A Love Letter to Metz

Written by Swati

April 21st, 2023

I’m sitting in Fox Coffee, the buzz of a pianist tapping away keys in the background, business men in meetings, friends catching up over coffee, and babies crying meld together, creating a harmony of chaos. Life is about finding peace in the turmoil, focus in the wreckage. Periodically taking a sip of my chai latte and glancing up at a man swiping on an iPad in John Lennon-esque glasses and another shuffling a handful of sketches in the corner, I feel the tension release from my shoulders as my vision clears. This must be the French joie de vivre. I finally feel it. I felt it so quickly in every other country, in every other city but I fought a battle with Metz during my first few months here. It’s a bit bittersweet to reach this conclusion so close to the end, but somewhere along the trek through muddy pathways and tapping excess rainwater out of my shoes, I fell for Metz in my own way. 

Metz kicked me when I was down, trickled rainwater into my teary eyes, then baked me chocolate eclairs, poured me a hot cup of tea and ran a hand through my hair, pressing a menu-etudiant in my hands when I had long forgotten about eating. Metz is a mother, taking my rage with a gentle hand, welcoming me back with warm, albeit misty and rainy, arms.  

Metz is taking off the mask, letting the facade go for a moment, wandering through a book festival and finding authors from different corners of the continent gathered in one place. Metz is knotted eyebrows and narrowed eyes bumbling through French conversations, picking out a few intelligible words and gesturing wildly in grocery stores. Metz is kind strangers with understanding eyes, encouraging smiles. It’s wondering who’s lying in intense games of One Night, suspecting new friends and questioning trust, observing strategy in a fierce game of Go. It’s slathering Nutella and strawberries into homemade crepes. 

In its own way Metz is both comfortable and suffocating, beautiful and boring, a calm pool of water next to the tumultuous sea. She is a baseline, a sanctuary, a suburban hideaway tucked away in the middle of madness. She is the last date before a breakup, wondering if the spark is still there. Whispered conversations over coffee, staring emptily at the ground, irreconcilable differences. Freedom from the chains of love or imprisonment in your solitude? Pick your poison. 

Metz is closing your eyes in the rare moments of sunlight, drinking up the precious, fleeting warmth. Metz smiles sadly as you grit your teeth, scribbling out half-hearted notes in class while staring out the window, always in wait for what’s next. She is a curious fusion of exhausted parents and spirited youth. Leather jackets and black puffer jackets populate the buses, dogs scamper next to their owners, teenagers dot the sidewalk, gasps blended with “c’est pas vrai!” and “mais non!” color their heartful conversations. 

Metz is now a piece of home, a shard of my heart, a worn couch cushion, every layer in a croissant. She is a complicated blend of chai, all of the emotions seeping together, each finding their own place in the mix.

Let’s Talk About You and Me

Written by Swati

April 14th, 2023

I realize now that I have fully sung the praises of every European city and country that I’ve been to and from the bottom of my heart, I believe every single word. But I also want to pay special attention to the bad days. The days you need a hug, the days you need your best friend on the phone to tell you she misses you and she’s just as proud of the person you’re becoming as you are, the days you wonder if you’ve changed at all after 17. 

At the end of the day, Europe won’t fix your problems. Studying abroad won’t fix your problems. Moving out of your house won’t fix your problems. Starting a new job won’t fix your problems. This is probably because most of your problems live in your head. Or because you’ll trade certain problems for other ones. And if you play your cards right, dealing with those new problems will instill in you the fight to learn how to fix or learn how to live with your other problems. Meeting new people and working with new personalities while planning trips is hard, but venturing out on your own and creating your own itineraries is also hard. Only doing homework and never spending time with people is hard, but spending all of your time socializing and falling behind in class is also hard. That which you are actively choosing not to do, indirectly chooses what you are doing.

