All in all, it was an adventure that crossed seven countries. I saw five West End productions. I throughly explored the British Museum on several occasions. I ate reindeer in Norway and haggis in Scotland. I was swept up in the crowd of spectators for the championship game of the Copa del Rey. I saw Gericault's "Raft of the Medusa," my favorite painting of all time. I saw a volcano strand travelers, including my parents. I walked from the Tower Bridge to the BT Tower at two in the morning. I drank Guinness in Dublin and "very cheap" wine in Florence. I made countless trips to the Green Man, and had a month's worth of subs-of-the-day. I walked a terrifying route to the worst bed I've ever slept on in Rome. I took photos, maps, and brochures, because I couldn't afford souvenirs. I toured distilleries, breweries, villas, castles, and prisons. I went on pub crawls, literary and otherwise. I saw monuments, ruins, mummies, and bizarre short films with mattresses falling out of buildings. I met an aspiring writer who hated snooker but loved John Wayne, a drunken Danish farmer headed to Australia, and a student from Mozambique who, having mastered French in France, was working in Ireland to learn English.
There are dozens and dozens of stories to tell, and they mix together in my mind in a stew, rather than a timeline, with different tales floating to the surface at any given moment.
I made memories, I made friends, and I made the grades necessary to receive credit for a semester of fun and adventure.
This may very well be the end of "Wandering Minds," but it is not the end of my writing. I've started a new project called Chronotopography, which will occasionally include fragments of my European adventures. I hope you'll join me there, faithful reader.
