How to Successfully Avoid Reverse Culture Shock

At the study abroad meeting waaaay back in November, before I left for France, I was given a timeline of culture adaptation stages and told that my emotions would roughly mirror this:

It was a little complicated, but yes, I managed to understand it, thank you.

I agreed with everything except that I would get reverse culture shock. At the time, I was dreading leaving so much that I considered the next 5 months to just be some sort of cruel self-inflicted torture designed to force me into maturity (or something somewhat resembling it). Once I settled into my life in Grenoble, though, I realized that leaving was probably not going to be as easy as I had originally thought. In fact, I was absolutely dreading it. I mean, who would want to eat dinner at any other table, with any other decoration?

You know, just where I ate every meal for five months.

And so when the opportunity arose to take the roadtrip of a lifetime – commencing three hours after I landed in America – I took it, and said to myself: “If there is anything at all you have learned over these months, Sarah, it is this: Pourquoi pas?”

So when three of my best friends showed up on my doorstep the night I came home from France, I left with them. Bags still packed, circadian rhythm out of whack, hair dreadfully unwashed. It was impulsive and possibly foolish and to be honest, we didn’t really know if it would work out until the day before – but we went. And by doing so, I discovered the cure to reverse culture shock.

Nineteen hours in a car can teach you a lot. It can teach you what your friends look like when they are at the end of their rope, when they fall asleep in the middle of a sentence after driving four hours straight through the middle of the inky black Indiana-highway night.  It can teach you what sleeping positions you can actually live with when unable to lie down. It can teach you that drinking soda can probably make you bloated, and thus either very uncomfortable or very embarrassed.

Nineteen hours in a car can also show you a lot. Everything you pass is somewhat slightly different. Scrub-table diners in the middle of scrub-field towns. Enormous water parks, across the street from one another. Ridiculous grammatically incorrect sign after ridiculous grammatically incorrect sign. Unfamiliar faces from unknown walks of life.

To avoid – yes, avoid, not get stuck in and subsequently have to conquer – the phenomenon known as reverse culture shock, you must throw yourself into your home culture. Stop preaching about Belgian beer, and start laughing as you choke down Milwaukee’s Best Light. Stop throwing around your French catchphrases, and learn the new slang that you missed when you were gone. Flop down on a manicured lawn and suck in the scent of the well-tended earth.

Shake hands with America. Memorize every road sign, giggle about the ridiculous town names you pass. Roll your eyes once – but just once, no more than once – about the ridiculously wasteful size and probable gas mileage of the innumerable Chevy SUVs that cut you off on I-80. Stare, stunned, at the Chicago skyline at dawn, orange sunlight cascading through the car windows. Marvel at the fact that you can now see the stars , and go for a run without having to cough up smog for the next two days. Let yourself be amazed – not disgusted – by the sheer number of Wheat Thins flavors, brands of orange juice, and types of cereal.

To avoid reverse culture shock, you must not let yourself be shocked. Explore the parts of this indescribably enormous country that you do not think of when you think of the word “home” – the parts that are so utterly different from the culture you left, and your hometown, that you find yourself not disoriented and melancholy, but instead exhausted with taking it all in.

And then – return home.

The things you have learned from living abroad don’t go away. The sense of wonder, independence, and adaptability are engrained within you, it doesn’t go away. Yes, you have lost your boulangeries. You have lost your ability to buy and drink €1 bottles of wine in a park. You have lost the thrill of constantly speaking, learning, and loving a second language. You have lost the people you have called your family and best friends for the past four months; they are flung out around the world now, and the chances of seeing them all in the same place again are slim to none. But you have not lost yourself. So push the still-sharp, bittersweet nostalgia to the back of your head. It doesn’t matter anymore – what matters is the sense of adventure that you will carry with you for the rest of your life.

Embrace this next adventure of home.

Grenoble, somewhat explained.