The two most central conflicts at this point in the semester I think are balance and fighting the inner self, or rather teaching the inner self. Personally, I’m only on campus for 48 to 72 hours at a time. I got infinitely lucky with my schedule and have been able to commit a majority of my time to traveling, seeing the world, and constantly putting myself in controlled but new, and at times uncomfortable, situations to see how much I’ve grown. Hearing stories of other group trips and travels helps put a lot of things into perspective in terms of interpersonal conflict and interpersonal relationships. Change starts in your head. A change of scenery was what I needed to kickstart my journey as a young adult, but this arc has been a long time coming and I truly believe if you go into an experience knowing what you want, and having support in those decisions, you’ll get what you want, if not for what you need. Regardless of what happens, you’re growing. Regardless of what happens, you’re learning. And everything you pick up throughout the course of your life and every lesson you learn rears its head again later. I will say, the time comes in which you need to reach out to others to get support and it is my greatest wish that everyone is met with the same warmth when they need help as when they don’t. It’s difficult to heal, but it is worse to stay hurt. And to get past anything, the only way around is through. 

It is too cruel a world to hurl abuse at yourself. Be patient, be kind, and be gentle. It’s easier said than done of course, but is it not in our blood to fight and go in search of difficult victories? We are now creeping up to the end and I feel nothing but such intense joy for giving myself the permission and space to follow my heart and find wonder in the beauty of the world. So much good exists if only you remember to look for it. The sun comes in only if one remembers to open the blinds.Let’s Talk About You and Me

Monthly Musings #3: Make the Week(end)s Go Slower

Written by Swati

April 4th 2023

3 months, 9 countries, a lifetime of memories. Enough titles from bookstores to last me the next few years. Can we believe how quickly the semester has gone by? I’m trying to grasp on to the ends of every moment, but find them slipping through my fingers. This semester feels like sand on the weekends, shattered glass during the weeks. It’s difficult to recuperate from travel and the unwelcoming arms of classes on Mondays wrap around us like steel arms. The seconds pass like ice melts in the winter, my fingers creak over laptop keys. 

This month was growing pains. This month was hitting the wall, running my fingers over concrete, slipping over lakeside rocks, pulling myself out of knee-deep water with a laugh. Sometimes the world laughs at you, sometimes you laugh at yourself alongside it. I’ve learned it’s best not to take yourself too seriously in moments of distress. Somehow we find a way.  Somehow we will find a way. This month was train rides, observing strangers from toe to head, blinking away stray tears. This month was girls’ night in tiny kitchenettes, tender chicken cutlets over sauteed broccoli, giggling to the Mamma Mia soundtrack. This month was tears of affection, tears of exhaustion, tears of confusion, tears of uncontrollable joy. This month was fighting with the world, finding out that it won’t always fight back. This month was throwing my arms around strangers turned to sisters, chasing after stars at dusk. 

In Portugal I learned to admire. Literary landmarks, detailed porcelain tiles, the sun’s gentle caress. Life is sweet where the weather is nice. Or where people make the weather feel nice. And maybe that’s the secret to it all. In Belgium, I learned of the sweetness of simplicity. Chocolate shops, bookstores, and walks along canals. In Ireland I learned to love big. Throw my arms around the world and feel what it’s like to have it wrap me in its warmth and chaos. I learned to ask small questions, await big answers. I learned to do the things I thought I would hate just to give it a chance, sometimes hectic pays off. And in Switzerland I learned to never control my awe of things big and small. The relief of reunion, a newly bloomed spring tree, a groomed dog’s soft coat, a father gently guiding his toddler by the Swiss riverside, a necklace for my best friend. Ducks swimming forward, looking you right in the eye, telling you a secret. This month I learned to skip through empty streets and spin around my room at midnight. Falling is another way to learn how to fly. I learned how to lean on the people around me and found comfort in the similarity of our experiences. I took off the rose colored glasses and realized the petals were beneath my feet the whole time. Everything comes back, but youth never does, not in quite the same form at least. If I could do anything, I’d stop time. I’d freeze it now, as I write this and look back on memorabilia that already means the world to me. I’d freeze it every second of this semester. I’d make these past few months everlasting. But the fact that they are fleeting makes them all the more precious. 

