The Euro Diaries Part One: The Beginning of Our Relationship

How a ten-year-old girl with an Eiffel Tower birthday cake had her first trip to Europe canceled, but ended up living there anyway.

I had always dreamed of Paris.

Maybe it started with my fashion-filled monthly Seventeen and Teen Vogue magazine subscriptions that I paid for with my allowance, or with finishing off every childhood ballet class I took with a curtsy and a “merci beaucoup.” For years, my childhood room was filled with everything Paris. I began finding little “French” knick-knacks from yard sales on Saturday mornings with my grandparents. I had little Eiffel Towers, plenty of Paris posters, and Arc de Triomphe picture frames. My room stayed that way from before my preteen years and into high school.

My 10th birthday was, of course, fully Paris-themed. We had Eiffel Towers everywhere; I even had an Eiffel Tower cake. My stepdad dressed up as a mime, and we hair-sprayed my poodle’s hair pink. The morning after, we ate crepes. All the French clichés we could think of.

With Danish roots, I grew up eating the best homemade Danish sweets: butter cookies, almond danishes, and my favorite, aebleskivers, which are essentially a pancake ball of heaven that we eat every Christmas morning. When I was a teenager, my family went on a trip to Denmark where they met some of our long-lost cousins. I was so bummed that I wasn’t able to go, but the fact that they all went made Europe seem more accessible to me. If my grandma could go, maybe one day I could too.

While I did not make the trip, my grandma bought me my cross necklace from a church where our family members had been baptized. On the front of the necklace is Jesus with Roman numerals, and on the back, the Lord's Prayer in Danish. I loved my little Eiffel Towers, but one of my most prized possessions became this silver cross necklace. I have worn it almost daily since high school, and I will probably be buried with it.

While I have now been to Paris, I have still not made it to Denmark. It is on my very long and ever-growing Europe list. I know that when I finally make it, I will step into that very church with my necklace around my neck.

College, COVID-Canceled Plans, and Longing for Europe

My fascination with France, with Europe, was not just a phase of my childhood; it stayed with me.

In the summer of 2019, I had just wrapped up my freshman year of college. College made me feel intellectually challenged for the first time in my life. I enjoyed reading my psychology and philosophy books next to the wooden, maple-colored library bookshelves and walking around campus among the maroon brick buildings from the early 1900s. Something about college and being a philosophy and psychology major made me feel oddly… European, although I did not know what that meant.

I remember taking art history, and it was like a window into Europe. I loved it. It was my first time learning about iconic artists like Manet and Renoir. I added visiting the Louvre and the Musée d'Orsay to my Paris bucket list. Monet became one of my personal favorites, and I ended up buying several cheap pastel prints of his for my college room. Essentially, I swapped out the Eiffel Tower posters for Monet’s water lilies.

In my philosophy classes, I was reading Nietzsche and Dostoevsky. Still, it was France’s own Jean-Paul Sartre that solidified my interest in existentialism. When I read Nausea, it was as if I was transported to Paris, drinking a coffee on the terrace of Café de Flore or Les Deux Magots. I longed to go there and sit where he sat. However, the only voice my philosophy courses missed was that of Simone de Beauvoir, and I am glad I have her now.

Toward the end of that year, I had heard that both the philosophy and the psychology departments were planning Europe trips. Psychology, my primary major, had a longer trip with more stops. I was instantly sold, although slightly bummed that this trip did not include France, which was number one on my bucket list. Still, I said goodbye to my savings and signed up.

The trip was centered around psychology and visiting all the famous sites that shaped the field into what it is today. A big part of the trip would be spent in Germany, as a significant amount of psychology’s history originates from there, especially the work of Freud. I was thrilled about this, but also excited to make stops in the UK as well. We continued to meet monthly during my sophomore year to plan the trip. I did not really have any friends going. I did not care. This was Europe.

The trip was scheduled for spring break in March 2020, and the date was slowly approaching. I had perfectly curated all of my outfits to fit our Europe itinerary. We were less than two weeks away from departing when my dad called me. He told me about this thing called “Coronavirus.” Huh? Okay, yeah, right, I thought. My dad can be someone who slightly over-worries about things he sees on the news, but this time he was right. Less than a week before we were supposed to leave, the world shut down. Our trip was canceled. I was so disappointed. I was more upset about the trip being canceled than what was actually happening in the world. I had spent years of my savings on something that wasn’t going to happen. What if it never happens? I thought.

But even still, I convinced myself that I was not done with Europe.

And I wasn’t.

In fact, I ended up going to Europe three times during college, and now I live here.

Follow along to hear more about my journey moving to Europe in my Euro Diaries Series! You can also find the series on Substack.