After a week abroad—my first trip outside North America—I didn't come home with souvenirs. I came home with questions.
This isn't a travelogue. It's something quieter—a kind of listening report.
I didn't go to Europe to conquer, collect, influence, or evangelize. I went to learn how to pay attention again. I didn't walk slower, exactly. But I noticed more. The doors, the bridges, the light. I wasn't chasing moments. I was receiving them.
I wanted to be open.
Vulnerable. Receptive. Teachable.
Not just in a new city, but in my own body.
This is what I heard.
The Bridges
Once I arrived at Hotel Léopold in Montparnasse, I mostly traveled by foot, despite having purchased a Metro pass.
Rive Gauche, Rive Droite. I moved through the city à pied—as they say in France—letting it all come to me slowly.
I did take the train to Versailles. Even the flâneur has his limits.
In Prague, I walked from the Orea Hotel Angelo through Staré Město, Malá Strana, Nové Město—then wandered my way back again.
In Frankfurt, I traced the quiet curves of the Altstadt, letting the rhythm of the streets lead me—until I happened upon Main Fest, the city’s annual river celebration.
Each city moved to its own rhythm—but my soul kept the same pace.
I walked them all, crossbody bag over my shoulder, averaging nearly 20,000 steps a day across France, Czechia, and Germany. Always moving. Always noticing.
My days were shaped by bridges—literal ones.
In Paris: Pont Neuf, "new bridge" but oldest in the city; Pont au Double, the "double toll"; Pont d'Iéna, linking the Trocadéro to the Eiffel Tower.
In Prague: Charles Bridge, that medieval stone spine across the Vltava, as well as the Jirásek, Legion, and Mánes bridges.
In Frankfurt: the Eiserner Steg.
But also the kind you don't see right away—the kind you feel only when you stop rushing and start paying attention.
Bridges are portals. They carry you from what was to what's next. And on them, I heard an invitation:
Cross over. Keep moving. Let yourself be changed.
But bridges are also in-between places. You've left where you were. You're not yet where you're going.
And that middle—the liminal, breath-held space—is holy too.
A place to pause. To breathe. To inhabit your body. To listen.
That's what I heard on the bridges:
You don't have to rush. Presence is its own destination.
The Cafés
When I imagined this trip, I knew I wanted to sit in the legendary cafés of Europe—those sacred salons where writers, thinkers, and revolutionaries once gathered to drink, dream, and disrupt.
My first stop in Paris, after dropping my bags, was brunch at Les Deux Magots, a Saint-Germain institution. Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Sartre, de Beauvoir, Camus, Picasso, Joyce—they all came here.
Steps away: Café de Flore, where Baldwin wrote Go Tell It on the Mountain.
That evening, I had dessert and a café crème at La Closerie des Lilas, Hemingway's favorite writing haunt.
Wood-paneled walls. Red banquettes. Jazz piano. Nameplates at every table.
I sat at Beckett's table. The server walked me over to Hemingway's barstool.
Before leaving Paris, I had breakfast at La Rotonde, peeked into Le Dôme and Le Select, and sipped an Old Fashioned at La Coupole, where Josephine Baker once danced.
In Prague, I started at Café Louvre—a Belle Époque gem once favored by Kafka and Einstein. It was shut down under communism in 1948, then lovingly restored after the regime’s collapse in 1992. Later, I wandered past Cafés Montmartre, Slavia, and Savoy.
These cafés aren't just historical. They're threshold spaces—where the past still sings, and the present invites you to sit still and feel something.
You don't need a passport to feel what I felt there.
The café can be your living room. Your porch. Your kitchen table.
What they taught me was this:
Your life doesn't need to be efficient.
It needs to be meaningful.
The Sacred Spaces
France, Czechia, and Germany overflow with sacred spaces—places that help people remember something deeper, wider, older than themselves.
In Paris, two very different sanctuaries sat just across the Seine from each other.
On one side: Shakespeare and Company, the legendary bookstore that has become a refuge for readers, writers, and wanderers.
On the other: Notre-Dame Cathedral, still under reconstruction after the fire of 2019.
We didn't go inside Notre-Dame. But standing beneath its towers, something ancient stirred in me.
In Prague: St. Vitus Cathedral, begun in 1344, rising from stone first laid over a thousand years ago. Its spires, stained glass, and long shadows hold the prayers of generations.
Sacred spaces aren't just historical.
They are containers of devotion—alive with longing, grief, beauty, and awe.
And they reminded me:
You don't need vaulted ceilings or Gothic arches to encounter the holy.
You just need space.
Space for meditation.
Space for stillness.
Space to remember what matters.
So yes, I went to Europe. Not to impress or achieve—but to listen.
And what I heard has left me with new questions:
How do I bring this slowness home?
How do I make my kitchen table feel like Les Deux Magots?
How do I turn my daily commute into a bridge—between who I was and who I'm becoming?
Presence over performance.
Slowness as wisdom.
Meaning as the quiet thread that ties it all together.
(We haven't even talked about the museums. But we will.)
These aren't conclusions.
They're invitations to live differently.
The real journey starts now.
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