Final Thoughts about our 5-Week Trip

While we've been living abroad on and off for the past 7 years, this summer we took our longest trip to date. A few years ago, we spent 2.5 weeks in Thailand, but have never done anything like this last trip. I want to start off by saying I know how fortunate we are to be able to do this. We are really, very lucky!

**Please don't think that I'm complain-a-bragging. Yes, I know we are living in a different part of the world, getting to experience some really cool sh*t. However, this is our life. And, in life, we all want to share our experiences. Not everything is perfect. Yes, doing all of this neat stuff is really great. However, many times, life is hard, frustrating, and confusing. Sometimes, I think people only ever hear about the really great times - or in contrast, only the really bad times. So, please don't take this post the wrong way. Life is just life.

When planning for this trip, I thought five weeks would not be enough time. Five weeks traveling around Europe?! What a dream! This is true. It really was a dream! However, we learned some things about ourselves, each other, and our life in general on this trip. Here is our "what we learned" list, in no particular order:

1. Five weeks is too long of a vacation (travel) for us.

I don't know how some people travel the world indefinitely. Maybe it's because we were constantly moving from place place. We were were posted up somewhere for weeks at a time, maybe I would feel differently about it.

2. Five weeks is a long time to spend together - just the two of us.

Vltava River, Prague

We spend a lot of time together in our normal life - more so than many other couples I know. We live together, work together, and hang out on our free time together. We love each other, but man, we also need some time apart. That didn't really happen much this trip.

3. Water.

I know this isn't sparkling water, but you could have drunk it. Lake Zurich, Switzerland

In Europe, when you ask for water, you have to choose between mineral water or gas (sparkling water). I cannot stand to drink sparkling water. When at the store, no matter how close I look at the bottle to make sure it's not sparkling water, I ALWAYS end up with sparkling water! Haha! Thank goodness Zach likes it.

4. I really hate tourists.

The Louvre, Paris, France

I know, I was a tourist too. I just hate "other" tourists. People are just so oblivious to what's happening around them. Please don't stop mid-way walking down the stairs without notice just to take a picture. Move to the side.

5. The world is so big, yet so small.

Lunch with a college friend and her family. Amsterdam, Netherlands

There is so much to see and do. However, after talking to people, you find out just how small the world is. It's crazy to me that we have friends living in all parts of the world. It was great to meet up with a friend and catch up.

6. I am not allowed to plan our next big vacation.

Berlin Wall. Berlin, Germany

Zach gets to do that. He hates going from place to place. His idea of a great vacation is staying in one place, relaxing.

7. Zach enjoyed Europe (...traveling through Europe #goals).

However, he would much rather travel around Asia and experience that culture - maybe because it's so different than ours?

8. Beer.

Zurich, Switzerland

Beer is pretty universal in all cultures. We really enjoyed our beer - too much - on this trip.

9. We miss friends.

Hanging out with Joe. Rome, Italy

This one relates to number two. While in Egypt, we miss our friends from back home. (Even if we don't always reach out, we still think about you a lot!) However, we have (good) friends here that we love doing things with. While traveling, it was just the two of. We missed having friends around, terribly. Yes, we met people, but it just isn't the same.

10. Schoolwork is a bummer sometimes - so says two teachers.

Hotel. Prague, Czech Republic

We both started graduate school this summer, so we had to make sure our homework got done...on time. There were days where we stayed in the room most, if not all day instead going out and doing things. We tried to do that only one time in a city. We get new assignments every week, so we tried to do most of our homework in a day (or at least get the bulk of it accomplished) so that we didn't have a ton of homework to do each night.

11. We've gotten really out of shape.

We stayed at the same hotel at the beginning and end of the trip. We were amazed at how far we thought we had walked those first couple of days compared to the end. That is one thing I miss about living in Korea - we walked so much more.

12. Planes still scare the crap out of me every once-in-a-while.

Sometimes, I get these death-coming fears that "that's it"! This will be the last moments of my life. It usually doesn't last long, and I don't panic, but the thought crosses my mind.

13. I packed too much!

Getting our lost luggage! Rome, Italy

I really thought I was doing really well. I packed everything for the trip in a 35-liter backpack. Yet, there were still some things I could have left at home.

Europe Vacation - Zurich

Our next stop was Zurich. To be honest, I knew nothing about Zurich. I only knew it was in Switzerland and going to Switzerland seemed awesome. Switzerland, by the way, is country #19 together. I should have done a little more research about the place, though, before we went. We did have some friends who went a couple of weeks before us and informed us that it was expensive. While we completely believed them, I didn't know just how right they were.

Again, I really knew nothing about Zurich. After doing some research, I found that most of the "tourist sites" were within walking distance of each other downtown. There was also a mountain that we could go up. Perfect! It wouldn't take long to sightsee. That meant that we could spend some time working on homework and not feel too guilty.

Because of our friends, we learned that our EU SIM cards would not work in Zurich. Bummer! I thought we would be able to roam, but that was not the case. Oh well. We've gotten by before. Plus, airports usually have free wifi. Before getting to Zurich, we pulled up a map and directions of how to get to our hotel from the airport. We went from the airport to the main metro station (with some slight aggravation). Once we got to the main metro station, we were really confused about tickets. They are like Paris in that you pay by zones. We didn't know what zone we were in and didn't want to spend more than necessary. We looked at the map and realized that we weren't really that far from our hotel, so we decided to walk. It was a nice afternoon anyway. It turns out that the hotel was a little more than one mile away.

On the walk, we passed by a Burger King. We looked in to see what a meal cost (a good indication of what prices were going to be like). The Swiss Franc is pretty much 1:1 to the USD. As we were walking by, we saw that the average price for a value meal was about 15 Francs!

It turns out that the metro was super easy and convenient! About 100 meters from our hotel was a stop and it even a person selling tickets instead of just a machine. The lady we dealt with was super helpful and saved us more money than if we tried to buy the tickets ourselves.

Downtown Zurich is picturesque. It's so clean and quiet for being a major city. This "big" city is almost quaint. We walked by a few churches but decided not to go inside. I think after seeing St. Peter's Basilica, I would have been a little disappointed. We did see St. Peter's Church (Zurich) which has the largest tower clock face in Europe. So that was cool. We took a stroll by the river and stopped to have a brat and beer. It turned into an afternoon of people watching.

On another day, we took a gondola up Uetilberg Mountain. Our plan was to walk 1.5-2 hours to the top of Uetilberg, but we never made it. Once we got up as far as the gondola went, there was a restaurant with a nice view. We decided to spend an hour or two there drinking over-priced beer and apple strudel. We did talk about 20 minutes toward the peak but turned around and took the gondola down again! Haha! It was a beautiful day, but we just were not in the mood to hike.

Zurich was a relaxing place for us. However, it is not a place we need to return to. However, I do want to return to Switzerland to experience the Alps.