How do I describe, exactly, how life here is? I can give you snapshots: walking down the wind-tunnel side street near my house, cursing as my umbrella turns inside out no matter which direction I make it face. Gagging as I maneuver my way through yet another group of men on the tram who really just can’t find 3 seconds in the morning to put on deodorant (or maybe they just don’t know what deodorant is – which is perfectly plausible). Nearly crying with laughter as I sprint around the perimeter of a deserted dark square with my best friends, for no other reason but to sprint, and feel the cool city wind on our faces, and collapse, winded and gleeful, to cry “Santé!”, clinking together our 1€ wine bottles.

But I think I speak for everyone here in Grenoble, that I can’t ever really make someone else understand what it is to spend every moment here, wide-eyed and tongue-twisted in this busy little city in the heart of the Alps. And as the days tick down to our departures on Thursday morning, I can’t help but want to freeze this all, so that we all do remember what it was like to sprawl out in Parc Paul Mistral on a hot Friday afternoon, and eat kebabs at Notre-Dame as the tram clunks on by, and grudgingly shell out 10 euros at the discotheque to end up having one of the best nights of your life.

So that’s why I’ve made this little montage. So everyone back home can know – and no one here in Grenoble will ever forget – what it means to be young and in France.

Happy Cinq de Mai!

I feel a tad uncomfortable celebrating Cinco de Mayo here in France, seeing as it’s Mexico’s way of celebrating the day they defeated the French Army against all odds back in 1862. But, then I remember that you can only say “Happy Cinco de Mayo!” once a year after taking a tequila shot, and then I don’t feel uncomfortable anymore!

Alors, because I could not present you with a Happy Thursday music tidbit – as my Thursday was not happy, and spent studying for the Diplôme Universitaire d’Etudes Françaises exam – here is my gift to you, mes cheries, two days late.

How I Finally Conquered Depression (Sort Of)

It’s been a while – welp, 25 days, to be exact – and I feel like I’ve been around the world and back in that time. It’s been a weird 25 days, an exciting 25 days, an upheaving 25 days – but most accurately, a humbling 25 days. And I’ve been searching for awhile, for much longer than 25 days, in fact, to describe exactly why I’m feeling this way. So, without further adieu, I’m about to get a little personal.

I’ve struggled with a mood disorder since I was about 11. I knew, even in my horse-obsessed 6th-grade head, that something was wrong the November day that I was standing in my kitchen, tears streaming down my acne-studded cheeks, unable to muster up the will to put away the dishes from the dishwasher, because we were all going to die someday anyway.

Insurance companies call what I “have” Depression 311, or  “Depressive Disorder Not Otherwise Specified,” because I don’t quite fit the bill for any of the DSM-IV’s finicky labels. When it comes down to it, though, is that there are some days where I cannot move, cannot think, cannot do anything but stare at a wall and breathe, in and out, in, and, out – and then there are other days where there are so many words, so much frustration, inside me, that I feel as if it’s all coming out of my very skin, and I can’t do anything but chuck innocent objects across my room and yell obscenities at the top of my lungs.

That is – when I’m not on my medication.

Now, stop. Reread the above sentence. What does it mean?

It means this: “She can’t be a normal person unless she’s on her medication.”

Welp, cool life, Sarah.

But technically, yes. And this is why, on April 2nd, when I ran out of my prescription for a lousy 20mg-per-day pill, I didn’t go through the hassle of refilling it. Don’t get me wrong – this is not a new thing. I’ve tried this before. And every time, it’s the same. I think I’m fine, and then depression hits me like what happens when you forget that your attic roof slants. Yeah, ow.

So of course, what happened about a week after I stopped? What you’d expect. Did it stop? No. So I went back, as I always do – but this time, I had realized something. When I stop taking those teeny-tiny pills, it’s always with a resolve – I don’t need medication to make me a normal, functioning human being. And when my mood inevitably starts to downswing, I lose faith in myself.

Until now. Because what I really should have been saying to myself was this: I need medication to help me conquer something that shouldn’t be a part of me, but unfortunately is. Depression is not me. It never was, even on that November day in my kitchen back in 2002. It’s just something that’s always going to be there, unless I fight it. And that fight is part of who I am. Not a chemical imbalance, or a dependence on 20 mg per day.

