Goodbye Europe

The previous night I shouted K and P to an Indian dinner at the Gandhi restaurant. After that I met up with the Dutch couple I had met in Gibara in Cuba, who lived nearby, for a nightcap in a cafe near Haarlem's cathedral. We exchanged travel stories.

In the morning I caught the bus to P's place and gave her a quick slide show of my travels. I also had enough time to quickly check my email. Then I said my goodbyes and caught the Zuidtangent to Schiphol Airport. I didn't find anything I wanted in duty-free so I had 400€ left over. That was a problem because I didn't think I would be back soon because old Europe was so familiar to me now. I thought next time I would visit Asia or South America instead. (Note from the future: In 2007 I decided to visit the Adriatic coast, so that money came in handy after all.)


It's now 2011 as I finish this blog. Reading my diary from a distance of 7 years, I notice that it feels like 3 separate trips, one to Western Europe, one to Cuba, and one to the Canary Islands; so different were the environments. But when I was on the road, it didn't feel that way. Each part of the trip was a natural progression from the last. Perhaps that's a model for life. In hindsight, a given period of your life will bear little resemblance to the previous. Sometimes the transitions are obvious: graduating from school, getting married, etc. These are the occasions for celebration. Sometimes the changes are strokes of fate. Sometimes after a small change, you imagine things will be as before, but they really won't.


I still had uncertainty hanging over me. When I got home I had to find a job. But after what I had been through in my travels, it would be just another detail on the road of life. And that realisation was the journey's gift to me.