From London With All My Love

Written by Swati

April 13th 2023

London, London, London, how I truly love you. Being in London is like slipping on your old favorite shoes, flipping through your favorite childhood book, finding a sweatshirt that fits just right. Wandering through Kensington and Westminster, I felt my heart fill up with the greatest sense of belonging. London bookstores feel like a boost of glucose straight to your bloodstream. A perfect mix of classics and currents, well-loved second hand treasures and mint condition newly printed novels. So many cornerstone female and feminist authors hail from these streets: Virginia Woolf, the Bronte sisters, and Mary Wollstonecraft. I spend many hours digging through bookshelves to find their stories and muses. Life in London is a thrill, it’s a city that’s exciting, it’s a city that’s inviting. Londoners, in my experience, also went out of their ways to help me. At the British Library, a man drew me a map to his favorite bookstores nearby and told me to be safe in the protesting Parisian streets when I Ieft England. Two elderly women stopped me on my march to the train station to let me know my backpack was open and made sure nothing fell out. Every upbeat pop song that dances through my head feels just right in the city. The brick architecture, the newly restored Big Ben, the London Bridge that is not actually falling down. It feels like the buzz of New York with the charm of Paris. As soon as I stepped off the platform at St Pancras International Station on Thursday morning I put on the rose colored glasses of life and didn’t take them off for six full days.

I spent my first and last day in and around books, The British Library, where I registered myself for a library card (my favorite souvenir!), and three bookstores, Waterstones, Judd Books, and Collinge and Clark for collectors. Taking the day to settle in and pop into shops while strolling the streets was the perfect beginning to my London adventure. I ran into the Thursday afternoon street market by University College London and found an Indian street food stand run by a Tamil man, from the same hometown as my mother, who made chicken curry that tasted the same as my grandfather’s. I spent hours flipping through old novels and found books written by the philosopher I met on the train in Italy. Over the next few days I saw the London Eye, Big Ben, Kensington and Buckingham Palaces, walked the streets of Soho and Chinatown, spent a morning in Wales, fell hard for the Phantom of the Opera, and indulged in English breakfasts and tea.

London is not just a place, it’s a feeling. High tea with delicate sandwiches, flower petals falling between pages, sun sparkling on the Thames. My mother says I fell in love with London before I even knew what love was. And after this past weekend, I can fully attest to that. I love people watching on the Chube, despite how slow it is. I love afternoon strolls in the Kensington Palace gardens, the fields gently caressed by clusters of spring flowers. I love walking down the streets and seeing black trench coat-clad shoulders and simple leather bags, haphazardly layered gold necklaces. I love the hum of traffic along Portobello Road, the jewelry stalls in Camden Market, the busking in Covent Garden. I like to think London taught me what love is. As soon as I stepped off the platform, it was at first sight that I fell. Dearest mum, you could’ve made me English. What a shame. Never mind the past. London, I will be back. For a year or two at the very least, the better part of this lifetime if I’m lucky. 

You Get the Best of Both Worlds

Written by Swati

March 30th 2023

At dawn we break. Well at dawn I break to go find my tour bus through Wild Rover Tours for my day trip to the Cliffs of Moher! Our tour guide is effectively an enthusiastic elementary school teacher, sprinkling in fun facts about Ireland and Irish history throughout the tour and her light hearted commentary distract from the fact that we have a 3 hour bus journey starting at 7am to reach the cliffs. We take a quick pit stop at the Obama Plaza, a gas station dedicated to Barack Obama, who apparently is a descendant of the Moneygall Obamas. When we make it to the cliffs around 11, I’m struck by the pure wonder of the thrashing waves against cliffs that go on for miles. I only have 2 hours there before we head off to Galway, so I immediately start down the path to the right. 

Let me say it here first and foremost: I’m really not a nature gal. I’d rather spend a day in a bookstore or art museum than go on a hike, but I wouldn’t trade this experience for the world. I endured snow, rain, wind, and slivers of sunshine at the cliffs and every minute felt like a new adventure. Even if I took my eyes off of them for a second, I’d gasp when they entered my line of sight again. I felt a sense of camaraderie with fellow travelers who were whipped by the strong wind and fought against nature to witness its beauty. It felt like walking through a wind tunnel, but being rewarded with more waves crashing in at every stopping point. The Cliffs of Moher truly feel like a wonder of the world. I walk my way over to the end of the official path and find a castle at the highest point. Arms outstretched, it feels very Titanic, but I say a little “I’m king of the world!” in honor of Leonardo DiCaprio’s legendary film and start the cautious trek up the treacherous path. The unofficial walking paths to the edge of the cliffs aren’t technically endorsed by the tourism office, but there are safety precautions and a trail, so I take the leap and make it about halfway up either end before reaching puddles too large to cross. 