So what I mean by this all, is that we all have buried within us things about ourselves that we want to change, but can’t. And what I say to you, mes cheries, is this: don’t. There are some things that you cannot change, no matter how many times you try. These past 25 days have showed me that this road of self-discovery is filled with shifts and changes and upheavals, in perceptions and relationships and experiences. However, the final destination is acceptance. Not a “giving-up” acceptance, but an acceptance where you say, “Okay, c’est comme ça,” and then you go out and you succeed even more because of it. … And that sometimes, in order to be at peace with something that makes you upset, or ashamed, you simply have to reword it.

Happy Thursday!

HEY, I JUST MET YOU
AND I DON’T SPEAK FRENCH
AND I DON’T KNOW MY NUMBER
SO… never mind

A little sentimentality, si ça te branche…

There’s something to be said about the verb “brancher” in French. It’s used in a very common expression for inquiring about interest: such as, “We’re going out to London Pub tonight, ça te branche?” It means, roughly, “Are you interested?” A willingness to branch out, to try something, if you’re down for it.

And so far in France, everything has me branche – from singing off the balcony of a centre-ville apartment at 3 AM, to impulsively drinking pints with random French friends-of-friends-of-friends and scoring (yet another) swerving ride on the handlebars of a bicycle down Grenoble’s busy avenues, to challenging myself to run the 2.5 km up to the Bastille (no easy task, might I add), to braving the twisting mountain road in an oversized bus (anti-nausea pills previously gulped down, of course) up to these absolutely éblouissant caves in Choranche.

It was a bit like Khazad-dûm, to be honest. No? No one got that reference? ... Fine.

But brancher has other meanings, as well – one of which is “connect.” And however wonderful it is to  dabble and experience and taste and explore and do everything there is to do, I find myself feeling just a little empty, a little less-than-content from time to time, when I switch off the light at night. The connections that one makes while abroad are often superficial, good for a text now and then – we’re going to London Pub, ça te branche? – but they don’t truly know you. They wouldn’t recognize you after you’ve rolled burritos for six hours, when your skin smells like fajitas and barbacoa, and your brain is so addled that you nearly ask them if they want black or pinto beans every time you open your mouth. They wouldn’t recognize the expression of unimaginable joy you make when your beloved dog sprints to the door to lick your face and whack his tail against the walls. They wouldn’t recognize the face you make when you realize that you’re completely and overwhemingly in love with the person in front of you. They couldn’t. They never can.

What we have makes even French couples jealous.

In our lives of arbitrary choices based on moods and to-do lists, it is hard to stop and count the number of people who mean so much to us. Yes, the network of vrai connections I have here in France are not numerous. But, they exist still, and mean just as much to me as my closest friends at home. Just the fact that we can still make these types of true connections gives me hope, that maybe we can overcome the baggage at the back of our minds, and still truly brancher, regardless of total time spent together, unfamiliar contexts, growing pains, and culture shock.

Yes, it is important to brancher in the first sense, in this wonderfully bizarre world. But it is just as important to brancher in the second sense. To connect. To know. To trust. And that’s what I mean, I guess, when I tell you that I miss you, or that I truly appreciate you. That nothing in the world – not even the caves of Choranche – really compares to having a true friend – home or abroad.

Happy Thursday!

 

Lost (and Found) in Translation

I’m sitting on his couch, biting my lip, shaking my head, and thirty different sentences are running though my head. All are good ways to phrase what exactly it is that I want to say – the problem is, all of them are in English.

Now, mes cailles, think about these following questions: How do you explain a sentiment, even in your native tongue? How do you explain the feeling you get when you have written a sentence and you say to yourself, “Yes, that is it. That is exactly how I feel”? How do you explain the victory of honesty, of being tellement true to yourself?

When you speak your native tongue, you can express yourself more easily. (Well, that’s obvious. Thanks, Sarah.) But when you sit down and have a real conversation with someone, and it’s time to speak French, what you say does not accurately reflect your personality. For example. I’m sassy. I mean, some might say I’m a little too sassy for my own good. But the sass dictionary is composed of special phrases that are constructed with particular words to convey that sass in just a certain way. Not what one would ever describe as sweet as sugar, but not vulgar, either (well, sometimes I cross that line.  Not exactly sorry about it.).

