american backpacking in europe
Backpacking Through Europe After The Bar Exam
A lot of soon-to-be lawyers go backpacking in Europe after they take the bar exam, before the results come back. The theory goes like this: as an attorney, you won’t have any free time until retirement, so you might as well go have some fun while you have the chance. The main flaw in this theory is that backpacking isn’t fun, it’s miserable. Maybe backpacking was fun when backpacks were first invented, when the alternative was hiking around carrying your supplies on a platter, but today, backpacks should be reserved for elementary school children and hipsters.
I sound like an expert on the matter, but the truth is it took me years to figure out how awful hiking is. When I was a kid, I bugged my dad to take me camping every year.
“I don’t spend all day at the office so I can sleep in plastic shacks set up on a tree root,” he’d tell me.
And of course that’d make me want to go camping even more. For years I called him a bore, and imagined how much fun we’d have in the middle of the woods, telling ghost stories and eating s’mores, and doing all the things I saw backpackers doing on TV and in movies.
Then I actually went backpacking, through the Upper Peninsula’s Porcupine Mountains (the Porkies), with ten other boys from Camp Nebagamon. It was the worst week of my entire life and it gave me a newfound respect for my father and his judgment.
As you may or may not know,
As you may or may not know, I actually went backpacking through Europe with 5 friends a few years ago. The actual trip was not a vacation and could hardly be classified as fun. It was much more similar to a business trip during which our objective was to take as many pictures at as many places as possible. We went to 5 cities in 12 days and snapped over 1000 pictures collectively.
A short and incomplete list of our conquests:
The Louvre
Notre Dame
Arc de Triumph
Michaelangelo's David
The Vatican (St. Peter's basilica and the Sistine chapel)
The Forum
The Colosseum
The Pantheon
Various Fountains
A Train Station in Milan
Gaudi's Sagrada Familia and various other landmarks
About Every Cathedral in Europe
Several Bars and Night Clubs
2 Girls we Convinced Mike Barovski(sp?) was the Guitarist for Maroon 5
Fiesole (Williams' favorite city)
Every Hostel we Stayed In (including the one we snuck 3 people into in Milan and the one we tried unsuccessfully to sneak 3 people into in Florence)
Wow you stayed busy! But
Wow you stayed busy! But you have so much cocktail party value now.
"Actually, i've BEEN there, and...."
Funny...i'm here in vegas...i can see replicas of like half that stuff...and all in one day!
Perhaps you went about it
Perhaps you went about it the wrong way or at the wrong age. And yeah, Ryan(?), your group definitely had the wrong approach. Actually I am not a hiker and would not like to backpack traipsing through the woods. But a friend and I went to Europe after our first year of university (undergrad) and had a BLAST! I would kill to do it again.
We flew to Amsterdam with an open return ticket so we could come back when we ran out of money. Took the train, backpacked, stayed in hostels, got accosted numerous times and had a blast. Let's see ... Holland, France, Italy, somehow we got to Greece and then took the "Magic Bus" back to Amsterdam when the funds dried up. I remember getting the worst sun burn of my entire life in Nice (France) and having to spend 2 extra days in the hostel because there was no way in hell we could carry our packs. Anyway, it was a blast and I came home with very, very blond hair, an incredible tan and a toned body. Oh, for the old days...
Unfortunately whenever I
Unfortunately whenever I talk about having been someplace in Europe I end up sounding like a pompous ass...not unlike whenever I talk about any other subject.