During my busy stay at St. Andrews, I have often wondered if any earthly force could pull me away from this windy, rustic town on the coast of Scotland, short of a forcible deportation by the British government for overstaying my visa.
Family matters is one.
I flew to Munich on the first morning of the university’s autumn vacation and rode the train south to the tiny hamlet of Gmund, perched on a lake called Tegernsee, all draped in a fresh layer of snow by this time of year. I soon met my grandmother and her sister, as well as a horde of distant aunts, uncles and second and third cousins, most once or twice removed. In America, these would be the relatives from Tulsa whom you would meet once and never wish to again, as they explain the intimate details of their grain silo. Not here. I was embraced as a brother or son by everyone, and plied with so much bread, beer and sausage it had to be a sin. My grandmother assumed the role of interpreter, and I was soon able to laugh and joke with this side of my family, so new to me, and of whom I had formerly heard only stories.
Three days later, I was on a bus weaving through the colossal west Austrian Alps, transfixed by the alpenglow of late afternoon, and was soon bound for Vienna on a train with a Swiss Buddhist and a raving lunatic who desperately wondered if I had connections in the American legal system. Imagine sitting in a train compartment discussing the future of Tibet (with the occasional crazed interjection), all while the landscape whizzes by, and you will understand what it means to travel in Europe. It is a continent full of the bizarre and unusual, and it is so easy to become adrift in the peculiarities of each culture one must blink his eyes hard to maintain a grip on all he knew before.
My travels during the week’s remainder would take me to Vienna, Venice and Ireland, prompting visits to the standard array of religious, historical and drinking establishments. I witnessed the Hofburg palace and Lipizzaner stallions in all their baroque elegance, and marveled at the glittering ceiling of gold mosaic tiles in the Venetian Basilica di San Marco, which also unabashedly boasts a vast collection of stolen treasure.
I didn’t always find myself to be a tourist. On a train from Venice, the hours flew by while discussing with a friendly Dutch girl the frightening prospect of living after college, yielding more laughs than conclusions. That evening, the French transit industry went on strike and forced nearly all of the Mediterranean railroads to a grinding halt, and I debated my approval for labor movements while huddled, shivering, in an open-air Genovese train station for the night. An icy concrete floor has a persuasive way of granting a fresh appeal to hitchhiking; luckily, I managed to catch one of the few remaining trains the next morning.
In Dublin, the heart and soul of the city revolves not around the Guinness Storehouse, but the Temple Bar, and sitting crammed within a crowd of Irish men and women listening to the falsetto of a fiddle and pennywhistle is in no way a waste of time. It soon became evident that, while experience may teach, it is of a different variety than what is found in the classroom, and of no lesser value.
At the end of the week, after a short flight from Dublin, I trudged through the doorway of my room at St. Andrews, realizing the trip had been quick and dirty, and lacked the creature comforts that usually accompany a week’s vacation. I cannot say I would prefer anything different.