So if I’m going to convey my sassy personality to fellow French twentysomethings, how exactly do I say:

• “So today I’m wearing a skirt and I didn’t shave my legs… what you bitches gonna do about it?”
• or, “Wuteva, lulz, sluts gonna be sluts”
• or, “Yeahhhhboiiiii I’m tryna”

or – my classic Sarah-ism when I agree to do something or go somewhere and I just keep saying –

• “Yuh yuh yuh yuh yuh”

in French – without sounding like a robot?

But really, how can I hang with mah gurl SW if WordReference can't pull through?

And what I’ve realized is: you can’t, really. You can learn their slang (“bahhhhhoui, c’est chiante!”), and learn what they say when they can’t get their computer to work (“Merde merde merde MERDE”), and what they say when they don’t shave their legs (well, I haven’t figured that one out yet – that would involve befriending a French girl, which is NOT on my list of things to do) – but at the end of the day, your lexicon is on the out. The words that once defined you just don’t matter anymore.

So instead, I closed my mouth and shook my head, and instead accepted that this blur of five months – now whittled down to two – is solely for experiencing. For dipping the fresh croissants he bought downstairs at the corner boulangerie into hot coffee, while the cold mountain sunlight streams through the French windows: open eyes, closed mouth, whirling head. For sharing a baguette on a crumbling fortification of the Bastille, stumbling through broken sentences about how two years ago, I never would have expected to be here, watching a violet Alpine sunset with a Frenchman.

When you lose your jargon, you lose a piece of yourself. You lose your ability to react in the way you really want to react. Your flirty sarcasm? Nope, can’t use it. Your ability to dictate your eloquent and pensive thoughts about social injustice? Sorry bro. But in a totally absurdly corny way, you can fill in that space with what you learn in your struggle to fill that blank, as you frantically conjugate verbs and actually spit out a sentence that might make sense. And that, mes cheries, is what I call experience.

Another reason for me to like France better than the US?

The Hunger Games opens here two days earlier.

Une prise de conscience

“Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people.”

A person who shall remain nameless once said this to me, and credited it to Albert Einstein. When I looked it up this afternoon, it turned out that it was Eleanor Roosevelt who said it. But that’s not really the point of this story.

The point is, this quote used to torture me in the days after my relationship with this unnamed person was abruptly severed. Days? Did I write days? I meant months. No, years. This quote tortured me for years. Why? Every word that came out of my mouth, if I were even just to discuss the goings-on of my day with my mother, incited guilt in my stomach. Was I small-minded? Was I a simple, ignorant human, one of the masses that discussed petty things and did not care for the rest of the greater world? Who would ever give me the time of day, never mind love me, if I was a stupid naive girl who thought she was more introspective and intelligent than she actually was?

As the years passed, I filled my time with little-known indie bands, TED talks, philosophy books, and conversations with people who were smarter than me on all levels. Some days, it’d take me fifteen minutes to read one page of a philosophy book (why bother writing it down if no one understands you, Sartre?). Some days, I found myself spending ten dollars on The Red Sparowes’ new album just to listen to it once (I’m sure the deeper meaning of mechanical clatter and sawing is very enlightening, but I’d rather listen to Taylor Swift, thanks). Some days, I wanted to give up. But the guilt would settle back in, erode my tear ducts, until all I could do was sit in my self-pity, wishing I was smarter, more worldly, more educated, more anything, just better.

Until today, when I realized, quite abruptly on a walk (of course, while casually keeping the towering peaks of the Alps within my view), that while these great minds may very well discuss their worldly ideas; and the average minds focus on discussing events; while these “small” minds just discuss people — the best minds discuss all three. You can’t discuss theory all day and expect it to work — that’s what happened in Communism, folks. (Yes, great idea, everybody’s happy and equal. Then Stalin comes along and no one’s ever happy again.) But you can’t discuss practicalities all day and not take people into account, either. (Bank of America and Netflix know this all too well. Sucks to suck.)

