When maps don't work, you have to wander

The first time I visited Europe, it was for less than 36 hours. An opportunity to go to Brussels came out of nowhere, in the form of an e-mail that said: "You have to be there in two weeks". I did the math: This meant I needed to fly for over forty hours, from Caracas to Brussels, and only be there for a day and a half, with no time to see anything at all.
I said I was in.
So, the first time I crossed the Atlantic Ocean, was also the first I traveled outside my country alone, that I went to a country which language I didn't speak, and that I completely lost myself in a foreign city. I arrived on a Sunday afternoon, and my budget was almost non existent: I was relying solely on the accomodation and food that the organization would provide me, and coming from a country with a strict currency control, I was unable to get more than a few euros from my own pocket. I took the train from the airport to the city.
Surprisingly, I got off at the right station... but went out the wrong door and completely lost myself while attempting to get to the hotel.
This is the moment I always remember when people ask me why I travel with only a carry-on.
For about twenty minutes, I tried and tried and tried to understand the maps I had brought with me. I pride myself in being an organized person when it comes to travel, and I was prepared -or so I thought- and I had brought maps of all the locations where I needed to go.
I didn't understand a single one of them, and couldn't find any one of the places that I had thought would be good reference points. About a half hour later, I gave up trying to understand the maps and I walked.
And walked.
I went through many different states of mind. I distressed. I worried. I panicked. After a while, I just gave up worrying and started actually looking around. The signs I didn't understand, the graffitis, the buildings, the general atmosphere of the city. I felt I was in a place so old, with so much history and I felt the weight of this history like a shadow lurking over the beauty of the city.
This is the soul of the place, I thought. And it hit me, the feeling that even if I didn't manage to see any landmarks in that occasion, at least I would carry with me this sensation, the fleeting moment when I captured the soul of Brussels within my heart.
I walked for two hours until my hotel just popped in front of my eyes. But it was that day, after the exhaustion and the panic, that I learned the value of getting lost to find the unexpected.