Europe 1995 Introduction and Excuses

When I was 18 years old, I went on a trip. It was a Eurail Pass-centered journey with no real itinerary or timeline (but with a couple of planned specific destinations, including a flight into London and out of Dublin) that ended up covering parts of northern Europe, Scandinavia, and the British Isles. I believe that the original idea was celebratory, sort of a graduation present to myself, but the trip also ended up being a very well-timed lesson in self-reliance as I embarked on my life as a for-real grown-up.

This is what I looked like in 1995:

 

I kept a few things from the trip, like a map where I tracked everywhere I'd been and my original Eurail Pass voucher thingy where I kept track of all the times/places that I used the pass. I don't know where those things are now. But I do have a small, orange journal where I kept THE MOST random account of the trip and obsession-level accounts of my hunger, what and how long it had been since I'd eaten, and how many days it had been since I showered.

So now, in 2014 (almost 20 years after the trip), I am going to use the orange journal and my own memory (eek!) to document/recreate the trip here in 6 parts. I will include select parts of the journal (saving the reader and myself from the embarrassment of the worst of it) and photos that I scanned out of a photo album at my parents' house last month. This is going to be fun! Lowering expectations in...3...2...1...