137 Days Abroad

Leaving the Familiar

I recently finished 137 days - 4.5 months - of living and studying abroad in Zurich, Switzerland¹. It was an unforgettable experience, from the amazing people I had the pleasure of meeting to the fantastic and varied places I was fortunate to explore². Condensing such a long period into a single post would be quite a challenge (especially since there was rarely a dull moment the entire time), so I won’t even try to give a play-by-play summary. Instead, I want to share a few snapshots of personal experience, growth, and realization from my time abroad.

Being local to Seattle and going to the University of Washington, I’ve been fairly stationary since high school. Of course I’ve changed and my environment has shifted, but in the end it was still the same Seattle with most of the same people around me. Many of my high school friends moved away for college, but they would routinely visit home for holidays and breaks, and each time I would be there to reconnect when they returned.

Going on exchange, then, was a major shift. Suddenly instead of watching people come and go, I was the one who was leaving. This immediately set the tone for my exchange - it would be a time of change, new experiences, and expanding my comfort zone.

Wonderful People

In a new country with only one friend from home (hi Andrew!), I was immediately forced to build entirely new social circles. Luckily, both Andrew and I lived in 60-person student houses, which presented plenty of opportunities to meet people.

My housemates were mostly fellow exchange students, so it was really cool to hear about everyone’s different backgrounds. With people from all over the world including Germany, Scandinavia, Japan, and China, we had so many different perspectives under one roof. One of my favorite memories in my house was a Tour de Chambre – essentially a party going around room to room, with the hosts of each room preparing a drink and a game for the rest of the group³.

And then there was Andrew’s house, where I spent so much time that some people thought I actually lived there. While my house was mostly exchange students, Andrew’s had many local students forming a social core for exchanges to fit into. The first time I visited for dinner, before leaving I’d booked two trips with other exchanges: Munich for Oktoberfest and the South of France. Both the local and exchange students in the house were so welcoming and open, and by the end of the semester I was forced to say painful goodbyes to friends who I felt like I’d known for years.

One friend in particular, David, pushed me out of my comfort zone with his attitude towards spontaneity and strangers. In David’s world, each stranger is an untapped source of interesting perspectives, stories, local recommendations, and side quests. Traveling with him was at first an adjustment, but I soon realized that going with the flow and being open with strangers makes a trip so much more memorable.

In Nice during our first trip together, we met a Swedish-Norwegian bartender with a love for Abba who was a total character. Exploring Northern Norway in a camper van, we came across a local on a hike who regaled us with stories of a village that transplanted across a fjord and recommended an ideal spot to watch the northern lights.

And in Denmark, David and I speedran friendship with a girl named Mae we met at a hostel breakfast. On the last day of her trip, she spontaneously joined us on an excursion to Frederiksborg Castle and a bar in Freetown Christiania, Copenhagen’s anarchist self-governed zone. In just one day, we went from complete strangers to genuinely inviting each other to visit sometime back home. As my first hostel friend, Mae showed me the power of simply being open to new people and experiences. David and I could have gone about the day on our own and had a good time, but inviting Mae along made it unforgettable.

Exchange friendships are accelerated due to impermanence, but hostel friendships are condensed microcosms of meeting, becoming impossibly close, and saying goodbye - all in at most a few days. I traveled with David for 3 out of 8 trips and carried the same attitude into my solo travels, which led to making friends (who I plan to keep in touch with) in every hostel I stayed in.

Through all my travels I was struck that the world is full of wonderful people. No matter where I was, I found charming locals happy to share their stories and fellow travellers to explore and bond with. Going about daily life we (or at least I) get so absorbed in tasks, destination, and plans that we flatten the multidimensionality of the people around us. Of course it’s not feasible to talk to every stranger on the street, but I’d like to apply David’s mentality back home whenever I can – even if it’s just having a quick conversation with a barista while ordering my coffee.

Common Spaces

Something I noticed in Europe is the prevalence of public spaces, which seem to be much rarer in the US.

One example: while America has chosen the car, which emphasizes individual separation, most of Europe has embraced trains, trams, and buses, which focus on the collective as mass transit systems.

But “public transport is so much better in Europe” is overdone. A more interesting case might be Baden, a small city near Zurich that I visited multiple times. Baden boasts geothermal hot springs, and of course has several extravagant luxury spas with thermal pools. However, by the riverside there are also a couple thermal fountains completely free and open to the public as long as there is room⁴.

When I think of Baden, I think of “third places” as proposed by sociologist Ray Oldenburg – while the “first place” is your home and the “second place” is work or school, a third place is a space to socialize, relax, and build your community. Some characteristics of third places may be that all visitors are on equal ground regardless of social status, they avoid flashiness and glamour, and bring people together with conversation⁵.

The public hot springs are essentially concrete tubs of heated water with no frills at all, but they check all the boxes of a third place. Speaking to strangers might be improper in a paid-for spa, but in the public baths of Baden, everyone is on level footing and conversation blossoms. Once when I was there with friends, we met a local couple – one who worked in forestry and the other as a local magazine writer – who joined us in some games and gave pointers about skiing in Switzerland. This casual interaction with strangers would have been impossible without the hot springs bringing us together.

A concept like Baden feels so alien to the American backdrop, which is a shame. Having access to places like this makes a community as a whole much richer, connecting people and providing a space to exist just as a person rather than a customer. We do have parks in the US, and Seattle seems to be doing relatively well in this aspect, but the ceiling is so much higher. Now that I’ve seen what’s possible, I would love to see more investment into the diversity of common spaces to cater to many different purposes.

Moments of Pure Joy

I want to end this post indulging in reflection on an experience of complete bliss in Antibes. After exploring seaside towns, chilling on the beach, and visiting the Picasso museum, we made our way to the Bay of Billionaires in the late afternoon. Swimming out to rock formations in the water, we climbed and cliff jumped progressively from small outcroppings up to this massive spire.

Don’t get me wrong, sitting on top of the tower with nowhere to go but down was terrifying. But I think this massive step outside my comfort zone is part of why I experienced it so intensely. Trusting my landing zone scouting and making a leap of faith into the water, I was completely locked into the moment. There was absolutely no distraction – my only thoughts were on keeping balanced, jumping with enough clearance of the rocks, and landing smoothly in the water.

Since then, I’ve been pondering what made this experience so pure. The act of cliff jumping pushed my boundaries and gave me a thrill of adrenaline, but that alone doesn’t cover it. I was also surrounded by friends and the beautiful nature of the Mediterranean, with my phone far away on the beach and miles away from my thoughts. In my mind at that moment, not only was I entirely present in the real and physical world, but that bay might have been the only place on Earth.

Footnotes