Viva Hollandia: A Toast to New Friends and Travels Yet to Come

It’s finally time. My bags are packed, sitting in a bulging heap of fabric by the front door, my goodbyes said, and my room is the cleanest it’s ever been, which is to say, empty.

I’ll be heading home soon, and despite having navigated maps written in seven different languages across two continents, I’m not sure which way to go.

For the first time in a long time, I’m lost for words. No arrangement of sentences or paragraphs put to paper could adequately describe all I’ve experienced during the past six months.

          Nor can they possibly explain this picture

 This is my last post though, and as such, I feel to leave it at that would be a disservice. At the very least, I owe you, the reader, some sort of meaningful resolution; a sense of closure that maybe…just maybe…. scratches the surface of describing the adventure.

 To put it as simply as possible, I’ve been supremely fortunate over the past six months to feel at home in places that couldn’t be further away from home.

 It’s a simultaneously unsettling and assuring realization, because it implies being ‘home’ is not dependent upon physical location. Rather, ‘home’ is a state of mind available at any time and in any place, and everyone has his or her own recipe for it.

 Home for me is one part Colorado, where I was lucky enough to spend my first 18 years on this earth.

Where a landscape so divinely carved by nature emits a resonant, organic charm that never ceases to make leaving more difficult.

Where my roots as a person – my family and my friends – took hold in the lush fertile soil of the foothills.

 Where my body learned to draw every molecule of oxygen it could from the thin, icy air at the bases of the snow-capped mountains I can’t wait to see again.

                                                

                                               Feast your eyes

Home is one part South Carolina, where I learned to value a lifestyle that takes things a little slower.

Where it’s okay, even necessary, to toss the work aside for the day and enjoy a cold drink, warm weather, and Saturday football games on a tailgate under a grove of palmetto trees.

Where 18 holes and a six-pack of Natty is always exactly what the doctor ordered

Where the immensely powerful (albeit, expensive) hand of higher education unearthed passions I didn't know I possessed.

                                    

                                    *Choirs of Angels sing "Simple Man"*

And now, home is one part Rotterdam – a city that rose defiantly from the ashes of Hitler’s blitzkrieg not only to begin anew, but thrive.

Emblazoned across the bottom of the city’s coat of arms is the phrase Sterker door strijd, or, “Stronger Through Struggle.” It’s fitting, because I feel Rotterdam is where I’ve become just that.

It’s where I became irreversibly enriched and profoundly blessed with a new group of driven, accepting, and erudite friends from all over the world.

It’s where I learned of, and will forever cherish, Kralingen Bos’s ability to soothe hangovers and an anxious soul.

It’s where the nights spent in Jordan’s room playing Asshole and the subsequent club outings provided no shortage of honest words, hilarious stories, and very real friendships built over bummed cigarettes and Kapsalon sunrises.

Anyone who says money can't buy happiness has clearly never spent 6 euros on a large Kapsalon after a night of drinking and subsequent moral bankruptcy 

It’s where I was forced to confront my inadequacies and insecurities head on, only to realize that I needed only to confront myself.

It’s where I learned that movement does not equal progress and that progress is not so much a great leap forward as it is an accumulated product of daily diligence and ceaseless drive.

It’s where I realized all things are external to us, and thus, that only our perception of the external has the ability to dictate our reality.

This same sensation of feeling at home in a foreign place is not specific just to Rotterdam either. Home is now equal parts Amsterdam, Delft, Utrecht, Den Haag, Antwerp, Brussels, Bruges, Berlin, Cologne, Marrakech, Agadir, Taghazout, Prague, Milan, Paris, Rimini, Rome, and every cobblestone, train station, hotel balcony, pub-crawl, 4am conversation, and smoky bar in between.

 

Unseen picture: The Gentlemen of Rimini (Dan-o, Habibi, Laucha, Philippe).

It’s odd to think I’ve probably done more in six months than most people get to do in a lifetime. From drunkenly roaming Italian beaches under the stars to getting showered with champagne in a Czech club, every single moment has been a pulse-pounding delight; a cocktail of adrenaline and pure bliss that spirals down my spine and courses through my blood, even as I write.

     

It’s a time that I will forever regard as the spark that ignited a fire in my soul; an experience that unleashed latent passions with such joyous fury that the point between what I thought I could do and what I found myself capable of doing could not have been more clearly defined. It’s true: more often than not, you are the only thing keeping you from what you want.

More so, I’m incredibly grateful to have done it all with a group of people who equipped me with new eyes; a group of people who injected me with an unbelievably potent mixture of similar aspirations, contagious passion, and new perspective; a group of people who brought parts of me once dead or dormant roaring back to life.

          

                      We're all demons, and it's not even the full group

In that sense, I regard study abroad not so much as an end, but as the beginning of something completely new. It may be the end of constantly seeing and experiencing the people who allowed this change to occur, but that in and of itself does not signify the end of the metamorphosis that was set in motion.

 This is beginning of a new wanderlust. It’s the beginning of another new adventure; a new level of exploration and camaraderie, the roots of which are so firmly entrenched in Dutch soil they can never be replaced.

                                    A fitting photo...roots....ya know. Hah.

Today, I watched the sun rise over the leafy treetops stretching down Oostzeedijk, and tonight, I’ll watch the sunset over mountains 3,000 miles away as life in Rotterdam carries on. It makes me realize that even though we all came from the most varied corners of the planet, we’ll all always have Rotterdam in common, no matter where we go or what we do. It’s as much a part of us as anywhere else.

 Doesn't get much better

To all the RSM 2013-2014 Exchange Group and the students at Erasmus University: Dank je wel. This level of personal freedom and sublime fulfillment would not have been attainable without you all. Other exchange groups may come and go, but none of them will ever have as much fun as we've had or be half as close as we are.

I know it sucks to say goodbye, but I also know that you’re all profoundly fascinating people whom I greatly anticipate seeing again. I hope this experience has meant as much to you as it does to me. Now let's all go out and make money so we can have a champagne shower of a reunion at Club Bed when we're pushing 35. Ya'll are the best.  #HupHollandHup

                             Make more of that spinach stuff, Burcin

Also, to my roommates: Oostzeedijk 164c can never be undone. I’ve had an unbelievable amount of fun living with you all, and I’ll always regard ya’ll as the next best thing to family….a family of occasionally ratchet degenerates who provided an ever-consoling level of stability and familiarity in a faraway place. I can’t wait to see ya’ll back in Columbia in the Fall (even though the fact we’ll have classes together is terrifying). Thank you for making even the moments that are supposed to be boring anything but. See ya'll soon. Go Gamecocks. 

Lastly, thank you to everyone for your loyal readership, whether you loved every word or barely skimmed my posts out of sympathy. Hopefully I’ve left you blubbering like a tween girl at the end of “The Fault in Our Stars” or, at the very least, provided a brief respite from summertime monotony.

In the words of Professor Dan Ostergaard, “Here’s to the good ships, the wood ships, the ships that sail the sea. But the best ships are our friendships, and may they always be.”

Cheers ya’ll, wherever you may be.

Until next time,

 

- Drew