I eventually make my way back to the bus begrudgingly for the last leg of the trip to Galway and our tour guide teaches us some words in Irish and tells us of Irish hospitality. She tells us it used to be illegal to refuse housing to a traveler in Ireland and that food and entertainment, including an evening of  storytelling and songs, were expected. I find Irish hospitality and gentleness to strike a chord in my heart. There’s such an affection for new people hidden in their sing-songy accents. When we reach Galway, I find another bookstore I want to visit and pick up a boba, a box of chocolates, and a Claddagh necklace on the way there. The Claddagh ring, a ring with a symbol of a heart held by two hands, has a unique history in Galway where women wore them on either hand and turned in different directions based on their relationship status. If it was worn on the left hand facing outwards, it meant a woman was single and ready to mingle. Left hand turned in meant she was seeing someone. Right hand turned outwards meant she was engaged and right hand turned inwards meant she was married. The ring’s code was a way for men to approach women on a night out, which the tour guide joked helped the awkward Irishmen land dates. On the way to the coast, I grab a box of fish and chips, and an order of oysters, to enjoy a seaside picnic. I’ve never had oysters before, and while I doubt I’d go out of my way to eat them again, I enjoyed the new experience and the splash of lemon juice. We culminate the tour with a round of old Irish pub songs that she sings with hints of melancholy and cheer at sunset and we part with a list of Dublin recommendations. I snapped a picture, but knew that the tour wore me out and I had a flight to catch in 10 hours back to Luxembourg.

Upon my arrival in Luxembourg the next morning, I felt like I’d just woken up from a dream. Even looking back at the pictures now, I can’t believe I saw the cliffs with my own eyes. And I had 2 full days to rest and recuperate, a first for the semester! If this stat homework and physics lab ever get done, I really get the best of both worlds this weekend.

Books, Books, Books, and.. Oh What Was It? Oh, Yeah Books!

Written by Swati

March 27th 2023

(Trinity College Old Library)

Another weekend. Another solo trip. Except this time to the incredible city of Dublin and to the Cliffs of Moher! At this point, I consider my travel life a pendulum. When I travel alone too much, I crave company, and after a few hours of company, I’m ready to set out on my own again. These past two weekends I paired and trio’d off with small groups to Germany and Belgium but I was able to snag round trip tickets to Dublin for just 2 days at around 40 euros on Ryanair! Truly the best of both worlds as I’ve been needing some time and space away from campus and the recent onset of everyone collectively hitting the wall, but also rest and time to recuperate from the go-go-go lifestyle. 

I love solo travel. I truly do. Gosh it’s so romantic. It’s so freeing. It’s incredible, it’s lovely. It makes the globe feel like a bead. Spin the top and go where your finger lands just because you can. And it provides so much more opportunity to seek out hidden alleyways and street murals. Every minute feels like a movie. While I didn’t have nearly enough time in the beautiful city of Dublin, the time I spent there was magic. Several of Dublin’s historic tourist sites are going through a period of refurbishment, the Dublin Castle and the Trinity College Old Library, but I still appreciated the ability to see them in transition. 

The Trinity College Old Library and Book of Kells were historic, beautiful, and so calming. Worth the 15 euro entry fee? Maybe debatable. But when I entered that room, I knew there was nowhere else I’d rather be. A beautiful oak room filled floor to ceiling with the oldest copies of Irish history (but not currently, they’re in the process of tagging and scanning sections of books for their digital collection) and busts of historical figures like Shakespeare, Plato, and Ada Lovelace. I sat on the corner of a wooden bench and just took it all in. I don’t consider myself much of a giftshop person but I made an exception at Trinity College when I found the most beautiful copy of ‘Dubliners’ by James Joyce, a notable author from Ireland. I couldn’t resist the gold lined pages and robin’s egg blue hardback cover. And the Irish bookstores! They’re truly a world of their own. I dreamt of being a writer for so long as a child and literary cities strike a chord in my heart. It’s why I harbor such affection for Edinburgh, whose many famous sites are in honor of Sir Walter Scott, a household Scottish writer, and Porto, for their famous bookstore and literary sites throughout the city. 

