• Bread. You ate a lot of it.
  • Backwerk and Nobis; vanille-schoko-hörnchen und nuss-nutella-croissants und mehr mehr mehr!
• Ryanair. You'll never forget your time with Ryanair.
  • more like Vueling but still...cheap airfare livin
• You were shocked you actually had to do schoolwork.
  • case in point: IRTG presentation, UROP research paper, UROP colloquium poster
• You ruined a couple pairs of shoes on cobblestones.
  • but it was worth every shredded leather patch and every bloody blister
• Your travel plans were affected by national strikes.
  • that Vueling flight to Barcelona was very nearly ruined by strikes indeed
• You secretly looked down on your peers who studied abroad in English-speaking countries.
  • not quite but learning Deutsch from scratch was one of the best experiences I've ever had
• Even though everyone pretty much spoke English wherever you were.
  • das ist SEHR richtig
• There was someone in your program who discovered drinking and never looked back.
  • lol...
• You got used to (Asian tourists squatting while taking photos).
  • in which life imitates art
• At first you scoffed at the one-euro bottles of wine, but then you drank that stuff like it was water.
  • nicht so richtig, tut mir leid
• You roughed it on a 40-euro roundtrip Eurolines bus to Amsterdam.
  • try roughing it on a 50-euro roundtrip bus to Zürich instead
• You annoyed your friends back home by posting an average of 2,000 photos like this weekly on Facebook.
  • nah not about that life
• You had a really hard time paying to use the bathroom.
  • collisions

You learned that you have to be willing to throw a few elbows to get onto public transit.

• all the elbows
• You tell "this one time when I lived in" stories all the damn time.
• You were very disappointed by the size of the "Mona Lisa."
• You scoffed at other Americans, even though you knew everyone could identify you as an American by your shoes.
• You experienced no greater feeling of genius than when you successfully navigated public transit in a new city.
  • ich bin ein ASEAG-meister
• You would describe applying for your visa as one of the more unpleasant experiences of your life.
• You tell everybody you liked Speculoos before it was cool.
• You would get overly excited when somebody started to talk to you, even if you didn't understand what they were saying.
• You went to McDonald's once. Just admit it. You did.
• You were very proud of yourself after successfully ordering dinner in a foreign language.
  • the ICE from Mannheim to Köln! SO TRUE
• You could go on and on about the things you saw in nightclubs.
• You came to the sad realization that Mexican food is hard to find in Europe.
  • Japanese.
• No matter how long you were there, you kept having those "I live here" moments.
  • Oh my Lord, yes.
• And even though you're stateside now, you know you'll be back.