Steps.  Rome at night is just like it is in the movies.  There are little, quaint, roadside restaurants on the back streets.  Live music is playing while the people eat.  Rome was the first place that I went where what you see in Hollywood is similar to what you see in real life.

The next day we got to tour the Vatican.  It was interesting to see all of the history of the church in one location.  The Sistine Chapel was definitely my favorite part of the Vatican.  It was different than I expected it would be.  It was a lot smaller.  I imagined it being long, but it was reasonably short.  It was one big room with a bunch of people standing around.  The details were so spectacular.  It was really cool to see all of these paintings and structures that I had only seen in pictures, in person.  Seeing all of them first-hand was definitely not something that I would trade for anything.

Everyone will tell you that the worst day for walking will be the first day in Rome, but for me, it was definitely this day.  My feet were hurting so much from walking in Paris.  Standing around in the museums made my feet really hurt.  When you go on this trip, make sure you bring good, comfortable shoes that you don’t mind walking in for an incredible amount of time.

It was also this day that I had my first taste of Italian gelato.  It is so delicious!  That day I had so much gelato.  That was definitely not one of my brightest ideas.  The fruity flavors were the best, though.  One of the only ways to make it through all of the heat and walking is with the gelato.  The food was definitely one of the best things about Italy.

The next day, we sadly had to leave this beautiful city to head to Florence.  Although it was beautiful and surrounded with lots of Renaissance history, Florence was not one of my favorite places.  It was old and rather dirty.  The buildings were tall and the roadways were narrow.  It was definitely very different from Rome.  I think the fact that we had just left Rome made this city seem less impressive that it would have been if we went to Florence first.  In the main parts of the city, it felt very old.

One redeeming factor of the first day in Florence was the safety pin game.  Although many gave up toward the end of the day, it was a very competitive thing toward the beginning.  Paula charged us to stay positive throughout the day.  We were each given a safety pin.  If we were heard saying the word “no,” or any form of it, our safety pin would be taken away by the one who caught us, much like as if one were at a baby shower or something.  It was very competitive at the beginning of the day and ended with our very own Emma McNally, victorious, with all of the pins dangling from her shirt.

Despite the rather old feel of the city, it was one of the best places for shopping.  For those going on this trip to buy souvenirs, Florence is definitely the first place that has things worth buying.  It is fun to bargain with the workers on the street.  It is really busy, so be sure to stay with a group.  The number of street shops is seemingly endless.  It is definitely a place worthy of checking out.

The second day we stayed in Florence, we were bused off to a Tuscan vineyard.  The experience here was beautiful.  We were given the opportunity to take a tour of the vineyard, as well as the castle on the property.  From the top, we could overlook the beautiful countryside.  This was followed by a horseback ride through the hills of the beautiful area.  After our ride, we all sat at a big table and ate an endless amount of fresh pizza.  It was so delicious!  This was definitely one of the high points of the trip.  We all got to sit at a table and discuss what we had seen and experienced throughout the trip so far.  We went back to the hostel relaxed and ready for the next day.

Venice was next on our itinerary.  This was the place that I was least looking forward to.  Having an irrational fear of boats, I was ready to get this day over with.  Although having a reputation of being a beautiful city, I didn’t find it very enjoyable.  The roads, if you can call them that, were all dark and not very well lit.  There was little fresh air.  The alleys were dirty.  And to my dismay, boats were everywhere!  There are no vehicles on the island.  The only way to get from one place to another is by walking or floating, neither of which, at this point, I was very excited about.  But, like Florence, Venice has another of the best shopping locations.  Authentic Venetian masks and blown glass are everywhere.  It was really fun to explore the street for an afternoon.

The day ended with the thing I was least excited for, the gondola ride.  I do admit that my fear of boats is somewhat irrational, but when it comes to tippy boats, I completely freak out.  I’m proud to say that I took the gondola ride well, despite my death grip on the side of the boat.  I may have been the last one on and the first one off, but I attacked my fear of boats head on.

The next morning we were woken up early in the morning, after very little sleep, in order to board our boat to catch our train.  The streets of Venice are why you want to bring a small suitcase.  You will be told several times to bring the smallest suitcases possible.  When you arrive in Venice, you will either regret your decision to not listen or be glad that you did listen.  Venice is covered in cobblestones and bridges.  After going up and down about ten flights of stairs, you will want a small suitcase!  One thing you don’t think about when packing is that you have to carry everything with you everywhere.  I had a duffle, a carry-on, and my day bag.  I was dying after carrying my bags over like five bridges.  So, when Mr. Rush tells you to bring a small suitcase, bring a small suitcase!

