I depart on the Great Peregrination

I return from my six-week blog hiatus to declare that I am ready to travel again. A sojourn at home has been very restful--I read a bunch of books, watched lots of West Wing with my parents, studied for and took the GREs, discovered previously unknown sartorial talents, worked out at the gym often, saw friends as they passed through Idaho Falls, clambered about the house on scaffolding for a massive staining project--but the wanderlust has struck once more as I have booked hostels and pondered the map. Now two months of travel stretch before me, and I expect them to be delightful.

A brief itinerary, so that you have an idea of the wonders to come:

June 22: Arrive in Zurich
June 24: Fly to Krakow to meet Kathryn Paul and Rosemary Davidson, my father's cousins who are taking me to visit our ancestral village in the south of Poland. I will be investigating whether or not I am related to our neighbors the Barnas up the street, because we realized just a few days ago that there is a distinct possibility! We will also go to Warsaw, from which I will
July 2: Fly to Budapest to meet my Nana Rose, with whom I will be cruising down the Danube and the Rhine for two weeks. I will revisit Budapest and Vienna but see many new things as well. (And make lots of friends who are over 50. Nana is hoping I also make friends with the sailors.)
July 18: Arrive in Amsterdam and spend a few solo days there. My hostel is just around the corner from the Anne Frank House, where I will be making a pilgrimage.
July 20: Fly to Ljubljana, Slovenia. My father has been asking why Ljubljana, and I tell him, "Because I haven't been there yet--and because it looks beautiful." I stay there three nights, then
July 23: Fly to Sarajevo to visit my dear friend Lejla whom I met last semester. Maddie will meet us there as well, after a rather hellish flight which departs Cairo at 2:10 am. After this, the three of us will
July 29: Travel to Makarska on the Croatian coast for a spell of beautiful scenery and the Magnuson girls trying to stave off sunburn.
August 4: Ferry from Split to Ancona, Italy, which will be my second overnight ferry adventure. Berths were very expensive, so Maddie and I have just booked deck seating and will see how events unfold! We take a train to Rome at this point after validating our Eurails, and then spend FIVE NIGHTS IN ROME. (I say that capitalized phrase often and marvel at how fantastic life is being.) My Rome dress is ready--picture the sundress which a beautiful actress would wear in a movie set in Rome, because the dress you are envisioning is exactly it. (It will make appearances across Europe, of course, but it was made for Rome.)
August 10: Train to Venice for our stay in what I can only assume was a 16th-century palace which hopefully is not overly infested with mold for my dear sister's sake. This will also be fantastic.
August 13: Train to Grenoble to meet our jet-lagged parents who will have flown into Lyon that morning.
August 14: Drive to Pont-du-Fossé to visit our French family friends (FFFs), the Escalons, with whom I lived when I stayed in France once summer before senior year of high school and whose daughter lived with us a few summers before that.
August 17: Drive to Uzès, a village very close to Avignon, for Roman ruins and French cuisine.
August 20: Bid my family farewell after all that lovely time, train to Geneva to pick up a suitcase which Dr. Peters has kindly been storing for me, then train all the way up to Hannover, Germany, to visit my dear friend Alina, who studied at UI last fall and whom I have not seen for far too long!
Sometime before September 6: Travel to Strasbourg and plant myself there for the next four months.

Obviously this summer is an exercise in my "Efficiency Is a Waste of Time" mantra. To help you envisage my route, I helpfully decorated my 21st birthday cake like so:

(Maddie, Swen and Mum being represented by the green, myself by the red.)

And I shall do it all with a 60-litre backpack with room to spare, plus a bookbag because I have been conned into traveling with my laptop by forces beyond my control. All in all, I have once again demonstrated my mastery of the packing arts. I made my mother come thoroughly admire my ingenious job this morning; I think it will endure two months of wandering quite well.

So now I say goodbye to varied clothing, personal storage space, driving cars, having an address, high heels, the gym, and Idaho Falls weather for quite some time. Fantastic.