It is amazing how much ground ten adventurous ENC students can cover in three weeks’ time given backpacks and Eurail passes.  This past May just such a group explored nine cities in seven countries over 21 days in their version of the grand European tour without which no undergraduate education is really complete.  Along the way students Luke Cochran, Julianne Hale, Jon Helm, Rachel Jester, Ron Kling, Derek Krause, Alain Poutré, Kevin Uscinski, Heather Warmuth, and Daniel Wooster experienced enough excitement to fill any number of travelogues as they took in famous sights, savored curious foods, and wrestled with unfamiliar languages.

In keeping with the tradition and spirit of backpacking across Europe, this excursion could most charitably be described as a no-frills affair.  Accommodations included bunks in youth hostels and pensions, floors of private homes, and a multitude of overnight train berths.  Meals usually consisted of curious items purchased from small markets and sidewalk vendors with group dinners taken each evening in restaurants chosen for their selection of national dishes.  French bread, Czech clear broth soup, Polish bratwurst, Austrian schnitzel, and Italian pasta all received high marks while London’s steak and kidney pie and Warsaw’s blood sausage were deemed unforgettable for altogether different reasons!

Organized by Professor Carla Lovett, the trip was meant to be both about backpacking in Europe and about learning the new post-Cold War contours of the continent.  Each student enrolled in her intensive survey course on the history of the European Union (EU) which provided both an overview of the EU since its earliest inception and a focus on its most recent successes and stresses.  As the class traveled through London, Paris, Berlin, Prague, Warsaw, Auschwitz, Vienna, Venice, and Rome class lectures and writing assignments complemented their witnessing firsthand some of the drama currently embroiling EU member states.

The European Union is often touted as one of the most successful and sophisticated regional organizations of its kind to date, earning it the sobriquet, “United States of Europe.”  At the same time, this success has not been without its drawbacks.  London is famous for its double-decker buses, glimpses of the Queen, and that curious culinary concoction known as bangers and mash.  Yet, Great Britain is equally famous for its deep-rooted skepticism towards the Continent as seen by its membership in the EU but not in the euro-zone.  Paris is home to the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, and some of the smelliest cheese on record.  But it is also where hundreds of thousands of North Africans, with their distinct ethnicity, language, and religion, reside, presenting enormous difficulties to the purist defenders of traditional French culture.

Xenophobia is even higher in Berlin, where Turkish kebabs are as ubiquitous as sauerkraut, Berlin is known as “Little Istanbul”, and Germans are vehement in their opposition to Turkey joining the European Union.  Italy struggles with an unemployment rate as high as 20% in some regions, while Austria despairs at how dearly it has paid for EU membership – sacrificing many of its beloved arts programs for mandatory defense commitments.  Poland and the Czech Republic have emerged from behind the political partition of the Iron Curtain only to find themselves still segregated, this time by a “golden curtain” that separates Western affluent “haves” from these more poverty-stricken Central European “have-nots.”  And on the sixtieth anniversary of its liberation, Auschwitz still needs no further explanation.

The students thoroughly enjoyed their jaunt through some of Europe’s most famous and beautiful cities, with many vowing to return as soon as possible.  While the entire group escaped bad weather, ill health, getting lost, and any number of other possible calamities, no one could flee the sober intellectual reflection that such abrupt cultural immersion demands.  All returned with a brand new perspective of the world – from the other side of the Atlantic – and a much better understanding of the European Union, Europeans, and their dream that might someday rival that of Americans.