Sprinkled throughout Dublin are gems of bookstores and storytellers. I popped into The Winding Stair and picked up a copy of Letters to A Young Poet and browsed through Books Upstairs, another bookstore right next to my hostel. It was quite freeing to wander these English bookstores and stop myself from buying books not out of a lack of understanding but out of respect for my credit card. I’ve been having the opposite problem in Italy, Portugal, Belgium and France where I pick up copies of books and translate the pages individually, attempting to piece together stories before realizing that I can’t keep collecting books that I can’t effectively understand. Every bookstore proudly boasts copies of books written by James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, and WB Yeats, three of the most notable Irish authors. I was also pleasantly surprised to find Salley Rooney, the author of ‘Normal People’ amongst the Irish bestsellers section! The next morning I woke up at 6am for my Cliffs of Moher Day Tour! I had originally planned to spend both days of this short trip in Dublin, but I booked a Cliffs of Moher Tour through GetYourGuide at the recommendation of another group from GTE who went to Ireland last month. Best. Decision. Ever. Stay tuned to find out more!

Where to Rest My Eyes

Written by Swati

March 25th 2023

With UNESCO World Heritage sites on every street corner and historic memorabilia in every city, it’s difficult to give everything the attention and care it deserves. Parts of Europe have developed history and culture over centuries, some over thousands of years in the case of empires, with preserved artifacts marking some of humanity’s most groundbreaking accomplishments. Especially in cities in France, Italy, and Germany, dozens of museums populate towns, and I found myself struggling knowing where to put my eyes. Behold: the black door. This black door found in the room next to Michelangelo’s David caught my eyes in Florence. After about a half hour sat in a corner analyzing the realistic curves and features of David, Googling what he means and why people travel across seas and over mountains to see him, I found myself wandering over to the next room: half in awe, half in mental exhaustion. I stumbled upon the door. It was in the least ostentatious corner in the museum that gave me reprise from the lifelike marble and classical instruments throughout the museum. I found myself wondering what secrets lie beyond. Is it an uncovered exhibition? A storage of old masterpieces? More likely than not it’s a room filled with dusty chairs and stanchions to guide lines of people, but the possibility of something exciting kept me there for a moment longer. 

Guides and walking tours are great wells of knowledge in new cities, and they have information that many cannot amass during their first visit to new places, but it can often get exhausting trying to follow the routes and stay interested in old fun facts and historical tidbits. Don’t get me wrong, the right tour guides and the right instructors can interest you in just about anything, but we all tire of the same things at some point.

In order to break up the monotony, I signed up for a chocolate making class on a whim after talking to a pair of girls on Spring Break in my Bruges hostel. After a few days of admiring architecture, I started to wonder just what else there is to do in new cities any more. Of course there are the local delights: food, desserts, tourist attractions, but after nearly three months of walking up and down streets, you tire a bit. In my head, one thing never gets old: books and waterways. I find water the most relaxing part of nature, and I think the best when I watch waves lap over each other, but to break up the routine I wanted some new experiences that are specific to a place. The chocolate making class ended up being the most exciting part of my Belgian excursion this past weekend. Two and a half hours of sneaking bites of hardened chocolate and swoops of ganache, I was in heaven. I was in a class of fifteen, including a couple from London and about a dozen Americans studying abroad in different parts of Europe. Our instructor was the perfect amount of informative, encouraging, and hilarious, which encouraged me to sign up for more experiential days on my upcoming trips! I hope you’re looking forward to hearing about the Cliffs of Moher in Ireland and paragliding in Switzerland soon. 

I realize now that we are hitting the point of exhaustion. Somewhere along the way, streets blur together and the beauty and excitement of seeing new places wanes. It’s not that travel isn’t the most liberating and exciting thing in the world, it’s that the real world checks back in upon our weekly arrivals in Metz and sooner than later homework turns to exams turn into projects that were assigned weeks in advance. It’s later than I thought, with only 6 weekends left. I thought I would tire of the nearly full-time travel sooner. It must be the spring blooms, welcoming in the sunshine, putting on a parade for her. With the strikes and travel delays, we’re wearing out in transit, and there can be too much of a good thing. Sundays that used to be spent wandering cities, expecting to take the last train back, have turned into getting to the train station first thing in the morning and crossing my fingers that all legs of my journey still exist. But hardships wither in the face of comfort. And updating friends on the wild transit schemes and making it back safely are more things I can look forward to.

Curating a Sense of Self

Written by Swati

March 24th 2023

Much of our twenties culminate to a strong sense of self, or a person we come to recognize as we grow older. Some people are known as “too much,” having opinions on every little thing, whereas others are so easygoing and blend in so well they barely exist at all. The overarching light behind studying abroad is the ability to pick up stories and experiences from different corners of Europe. From chatting in pre-med to seat partners in chocolate making classes in Belgium to fumbling through a French conversation with women from Montreal along the Portuguese riviera, pretty soon we’ll all be friends of friends that cover the globe. 

