Well, this is it. My last post from Europe.

It´s hard to sum up an experience like this, but all I can say is that it was not what I expected. I didn't expect it to be so thorough and extensive. I never expected to see 18 countries in 32 days and I never expected that each place was going to be so different.

Now, my only challenge is to find a way to take all that I've done and turn it into some kind of meaningful nugget of wisdom for me to use and possibly share.

To me, the lesson of my trip is this - people everywhere are just trying to live well. It´s the bottom line of life everywhere. Regardless of our differences and our arguments, it´s all always part of some earnest attempt to lift our selves up out of our current situation (even if its a pretty good situation) and make life better for us and (generally) those around us.

Europe is spinning back into control after about a century of all kinds of change - political, economic, sexual, intellectual.. its just happening so fast. Old bastions like Paris and London are no longer the lone standards of a European experience. New, emerging capitols and life centers like Ljubljana and Riga are throwing themselves headlong into progress and romantic old towns like Krakow and Budapest are churning out a new generation of dynamic youth that is going to play a larger role in the next 50 years than, perhaps, America played over the last 50.

As Thomas Friedman taught me this month, the world is being flattened. European borders aren't so much borders any more but out dated barriers to societies that are now easier to transverse than the one between the US and Canada. The music and rhythm coming from Berlin, Prague, Stockholm, Amsterdam, and the like are regulating the pace of the world and it would be unwise to move to any other beat.

What´s the use of sentimentalizing the past? Locking up an old town behind towering walls and pretending to hold on to a romanticized history is nothing more than a tourist trap. It doesn't reflect the real, emergent European community - a community that is much more interesting than the period costumed marketplace salespeople hawking the same junk at every corner.For me, that means that the most exciting places in Europe are the ones that have just one eye on their past and another keenly on the future. As to this measurement, there is no more dynamic and significant city in Europe than Berlin. Visit Berlin because it is there that you will see the world spinning at a faster pace with watchful caution over its painful past and the mythical free hand of economics driving its future.

As for the many random readers who I have picked up along the way, who have been looking to me for travel advice and some kind of European insight, all I can offer is three pieces of practical advice. One, spend as much time as possible out side of old towns. Two, plan on taking a lot of buses. Three, go alone.

For everyone else, I just want to finish by admitting that this entire trip was undertaken in folly. How could I possibly swallow the enormity of Europe in a month? 18 countries in 32 days?! What was I thinking!?! When it comes time for you to do your own euroschlepping, which I hope that you do, just take a single zone (I´d recommend traveling from Berlin to Krakow to Budapest to Croatia), and milk it for all its worth.

I´ll probably post one or two last retrospective pieces about my favorite photos and some detailed hints on where to, and where not to visit. And maybe I´ll resurrect the blog some time down the road for a future trip to South America, Asia, or the Middle East, but for now, from the Euro Youth Hostel in Munich, the time has come to retire my euroschlep travelogue. I leave the continent at 11:40am tomorrow to dive head on to my post college life.

It´s been real.

-Adam  ¶ 10:33 AM