I spend my last two weeks having the time of my life in Amsterdam and London. Amsterdam is now tied with Berlin for my favorite city in the world. I went with a couple friends from Maastricht, and we went to a Electronic Music Festival called Dance Valley, which was fantastic. I had never been to a music festival before, so going to a huge one in The Middle Of Nowhere, The Netherlands was pretty incredible. Also that weekend, my friends and I met local university students from Amsterdam. They hung out with us all night and showed us the best things to do in Amsterdam. I’ve heard it said that the Dutch are the nicest people in the world, and the people I met definitely back that statement up. 

After a last week of classes (and a final exam), I packed my room up, returned my bike to the rental place, and lugged my twenty thousand pound luggage down to the train station. It was very sad for me, but also strange because I was the only person in my program not looking forward to coming home. No offence Mom and Dad if you’re reading this. I loved the weeks I spent studying in Maastricht, and I regretted leaving, just as I was starting to be comfortable navigating the city. 

So, I took the train under the English Channel and arrived in London. I write for an entertainment news site in my spare time, and they were putting on an annual convention in London that weekend. The timing worked out incredibly, and so I spent my weekend frantically running around the convention hotel trying to cover different events and panels. I got to see friends who I hadn’t seen in years, and though exhausting it was easily one of the highlights of the entire trip. 

And now I’m home. I cried the whole time I was in the airport, not wanting to have my summer adventure be over. But now that I’m getting back into the swing of things I’ve adapted back into college-mode. Interestingly, I find myself homesick for Maastricht, or even Europe in general. I’m taking three different European studies classes this semester, and I teared up the other day just looking at a map of the continent and realizing how much of it I was able to explore. When I was abroad, I was fortunate enough to not experience homesickness. I might have just not been there long enough, but I did find a life-style that I loved and more people with similar values than I’d ever met anywhere else. I think that means that I’m in the right field of study (International Politics/International Agriculture), and I’m already looking for the next opportunity to travel abroad. 

So that sums up my adventures in Europe. Thanks to modern technology, I was able to take pictures and share them with friends and family at home. I was able to keep a blog as a record of my time spent, and I have social media to allow me to stay in contact with all the friends I made from Australia to Sweden to Brazil. But before I end my time as a geoblogger, I wanted to give some advice to anyone studying abroad in the future (Shout-out to my friend Marie who will be blogging from France this Fall!)

Barring illegal or dangerous activity, really try to break out your comfort zone. There were many times when I ended up having the time of my life after talking myself out of initial hesitation. In Berlin I didn’t want to go on the bike tour, but I ended up enjoying it so much that I rented a bike for the entire trip. In Amsterdam I was weary of going to a music festival in a different country, but it was unforgettably fun. Find ways to challenge your status-quo and really make the trip an adventure.

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, whatever your preference is for social media platforms, add everyone. The person you met waiting in line for lunch, the student sitting next to you in class, even the person who you talked to at a dance club that one time. It’s actually surprising how much seeing updates from these people keeps my memories of the experience alive, and even simply “liking” a status or a photo is an easy way to stay in touch with people. And on the plus side, when you’re on your next trip and you realize you’re in the same city as someone you know, you can easily find them to go have lunch with them. 

In the age of camera-phones, this may seem obvious, but I regret not taking more pictures than I did (and I took over 700 pictures). Everywhere you go, snap a picture. If you meet a group of people, take a selfie. That building looks cool? It should be on your phone/camera. Posting pictures online is an easy way to stay in touch with folks back home, and I promise there will be nights when looking through your thousands of images sounds like the most fun ever. You’ll never regret taking a picture, but you’ll definitely regret the ones you didn’t take.

This may be different for semester study abroads, but during my trip I traveled in every spare hour I could. Find something to do in the time after your classes and put a limit on facebook-checking time. I promised myself that I wouldn’t spend my time in Europe sitting in a dorm room, and I’m very glad that I actually got out to explore the area I was in. Plan trips well in advance for the best prices, and look up things to do in the area before you go. I highly recommend “Let’s Go: Europe,” which is a travel guide written by Harvard students specifically for study abroad travelers. Basically use your time so that you’ll have the most stories to tell when you come home. 

I already wrote an entire blog post on this, but staying in hostels is an incredible experience that no study abroad is complete without. Go make friends from Australia and explore the city with new friends. 

I’m sure once I publish this I’ll think of twenty more things to say. Now that I have access to a real computer instead of the iPad I’d been traveling with, I’ll be going back through the blogs and inserting photos to them. Even though I’m a bit sad to say that my trip has ended, I am so grateful to have been given the opportunity to have what is so far the best summer of my life. Thanks for reading about my adventures, and good luck to all the students who are heading out on their own. I’m incredibly jealous, and you’re about to have the best semester ever.