And let me clarify by saying that these “best” minds are simply the more educated ones. And they’re only the more educated minds because of the opportunities they’ve had in life. So, as a warning to all you “best minds” out there — every single person on this planet is just that: a person. Though someone may only talk of their neighbors and the food they plan to cook for dinner that night, that doesn’t mean they’re any less of a person than you are. And just because I’m typing this pretentious little lecture on a Macbook while listening to classical music while in goddamn France, doesn’t mean I’m any better than those “simple” minds.

So, basically, Eleanor — you’re a bitch.

“The air was soft, the stars so fine, the promise of every cobbled alley so great, that I thought I was in a dream.” – Kerouac

I’m going to start in medias res, here:

It’s 3:45 in the morning and you’re with someone you just met. The best conversation you’ve ever had, in the middle of a club whose walls shake with manufactured beats and the sexual torment of youth. Walk outside. Pourquoi pas? There’s something different about city streets at night – there’s a grittiness to the air, and everything seems yellowed and mysterious and exciting. You take random turns down the maze of avenues, your footsteps echo up the walls of the buildings around you. You talk and you laugh and you trip over broken sidewalks, and you laugh some more, and you struggle through sentences that would come easily to you in English – but here you are with someone who grew up on the opposite side of the world and it’s time to speak French.

He takes your hand and all of a sudden you’re invited into an apartment, but it’s up to you, a friend is there waiting. Pourquoi pas? You dance to rock-and-roll, you dance to electronic that moves your bones, you collapse on a couch hardly able to breathe because you’re laughing so hard and your head is still spinning a little from the bottle of wine you drank three hours before.

He takes your hand and all of a sudden you’re on the handlebars of a bike. Pourquoi pas? Those same mysterious and yellow and exciting streets whizzing by you, cool 5 AM air whipping through your hair, and you can’t help but gasp. And yelp when you nearly fall off as you hop onto a sidewalk, but here you are, home, safe and sound. The morning birds are chirping already. The best conversation you’ve ever had. Your once straight hair, tangled and curled. You’re breathless, you’re a million miles away from home, you’re alive.

… not to tease you all, but I guess by “medias res” I meant: I’m going to describe to you brief snapshots of a night, and then not go back to the beginning, but rather tell you what is so wonderful about nights like these.

Spontaneity. Le candeur. Fuck it, why not. Pourquoi pas. 

When you are young, and alive, and in love with the world, il faut profiter. We get together, we drink bottles of wine with our friends, we go out to bars and clubs and deep down we pray – I hope this night is good. I hope I meet people. I hope, I hope, I hope. And when it happens? We push it away, we’re scared, what if this person is just being a creep, come on, I’m tired, yeah, I’ve got stuff to do tomorrow, let’s go home.

No. Pause. Think – when am I ever going to be in this situation again? And say to yourself, pourquoi pas? Talk to that guy with the flask who seems interesting, dance with that guy in the plaid shirt, share a joke with a bunch of Spanish girls smoking cigarettes on the sidewalk. There’s nothing quite like adventure. It’s a high that you can’t shake, that grabs your heart days later when you think about it, that pushes your life in so many strange and beautiful directions. It’s addictive, and it’s wonderful, and you’ll wake up the next day and say, “What the hell happened? Was that a dream?” Jump around to that electronica, yell the words to “All the Small Things,” hop on the handlebars of that bike, and profitez.

Il faut profiter ce soir, mes cailles.

Why I hate – well…

I couldn’t exactly decide what to title this post, as I’m not quite sure what it is that I hate. Let me rewind, faire une petite pause, and describe my predicament.

Why is it that when I say, I want to shop in the markets of Morocco, I want to visit the pyramids of Egypt, I want to take a cheap bus that arrives at 4:30 AM in Turin, Italy, I am greeted with, “No, you can’t”?

Because I’m a woman.

Is anyone else infuriated by this? I feel like I could catch on fire with the anger that flares inside me when I hear, “You’ll get catcalled, it’s not safe, that’s not a smart idea, go with a friend, go with a man, take a taxi, you can’t walk home by yourself.” It’s not that it’s not true. Because it is. It heartbreakingly is.

