The first thing that europe taught me, and keeps teaching me, (other than the fact that mostly everyone in the Netherlands would be qualified as a hipster back in Canada) is that you are never alone.
On the train from Amsterdam to Utrecht I was standing near the doors, trying to balance all of my bags, and ended up striking a conversation with a guy sitting on the stairs. Not only did it turn out that he was on the same plane as me, but he grew up right outside of the town that I went to high school in. In fact, he lived on the same road as one of my high school best friends. It's quite possible that I passed by his house many times and never even knew it.
At first we bonded about our devastation upon Jack Layton's death, which coincided with our departure from Canada. It was a comfort to be able to talk to somebody about the man who both figuratively and literaly moved so many Canadians. Not many people outside of Canada had heard of him, but he will never be forgotten within the country. The conversation went on from there, about school, work, ambitions etc.
We were both getting off at Utrecht, but I was staying there, and he was transfering trains to go to Cologne, Germany for an internship. Yet in our half-hour conversation we formed a friendship. If either one of us is ever visiting each other's cities, we have a place to crash. Free accomodation has got to be the best form of friendship.
This wasn't just an isolated incident.
On our first introduction day at the university, I met a guy who goes to my home university back in Ottawa. I had never seen him before, but in a school of about 25,000 students it's hard to get to know everyone. Still, it seems strange that even though we go to the same school our first meeting was half-way across the world.
I ended up riding side saddle on the back of my bike, while he biked back into city centre. We tried the other way around but my biking skills are not that great. This is probably cooler than any bonding moment we could have ever shared in Ottawa.
People told me I was brave going to a different continent by myself for an entire year. But I stopped being alone as soon as I got on that train. This is the type of experience that makes you realise that you can plan a trip to Barcelona with someone you've only known for two weeks and be ecstatic about it.
I've been here almost a month and I probably have a place to stay in ten different countries, if ever I decided to go. Being alone is starting to become a very foreign concept.
