Home again, home again. With eight hours to kill on a flight home, I decided to put my Macbook Pro’s battery to good use and create a video slideshow of all my favorite pictures from my summer abroad. The slideshow was created using iMovie, features a song by Temper Trap and U2 and all the photographs are mine.

So I’m an adult and have friends who are getting published, which seems odd but so exciting at the same time. A friend of mine, Gabriel Gadfly, had his first book of poetry released today on eBooks and will be released in paperback sometime next week. I did a little video review of it for Amazon.com and got to finally play around with annotations and other fun things on Youtube, so I decided to post it here.

If you’re interested, buy Gabriel Gadfly’s Bone Fragments here. It’s such a steal at $1.

My friend Teresa and I went to Paris a week ago and we had photoshoots all over the city. Here are about half of the pictures we took.

After a sandwich and a stroll, I found my way to Charlemagne’s fortress Rathaus. For a couple of Euro, I got into the now town hall that has been built, added onto and remained standing since around 800. The first Roman emperor commissioned the only portion of the original fortress, the tower, in 789 and is now so fragile that no visitors are allowed in it. It was still quite a place to be, walking through the Coronation Hall that housed banquets and coronations of over 30 prince-elected German kings over the centuries. The silence and the respect of the visitors for the place for Charlemagne is still apparent; even children that were there when I was were quietly poised in curiosity.

After the town hall, I walked a few paces and wandered into the Aachen Cathedral, by far the most famous landmark in the city. Around 800 again Charlemagne commissioned the cathedral to be built, with later additions made in the 14th and 15th centuries to the cathedral. It’s really quite beautiful on the inside, the contrasting time periods, architectures and artworks blending together seamlessly. However, I didn’t know that drinks weren’t allowed inside, so I got yelled at in German as I was on my way out and I guess “kicked out” of the Cathedral. Put that on the list of things I didn’t think would happen while I was here in Europe.

After the cathedral, I walked down to a small inner city park and journaled, thinking about the day and what Europe really means for me, how I have grown as a person. I have written over 100 pages in that journal since I arrived here, and while I was flipping through the pages I realized that every single line, sentence and paragraph I was writing about how I was changing as a person. How I was trying new things, exploring who I am and figuring out how to best be happy when I enter that “adult world” in less than year. This summer was the perfect time for me to look back on who I am, and look forward to who I want to be.

But I can’t wait to go back home to the Ozarks.

Ireland is full of clovers and character. I wasn’t very surprised to step off a plane and walk down the dock of Dublin to see street after street of “for sale” signs and half-constructed buildings due to its economy, but I was surprised to find that the Irish are relatively upbeat about their misfortune. The Bachelor’s Inn we popped into for a pint of Guinness had a smiling bartender, a boy on the street stopped us to ask if we needed help finding something. The tourists on double decker green buses and swarming the breweries aren’t met with resentment or rudeness, they are simply embraced for their Euros (or American dollars, which they strangely take at some places) and the Irish go about their day.

My friend Alysha and I went about our two days in Ireland seeing a live show of the very popular television show Glee, wandering around Dublin and Trinity College, saw the most popular sights all in a very long Saturday. On Sunday, we woke-up late and went to the Cliffs of Moher, one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen. It was a long day in four different buses, but hiking along the cliffs was worth it.

The Manneken Piss, one of Brussels’ most famous and not-so historical landmarks, is a small and somewhat humorous fountain right off of the city’s grandiose Grand Place center.  The little statue was built for a handful of reasons based on a handful of legends. Regardless of its original purpose, the le Petit Julien (as it is known in French) has acquired over the years hundreds of ensembles and outfits which he wears throughout the year. Today, on my American Independence Day, the little statue sported a “Yes We Can” hat and an Uncle Sam’s outfit. I think if the Manneken Piss was real, American and old enough to vote, he’d cast his ballot to re-elect President Obama, but maybe not.

Photo via the fabulous Kelly, a fellow J-Schooler here in Brussels.

I’m not one of those people that says they’re not picky and then whines over every restaurant selection, appetizer and dessert choice as “unfit to eat.” I don’t complain when the food is a little too hot or a little too cold, I don’t throw a fit when my chicken is a little burnt. But I like what I like.

And I had no idea that I liked Turkish food.

With the huge amount of Moroccan immigrants that live in Belgium, there is an abundance of “snack shops” that serve durums, pitas, frites and sandwiches serving traditional fare. The food is quick, cheap and delicious, and the delicious part was what surprised me the most. My favorite is a chicken durum, a wrap that is sort-of like a burrito. It comes with lettuce, corn, carrots, onions and tomatoes and a perfectly sizzled tortilla of sorts to wrap it in. The locals take frites in the durum itself, but I take them on the side with a dollop of andalouse, a sauce that is sweet and spicy at the same time. It’s a perfect dinner for 4,50 Euro (around 6 American dollars) and only 500 feet from my front door, I frequent Snack Istanbul, Snack Delice and Snack Awa way too frequently.

But before you take a bite out of this hidden treasure of Brussels, a few things to remember:

• It’s fast food, but not too fast. All food at Turkish snack restaurants is made to order, and usually takes between 5 and 10 minutes to make a to-go order.
• All the workers don’t automatically speak English. Be prepared to point if you don’t speak French.
• Try different items on the menu. Don’t know what kefta is? Try it anyways, unless you have diet restrictions, then make sure you do your homework and study up on your French food vocabulary.

But just eat. Eat and be merry in Belgium, because they have a lot more to offer than waffles.

I woke-up this morning intending to take a two hour train to Aachen, Germany. A travel website that I frequent (Lonelyplanet) had advised me via a message board to try to book a last-minute filler seats for a fraction of the costs. This was not the case. So, after finding out that my $54 train ticket had turned into 65 Euro, and I had forgotten my Passport at home, I looked up at the “departs” board above my head and decided to go to Antwerp for the afternoon. I bought my 7,60 Euro round-trip ticket and boarded the train and popped in my headphones. After 40 minutes, I arrived in Belgium’s fashion capitol to rain and no umbrella. I had a general idea of where I wanted to go, the Grote Markt, and had no idea which tram to take to get there. I saw two other college-age-types asking a man in English which way they should head, and I popped over to them, squinting because of the rain.

“You guys American?”

“Yeah, sort of,” John, a 21 year-old from upstate New York said, motioning to his left at Paulina, a 18 year-old from Ontario.

“How about we figure this out together?” I asked.

And thus began a beautiful, short-lived friendship between myself and my two fellow Brussels interns. We bopped around Brussels, saw the Grote Markt, went into the Cathedral of Our Lady (it wasn’t actually called that, it was called something in Dutch that I can’t spell), ran into a small, surprising Museum Mayer van den Bergh full of Flemish medieval masterpieces, and sat on a bench in an alley that has looked exactly the same since the 1500′s.

But the best part of the day in Antwerp was watching the street celebrations of the Summer Solstice, a tradition of formally pagan northern European territories such as Flanders, the region where Antwerp is located. The percussion and the dancing and the costumes and the energy was fantastic, and I know, for sure, that I will never see anything ever like it again. The closest thing I can describe it to is Mardi Gras, but I’ve never really been so…I don’t think I have the right to compare it.

Anyway, watch the video below.