Like, honestly? Doesn’t anyone else find it ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS that HALF THE POPULATION of the entire world CAN’T TRAVEL ALONE? If a woman wakes up one day and wants to go see Mount Kilimandjaro, and no one else can come with her, well, that’s too damn bad. Looks like she’s gonna die without seeing Mount Kilimandjaro.

So what is it that I hate? Being a woman? ‘Cause I don’t. I subscribe to gender norms, dammit. I like dresses with little flower prints. In fact, I own about six different flower printed dresses. In mint green, and yellow, and pink, and dark pink, and pale orange, and sky blue. And I like when guys pay for my drinks at the bar, and I like that crying is a legitimate way to get out of a speeding ticket. And I really like to dance on tables at the discotheques, ’cause dammit, my makeup looks good tonight and I love David Guetta.

So do I hate men? No, I don’t. I like them a lot, actually. I like to absent-mindedly stare at the well-dressed, nice-smiling, scruffy-bearded ones on the tram, until they notice me staring at them and I blush and knock my iPod to the ground and then accidently drool or snort while trying to pick it up.

But when it’s just 7pm and I’m walking home from the yoga studio, with my workout pants stuffed into my boots and my coat haphazardly hanging off of me, sweat still running down my face, and a strange 40 year old man looks at me up and down and says, “Bonsoiiiiir, madmoiselle,” – it makes my goddamn blood boil.

Which brings me back to my original questions. What is it about sex that screws society up? What is it about society and sex that screws people up?

Why is it that a woman can want to dance on a table at a discotheque, but not want to be accosted when she steps out onto the street afterwards to have a cigarette? Why isn’t it possible to be feminine and not a target, all at once? And why, why, mes cheries, isn’t it possible to fully breathe in this life, and see this amazing, enormous, multidimensional world that we live in – by oneself, as a woman? Because that is, I suppose, what I truly hate – to be limited in this fantastic concept of today.

If I knew the answers, I swear I’d tell you. But I don’t, so we wait. And I wish I could say, “so we’ll change things” – but how? The answer to that, I believe, is even harder to find. So we wait.

A tad more serious, now.

When I left the United States, I said to myself, “I’m gonna hunker down in this new city, and get to know Grenoble, and that’s it.” Anyone who knew me before I left knew I hated to travel – hell hath no wrath like Sarah McHenry when she can’t find something, she’s stressed out, and has to leave. But here I am, with February winding down, and I’ve been in 5 countries within the past 4 weeks. How is this even really possible?

Something changes within you when you move abroad – and it’s something that you can’t really explain unless you’ve done it. Let me try, though, and see if this works.

When you move to a new city, in a new country, in a new language, in a new culture – and it’s not just for two weeks, it’s for a very very long time – you don’t rush out into the open air markets and plunge into every cafe you see. You take your time, you try to memorize what you see, you struggle to find a routine of some sort, you are like a blind person trying to memorize a page of braille. And it’s hard, and you’ll get lost trying to get home from the city center approximately sixteen times after you thought you finally memorized it. And then, one beautiful day, after the waves of homesickness and culture shock have started to recede, you realize:

“Oh, this is my home, now.”

And then you laugh, and you take deep gulps of air, and you book an impulsive ticket to Prague, and you find yourself border-hopping like you’re playing a game of hopscotch – triple-checking that you have your passport every day, eating whenever and whatever you can, hearing more languages than you ever thought possible, becoming less and less alarmed at your digestive system’s wariness and complaints, pulling out six different maps from your pockets trying to find the one you actually need, walking down streets whose names leave your tongue disoriented and your mind sans racines.

The road, the road! To walk, to see, to explore, and talk and laugh, and be utterly confused, and make fun of strange things, and get made fun of by locals – and live! And breathe – breathe city air, smoky pub air, recycled airplane air, grainy subway air, hostel bathroom air, warm filling air that rises from a hot creamy pasty at the end of a long day of walking in the rain. And this is why, my friends, I have changed. Because this is living, truly – rootless, American accent, wide eyes and tired feet – and when you finally pull into the Grenoble bus station at three o’clock in the morning, there’s no better feeling than being able to say, “I’m home.”