Finally after we finished our trek over the streets of Venice and boarded our boat, we arrived at the train station.  This day was a day full of train rides, all leading up to the climactic 4-minute train transfer.  We spent all day practicing getting on and off trains.  Everyone had their doubts about making the train in which we had four minutes to transfer.  It took us a good ten minutes at best to get off one train and on another.  Finally, when it was time for our train, we made it!  We had all been anxiously anticipating this train transfer, and, proudly, we caught our train.  That was one of the best feelings of that week.  We arrived in Rothenberg.

Rothenberg was definitely the most peaceful and enjoyable part of our trip.  We were given a full day to relax, sleep, shop, explore.  This old, walled town looked as if it came out of a Grimm’s Fairy Tale.  It was like we were in a movie.  The experience here was definitely one to remember.  We stayed in a small bed and breakfast owned by Klaus and his father.  They were so nice to us.  The breakfasts they served were delicious.  The rooms were nice and clean.  The town was very quaint and safe.  We were given the day to do what we wanted to do, free from chaperones.

That night we all met up to go on the Night Watchman tour.  That was so much fun.  He was hilarious and still gave us a good history of the city.  We walked around in the icy cold as he showed us unique parts of the city.  The tour with the Night Watchman was one of the highlights of the entire trip.

Germany was the country of bus rides.  We took busses everywhere.  Because of those busses, I learned to sleep in the most uncomfortable of positions.  They were reasonably enjoyable, as they were often entertaining.  Loud songs generally filled the back seat.  The silence was often filled with those singing in the rear of the bus.

We took a bus to Wittenberg.  This day was started off by stopping at Wartburg Castle.  The death hill was terrible, as the air was cold and the dirt road was steep.  Once at the top, we took a tour of the castle.  We learned about the history and got to see the room in which Martin Luther translated the Bible into German.  We then added onto our Luther experience by arriving in the town of Wittenberg.  We saw Martin Luther’s house and much of the town in which he lived.  The place in which we stayed was an old castle, and there was actually a historical dig going on in the back.

That night we all got a chance to sit around and play cards.  We listened to music and got a chance to talk about what we had seen, and for the first time on the trip we got the chance to really spend time together.  We just got to sit around and enjoy ourselves.

The next and final day, we headed into Berlin.  We started it off with a tour of the concentration camp.  It was really interesting to see where all of the devastation happened.  It was surreal to see the place where so many people died and were tortured.  Though much of the camp hadn’t survived over time, it was sad to see the buildings that still existed.  We walked through the same gate that the inmates there walked through.  It was strange to think that everyone knew what was happening in those camps, but everyone would pretend like they had no idea.  I found it interesting how the people in Rome, during the early days of this world, were searching for knowledge.  Everyone was looking to find answers.  When we were in Paris, we saw that people were making answers for things.  They got tired of wondering and created answers.  They wanted that knowledge.  And finally in Germany, once they had knowledge, like of what was going on in the world, they fought against and denied that knowledge.  They didn’t want to know what they did know.

After our tour of the camp, we got on our bus and drove all around the city for the rest of the day.  We stopped at popular points of interest such as the Berlin wall and Checkpoint Charlie.  It was definitely much more relaxing than much of the other tours had been.  We got to just sit and listen.  It was probably the most enjoyable tour of the trip.  Our guide was very energetic and excited about what he was telling us.  Berlin was definitely very interesting, and I wish we had more time there.

We set up our rooms in our hostel, only to be torn apart again in a short number of hours.  We woke up very early for our 7am flight to Paris.  From Paris, we headed back home.  I was definitely ready to step foot on the homeland.  The entire past two weeks felt like a fog.  Everything goes by so fast you aren’t given much time to appreciate what you saw.  Now, having been home for a month or so, I can fully appreciate everything I saw and learned and do hope to return one day.

Believe it or not, this is just a brief overview of what happened on the grand tour of Europe.  It obviously isn’t as glamorous as the itinerary makes it sound.  Don’t take this as me saying that the trip isn’t worth going on, because it definitely is.  But there will be times where you just have to go with the flow.  Sometimes the day isn’t planned out fully.  Complaining will get you nowhere.  In the moment, you may be in pain, or cold, or hot, but after it’s gone, all of the trouble that you went through was totally worth it compared to the experience you will take away from it.  One important thing I wish I took time to do on this trip was taking the time to thoroughly enjoy what I saw.  “Seize the day” as Paula says, but enjoy the moment.  The trip will be fast-paced, and there is absolutely nothing that can be done about that but take the time to take in what you see.  Everything from those two weeks is kind of foggy because I didn’t take the time to take in the details about every situation.  Also, take pictures of memories, not necessarily things.  I have so many pictures of buildings and art, but I have very few pictures of things that I really want to remember.  The Europe Trip is one that is really worth going on.  Being introduced to other cultures was an experience that I wouldn’t trade for anything.