Europe is the land where squirrels are replaced by pigeons and where status is no longer reflected in the whiteness of your picket fence or how lush your lawn is. Most of the time, exploring this land was like walking around without glasses on, surrounded by blurriness. You try to make intuitive guesses at what you are seeing and where you should be heading, but are mostly still confused. It’s like living as Mr. Magoo. But even with that handicap, it is truly amazing how much you can understand without actually understanding. You go with your gut navigating streets and put your senses to work. You always hope either logic or luck will be on your side, and fortunately for me, that was usually the case.

Since my scenery was constantly changing and so different from the US, I was anticipating just as much change to have passed at home. I am so accustomed to spotting minute differences that when I looked at my house with the same scrutiny, I was able to quickly discover the smallest alterations. Subconsciously, though, I was quite surprised at how little really changed. At the pace I was going, I was expecting to find purple trees growing or something drastically different from when I left to compare to my prior immersion.

I would say that I have a pretty good sense of direction, but one of the hardest things was following directions from a stranger on the street. Following the pointed finger can only get you so far and remembering a series of street names in another language is almost impossible. They end up being just another vocabulary word I need to memorize on top of so many more. Normally I would rely on that mental image that is somehow conjured to associate even the most obscure words in English but street names are so unfamiliar and out of context that I would have to ask for help again at each step of the way.I remember getting particularly lost in the “teeny-tiny” pueblo of Cuenca outside Madrid trying to find the bus station so I wouldn’t be stranded there over night during the festivities of Semana Santa. I still have no idea how to get to the station, but if it weren’t for my repeated inquiries–5 within one hour of travel, 30 minutes of which was “detoured”–I would never have made it home. I probably would have been better equipped with a map (inquiry number 3) but don’t fool yourself into thinking maps solve all problems. One shopkeeper (number 4) even walked a few blocks with me and nearly all of them told “todo recto!” which meant nothing to me then, but I now know (and won’t forget) that is the entirely unhelpful and ambiguous direction to “keep going straight!” Moral of the story: always be willing to ask for help and even more willing to give it to the weary traveler.