In Florence I found a quote by Doris Lessing that has stayed with me over the past few weeks, “Pensa in modo sbagliato, se vuoi, ma pensa con la tua testa.” Think wrong if you will, but think for yourself. 

Doris Lessing was also a citizen of the world. Born to British-Zimbabwean parents in Tehran, Iran, she lived in Southern Rhodesia (modern-day Zimbabwe) before moving to London, where she spent the rest of her life writing. It’s ironic that I found a British writer’s quote to be the most moving amongst a wall of quotes from international authors in an Italian bookstore, but the phrase is something I hope to keep by my side for a long time. When you make mistakes, they are yours. When you triumph, those victories are yours. Autonomy and developing a strong sense of self with opinions and desires is the most freeing part of becoming an adult. You are free to explore, free to examine, free to think, and free to observe as you please. Take advantage of that, especially in a place like Europe, where you are peering in through the looking glass. Soon enough, French and the French lifestyle will fit like a comfortable second skin and you will go in search of more adventure. 

Break off from your group for a few hours and do the things no one will join you for: museums that only you find interesting about cars or bratwurst, a hike through the hills, feeding birds in a park, reading religious text in a new language. Some things are just yours and you’ll grow more as a person by fostering that love instead of trading it in for that which others find more acceptable or traditionally fun. 

I recently read “Everything I Know about Love” by Dolly Aderton, a British journalist, whose quippy memoir warns about the lack of a sense of self. She writes about decades of her party lifestyle that culminate in years of therapy where she grapples with figuring out who she really is. Which anticipates the thought: why do we waste so much time waiting to figure out what it is we like and who we are? I can say with full confidence that I came to Metz to break out of the monotony of my life on the main campus, but also to be away from peering eyes. I didn’t want the noise of competition, drawl about internship compensation, and irritation of far too many assignments to reasonably complete to distract from the fact that I will never be in a position to drop everything and adventure ever again. 

Think deeply about who you are, and who you want to be. Run amuck, strike up a conversation with a stranger (during daylight hours and in the vicinity of others-please!), throw flower petals and skip rocks, wave at dogs on the street, and fall so incredibly in love with your life that it physically tears at your heart to have to change it. 

What a wild and wonderful thing it is to be you in a world with millions of possibilities and millions of universes in which if one thing changed, your whole life would look different. In the most cheesy, 2012 Tumblr way possible, be yourself because everyone else is taken. Thanks, Oscar Wilde!

L’Oiseau Bleu

Written by Swati

March 15th, 2023

That which we go in search of will never be found. But that which we choose to find in the world around us, appears more easily. Something I heard from my philosophy professor freshman year that changed my mindset: The opposite of depression is not happiness, it is purpose. As humans we must always be headed in a direction, any direction at all. We must be going after things, not as a means to an end, but focusing on the journey.

A fairytale that I recently learned about is L’Oiseau Bleu, an old Belgian tale about two impoverished children on a quest looking for a blue bird, the secret to happiness. After a long adventure to different worlds, searching, capturing, and losing different birds, they find the bird waiting back for them in their own home. 

Why is it that the further we chase, the less we catch? The more we search, the less we find? I know very little about manifestation but I can say that the general improvement of my quality of life is due to a habit I developed thanks to one of my very best friends. When I first started college in the midst of the pandemic, I was truly alone for the first time, I didn’t know what to do with myself and all of the time I had to sit and think led me to some dark mental corners. But a beacon of light came through one of my best friends who encouraged me to always look for one good thing in every day, even just opening the blinds and letting the light in or slipping on a pair of flip flops to run to the dining hall. And some days it was difficult, I’d report back to her with dismal news. “Today it was raining and the dining hall ran out of fries and ice cream and every possible edible thing I could possibly imagine putting in my body.” I’d conclude it was an awful day and move on. “But?” She’d gesture. “Well I saw a flower on my way to class,” I’d relent finally. “I’m sure it was beautiful.” And just like that the sunshine in my heart was restored.