 

Strange Men in Strange Places

Bonne après–midi, mes chers!

I’ve always heard stories of study abroad students staying out until 4 AM at discothèques, and thought it was a tad ridiculous, and didn’t really ever think I’d actually do that (seeing as, at W&M frat parties, I normally start whining about being tired and needing to nom on Wawa at like, midnight) – until last night. But that, mes amis, is a story for a different time. Anyways, with a pounding head and ringing in my ears…

In order to paint an accurate portrait of my adventures across Europe during the past week, I am going to take the time to tell a few tales of the fucking weird dudes I encountered while traveling (excuse my English.) Without further ado –

1. London, England: Adam and the Camden Town Victorians

We only kept him around for his pretty eyes.

I’m at a loss for words to describe this character, who we met in a bar in Camden Town. He came up to Johanna, Ashley, and Caroline (the three other girls that I was traveling with) – excuse me, stumbled up to them – and said, “AH YOU AAALLROIGHT?” It took them a solid five minutes to figure out that he actually was speaking English (by which time I had returned, with beer slopped all down my front due to a goddamn bar fight that had happened over my head. Welcome to London.). He proceeded to tell me that he was an electrician and that – “sweah on moai loife” – his grandfather had stolen a painting from the National Gallery of London and that they kept it for “yeaaahs” behind his grandmother’s couch.

(Shockingly, he might not have been lying – we looked it up when we got home and found this.)

As the night progressed, Adam stuck by our table – even though we weren’t saying anything to him – dazedly staring at us, and occasionally interrupted our conversation to ask us our names. He drank straight vodka and danced with his arms very close to his chest, like he was about to punch something. And it all went downhill when he pulled out his camera. Unbeknownst to us, Adam had a peculiar way of taking pictures – he’d suddenly and rather violently LUNGE around the back of you with his camera and point the shutter directly into your face.

No exaggeration.

I thought I had escaped the madness when he got distracted after taking photos with everyone else in the group in this bizarre manner, and breathed a sigh of relief – but I was wrong. He suddenly lunged toward his friend and gave him his camera, put his arms around me, and licked my ear.

Licked my ear.

We managed to get out of the pub alive, and even more miraculously, made it out of Camden Town alive, which looks a hell of a lot like this on a Saturday night – as long as you add in more weird men (yes, more weird men!) dressed up in Victorian garb with canes, yelling sexist slurs on street corners.

Yeah... I'm not quite on their level.

2. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Leidseplein shenanigans

When a girl goes out to a bar, there’s usually some expectation that during the night, a guy is going to buy her a drink. That’s all well and good, but not when the guy won’t get the hint to fous le camp.

I think you can pretty accurately tell how I was feeling. And how he was feeling, for that matter.

3. Brussels, Belgium: A 5:1 Ratio

I’m not exaggerating: for every one female in Brussels, there are 4 creepy males and maybe 1 less-creepy male. As a group of 4 twentysomething girls, obviously tourists, we were bound to attract more than our fair share of the crazies.

Right off Brussel’s famed Grand Place, you can find yourself suddenly in front of what looks like a mall – and even has a sign outside promoting bathrooms. (And showers. Wait. Showers?) Naively entering, in humble search of shopping venues, you suddenly realize that this “mall” is composed of 20 shops selling the exact same trashy clothing and faux leather purses, and every shop is guarded by a leering fortysomething Eastern European man. It was like a Taken prequel, except Liam Neeson and his particular set of skills were definitely not around to save us. So we peaced. Immediately.

Dad, you're great and all, but you're no Liam.

Later that night, as we attempted to find Delirium Cafe, Brussels’ most famous bar, a host of a nearby restaurant stepped into our path, claiming to be “Mr. Satisfaction,” and later, on our walk home, yelled after us that he was single. Wait, what? AREN’T YOU WORKING RIGHT NOW?

In conclusion: Men of the world, can you please STEP OFF?

It's less funny when it's not MadTV. Actually, it's just as funny, but only in retrospect.

Next time: A maudlin portrait of traveling and transitions. A tout a l’heure!