I had my Walkman volume turned up high, but I could still hear my friend crying next to me on the bus. I was listening to U2’s new album, Achtung Baby, which would become one of my all-time favorites, and one I will always associate with that night. My friend and I were both wearing the powder blue shirts that were our uniform in an orchestra traveling through Europe. It was July 1992, and I was 15 years old.
The trip was grueling. It was three weeks of intense travel, rehearsal and performance. For most of us, this was the first time we had been away from home for this long, let alone on another continent. We stayed with families all over Germany, France, Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands and Austria, often staying for only one night. At one tour stop in Germany, my friend and I were placed on a collective farm and were forced to eat pizza topped with cheese that smelled like feet and to sleep in a room filled with giant spiders.
It was also a summer filled with magical experiences. We went to carnivals, beer gardens, house parties, monasteries, and museums. We ate amazing food we never would have known about otherwise (bread smeared with butter and topped with a bar of chocolate!). We made connections with people that would last a lifetime, but for my friend, that night was all about crying.
We were about halfway through the trip on an overnight ferry from Denmark to Germany. Earlier that day, after rehearsing for hours and hours, we performed a concert and immediately had to pack up and get on our bus to leave for the next town. Part of the travel experience was that our host families would pack us a lunch when we left, and my friend’s host family packed her a sandwich filled with carrots and raisins. That was the last straw. She lost it. Everyone else was trying to sleep, and my friend was crying about a carrot and raisin sandwich.
As the sun rose and we saw the coast of Germany on the horizon, she began to feel better. We went on to explore little towns in France, make many mistakes (saying, “S’il vous plait” for “Thank you”), and become the best of friends. Each little hurdle (“Am I eating brains?”, and “Should I really buy these gold lamé boots?”) was an important learning experience that opened our little Midwestern minds and created a lifetime love of travel. Since then, I have returned to Europe, visited Japan, Korea, Egypt, and more. I don’t intend on stopping anytime soon; it has been what I do since I was 15 years old.
