This May, I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to travel to cities in Denmark and the Netherlands. The cities I went to were Copenhagen, Rotterdam, and Amsterdam. I travelled with 25 other students and the theme of the trip was how various companies in these Northern European countries do sustainability.
This trip was incredible to me for many reasons. One of the most influential of these reasons was the way in which it changed my view on the world. The 10 days I spent in Europe with this program were the first days that I have spent outside of the United States or Canada. Due to that, I admittedly had quite the limited worldview. Everything I thought about I always thought within a narrow American scope. Europe and the rest of the world seemed so far away to me. Any news that would come out of there seemed like nothing that would ever affect me. The ten days I spent oversees changed that view tremendously. I know this sounds funny but I realized that there were “real” people and places there. I guess I could say that I sort of humanized the rest of the world in a way that I had never before. The fact that I could take an 8 hour plane ride and be at a completely different part of the world was something that surprised me as to how much it affected me. As a whole, the trip forced me to widen my view on the world by just showing me that there was more out there than just North America.
One of the places we visited in Copenhagen really initiated the changes in my worldview. This was out group visit to a university in Copenhagen. We went to the university on our first full day in Europe. While at the university listened to lectures about sustainability within Copenhagen and Denmark as a whole. These lectures really provided a great back group to the learning that occurred during the rest of our trip. What changed my worldview in that trip was not the lectures, however. It was the time spent there watching the students. What I saw were kids in the same position as me likely trying to achieve many of the same goals as me. Although they group in a completely culture, seeing kids my age doing what I do every day was amazing in showing me how “real” this part of the world really is.
Another interaction that changed my worldview was about midway through the trip in a Copenhagen coffee shop. When 6 other students and I went into the shop we sparked up some conversation with the barista. Once he found out that we were Americans his immediate reaction was asking us who we supported in the upcoming election. (This was strange to me initially as I really did not realize that people in Europe would be paying too much attention to it.) He then went to tell us that if Trump were to get elected, America and the people from there would be looked at in different and worse way. He even said we likely would not be treated with the same friendliness we were being shown right then and there. This altered my worldview completely by showing me that America is not in a vacuum. All of the good, the bad, and the ugly that goes on in our country is watched by the rest of the world in the same way that we watch them.
The final aspect that really impacted my worldview was my last couple of days in Europe. It all started during our day trip to Amsterdam. While I was walking around the city I started to feel dizzy. This feeling did not stop and I eventually also became nauseous. My group hat I was with asked around for me and luckily there was a doctors office nearby. From there I was referred to go to the hospital in Amsterdam. From there I spent the next two days in Amsterdam and Rotterdam at two hospitals trying to figure out what was wrong with. Although nothing was eventually found and I was cleared to go home, this ordeal did play a huge impact on me. One of the ways it did this was really “normalizing” Europe to me. Up until that point I did and saw most things in the lens of a tourist. When I got sick, however, I got to experience a whole another part of Europe that I wouldn’t otherwise have. I saw their medical centers, I took their public transportation, I experienced being sick in a foreign country. Although I would rather have not gotten sick, I do appreciate the experiences that came from it.
Being able to expand my worldview from this trip was such a blessing to me. It was also extremely necessary to me as a citizen of the world. I needed to get out of my comfort zone and see other parts of the world to see what it is truly like. Because not all of the world is just like America and although I knew that before, it really took this trip to open my eyes and see the world in a truly “worldly” scope.