And days when I couldn’t possibly find anything she’d start off instead. “Today I got a milkshake and a nugget meal from Chick Fil A!” Finding joy in the simple things and looking for small victories which once seemed so difficult now appeared on their own. But it wasn’t because I went chasing after them, it was because it felt like they had appeared serendipitously, a miracle of their own. It’s tough to say after so many weeks of constant praise, but bad days happen everywhere, even in Europe. But it’s a mindset shift to have a sequence of bad events that don’t culminate to making for a bad day.

Just this week I had a terrible few hours where I lost one of my gloves (a recent heartbreak as they were my favorite purchase and a fur-lined pair from Edinburgh), had my umbrella inverted by the biting wind, a series of very confusing lectures that I couldn’t even pretend to follow, I was thirty minutes late to my physics meeting, and the constant rain seeped into my boots. Just when I thought it couldn’t get worse a pounding headache settled in between my eyes. But right then I looked up and caught one of the most beautiful sunsets in Metz all semester. Watching the colors turn right before my eyes felt like magic. Recently, a travel buddy asked me if optimism is natural or learned. And my first instinct was to say it was natural. I was always told I was a pleasant child, smiling, and trying to brighten the atmosphere, but it wasn’t until further reflection that I’d say it’s more learned than anything. Focusing on the bad zooms in on the bad and focusing on the good zooms in on the good. Though your situations are the same, the mindset at which you approach them, and thus the conclusions you reach from them, are inherently different because of a change in processing. 

Even when we were stuck in the train station for hours due to a series of cancellations and when we spent an extra hour on the metro, small pieces of good come out of everything.

Fill your life with good things. Or fill your life with things and see them as good. 

Anywhere you are, you are the same person. You look at the world with the same eyes, and if something is to change, it must change within you to change outside of you. New locations, new cities, and new architecture might provide some refuge or excitement but at the end of the day the biggest change starts with you. And the blue bird can be found, perched right on your shoulder.

Saudade

Written by Swati

March 9th 2023

I’m fully convinced that people who live in places with nicer weather are better people. Never have I been smiled at on the street so often or found street musicians playing love songs from the early 2000s as the sun set. In the coastal cities of Portugal: Porto, Aviero, and Coimbra I see such an affection and pride for life. Life is art and art is the simplicity of life. Pastel de nata with a glass of fresh squeezed orange juice first thing in the morning, the laughter of children tinkling in the background. In Portugal I see public displays of emotion for the first time in Europe, couples dance in the streets, babies waddle up to drop change in open guitar cases, others stroll by on daily walks, laughter in their eyes. How could life even be that bad with a protective blanket of sunshine over you?

I see a woman swipe away tears on the train to Aveiro, a connection on my way to Coimbra for a day trip out of Porto. White wired headphones in, I can only imagine what was floating through her ears. An old love song, reminders of a former flame, or a voicemail from a loved one thousands of miles away. Gentle waves lap at the shore out of the window, tenderness clouds her face. When our eyes meet she sends me a sad smile and I wonder what realizations she’s having on this train ride, where she’s headed, and what decisions she’s made recently that led her up to this moment. Accompanied only by a simple black tote bag, worn leather heels, and a swipe of red lipstick, she could be headed off to see the lake and decompress after a long work week or mourn a loss in her starched black dress pants. Maybe she hugged someone for the last time or hasn’t seen the sea in years and the fondness of it all brings tears to her eyes. This must be saudade. The longing and melancholy for something lost, something that may have never existed. 

Across from me a French couple does crossword puzzles together. If I was feeling any more adventurous I would’ve struck up a conversation but I’m too wrapped in scribbling down answers to Physics practice tests, sneaking in glances at the sea, and making up backstories for my fellow train dwellers. I love catching people in the midst of existence. Running to catch the bus, nodding off on early morning transportation, caught in the rain, burnt tongues from hot coffee, sticky fingers from melted gelato, widening eyes when realization hits. Struck by the humanity of it all I made the last minute decision to stop off in Aveiro and spend some time by the water before taking the next train out to Coimbra two hours later. With the lake a 30 minute walk away, I took a waterside stroll, saw Aveiro’s salt fields, and sat by the pier. On the way back to the train station I had bacalhau à lagareiro com batatas (cod with potatoes) and the blend of fresh caught seafood, homeliness of the restaurant, and kindness of the waiter made for an incredible meal. I was a bit rushed to get back to catch the train, but Aveiro was a sweet coastal town.