Oh hello! Has it been two years already?

Hello, friends- long time no update!

Accurate picture of me stepping into CDG

Exactly two years ago today I touched down in France and began my 15-month adventure. It’s been almost 9 months since I’ve been back, but that trip touches me every day in some capacity, especially when I get lost in my own thoughts. This time of year gets me thinking back to sweltering away at American Village, the camp I worked at for two summers. I miss it, in some weird way.

Just thought I’d give you a quick update on what’s happening in my life, what’s coming up (spoiler: a lot) and how I’m “coping” with being home.

After a crazy legislative session, I’m working part-time with my government relations firm through the end of July. I’m also working part-time with a University of Minnesota research project to collect data at farmers’ markets, and I recently became a shopper at Instacart to earn extra cash (it’s like Uber for groceries).

I’m training for a half marathon which is NEXT WEEK. I’m excited to run my first long distance race (but mostly to eat all the things afterwards). It’s the Red, White, and Boom in downtown Minneapolis, and I’ve been at it for a couple of months (minus a short break to recover from shin splints). I’m already thinking about my next race- maybe the “Women Run the Cities” 10-mile in September.

If you haven’t heard, I’m going back to school! I’m going back to the University of Minnesota for a dual Masters in Public Policy and Public Health. It’s a full two year program (no summer breaks!) I technically started my classes this summer, and am taking one summerlong class to get myself prepped to go full time in the fall.

Probably the most exciting aspect of my summer is that I am heading back to Europe for a 5-week stint starting in August. It originally was only going to be three weeks in the Baltics- I found cheap flights in December and literally couldn’t convince myself not to buy them

My partner Scott and I are flying into Tallinn, Estonia, and making our way through Latvia and Lithuania. We were both originally planning to fly out of Vilnius back to the states, but my college friend Chris is getting married outside of Lyon, France in early September, and I obviously couldn’t miss that, so fortunately a fluke in the way I booked my initial trip allowed me to cancel my flights and rebook them to fly out of Paris two weeks later.

Yes, I’m missing my first week of class at the Humphrey. No, I don’t think I’ll regret it. The best part is, between Lithuania and France I’ll have some solo travel time to hit up Minsk, Warsaw, and Krakow. I’ll be adding five new countries to my list this summer and I can’t wait to check out these new places.

You might recall that Scott came over to visit me in September on the last leg of my trip. I never ended up writing a post about it, but we hit up Barcelona and then spent 10 days in Ukraine, eating way too much chocolate, hiking, and making our way through western Ukraine and the Carpathian mountains. He was a great travel buddy, and while we’re increasing our travel time together by more than a week, hopefully we won’t get sick of each other! :P

Here’s a map of all the cities we’re hitting up, plus a few I’ll be doing solo. If you've been and have some recommendations, please let me know!

So obviously, this trip is keeping me in high spirits that I will continue to be able to travel (probably not as a poor graduate student, but who knows). Other resources have been keeping my inspiration/imagination high over the last few months, and I wanted to share a few with you, in case you're aching to do some travel or miss being on the road.

I just recently discovered the r/solotravel on Reddit, and it is awesome. So many people have questions about their trips or traveling and general, and I love being able to help out where I can and read about others’ experiences. I’ve posted a couple of questions to get advice about my Baltic itinerary, or flying into Minsk, and wish I had been aware of this site sooner!

Skyscanner and Google Flights can keep me busy as I browse around to find cheap flights I’ll never buy. Skyscanner has an “everywhere” option to browse destinations for certain dates and Google Flights has a great map feature.

Scott and I have been watching YouTube videos of other people's’ travel experiences in the Baltics, and they’ve been giving us a lot of insight. We recently branched out to watching places we won’t be visiting this time around, like the trans siberian railway across Russia.

So in short, that's what I've been up to! My "goal" is to update this blog more frequently leading up to the trip, during, and after, so I can be a better resource to those trying to figure out their own travel plans, and so I have an accurate depiction of this crazy awesome time of my life that I can look back on later :)

Cheers, all!

Sophie