My adventures around Europe : What I gained from Europe (besides weight)…

My last blog- The reflection blog

I have learned a lot over my last three months of studying abroad and traveling around Europe. During my trip, I made it to 11 countries and 21 different cities!! I now feel like I am an expert traveler and I am pretty sure that the “travel bug” will never leave me until I have seen the whole world. Traveling and being away from home has taught me many different things. I have come to learn that everyone has different experiences when traveling. Some people leave the states for three months and they realize how much they love and appreciate the USA, and other people only see how much they do not like the ways of the USA and how they only love Europe. I found myself in the middle ground. Jumping into different cultures all around the world has opened my eyes to what I think America could do better, and what I absolutely love about America and how truly blessed I am to be able to live in such a great country. Being back in the states, I will miss all of the adventures that I would embark on everyday. I will miss all of the wonderful people that I traveled with. I will miss roaming the streets of every cities and admiring all of the beautiful architecture everywhere. Of course, it is a given that I will definitely miss all of the delicious, great, and wonderful food!! During my three months away from home I always missed my friends and family the most! However, I also missed Nebraska’s nice and friendly neighbors and great customer service. I was also not a fan of paying for public restrooms and not getting free water at restaurants, however those were minor things and they were easy to adjust to.

For future travelers here is some advice! Always try something new. You may never be able to come back to the places where you travel, so you need to make the most of your short time there! Do what the locals do and make friends with other travelers or locals. Ask the local people where the best restaurant to eat is at, what sights to see, which bar/club is the best, and what part of the city is the cheapest. Doing this will always help you get the most out of your visit. The most important advice I can give is to remember that you are a guest in someone else’s country. You have to adapt to the way that they do life, and you should never expect them to change their ways just for you. The best part about traveling is jumping into other cultures and living life the way they do!!

It is bittersweet to be reflecting back on my study abroad trip and my time spent in the Czech Republic. I am so very thankful for being able to spend so much time abroad and to learn so much. I was blessed to be apart of such an amazing group! I was a little nervous coming into this trip because I did not know a single person who was in the program. All of these strangers quickly became my close friends and my new family for my time away from home. Sometimes we would get annoyed of each other because we were spending every second of every day together, however I could not ask for better people to travel with. Our Czech professors were absolutely amazing and they helped us out so much! Without them we would not have been a part of such incredible experiences. I also enjoyed getting to know all of the other Czech students and other European students that were also studying abroad in Olomouc. Theses students also went out of their way to help us with anything we may have needed. The program layout itself was perfect! Our program allowed us to travel to a different country just about every weekend, and it was so easy to travel places since the Czech Republic is so centrally located in Europe. I enjoyed all of the classes we took (even the Czech language class that I struggled with) and loved learning about all of the different topics that we covered. Overall I would not change one thing about my study abroad experience. It made me grow as a person and learn so much about other people around the world. If anyone is considering studying abroad or jut traveling anywhere in general, I would definitely encourage you to go! You will not regret it, and it might even be one of the best experiences in your life, like it was for me!