My European Road Trip: What a European Road Trip Taught Me About Life and Love
The Myth of the "Happily Ever After"
There are moments in life when reality doesn’t align with the expectations we've been conditioned to believe. I blame two things: the pressure from my parents to get married—“You can do whatever you want once you’re married,” they’d say—and the fairy tales that dominated my childhood. Stories where the girl meets the boy, they fall in love, and they live “happily ever after.” From Cinderella and Snow White to movies like She’s All That and Eat Pray Love, the message was always the same: happiness begins when you find “the one.”
Before my solo trip to Europe, I had taken a European road trip with a guy I was dating. We had only been together for a few months; he was older, and I didn’t think much of the trip at first. I was in a phase where I said yes to everything: Pool parties in Vegas during EDC, the iHeartRadio Festival, TomorrowWorld, and the Sundance Film Festival. I was chasing experiences I felt I’d missed out on growing up.
This trip, though, was different. It wasn’t a wild adventure with a group of friends; it was just the two of us. As we planned, friends and family whispered that he was going to propose, this was my “happily ever after”. It was such a romantic notion for them, especially with the mounting pressure from my parents to settle down. The idea took root in my mind, growing stronger as the trip approached. Maybe, just maybe, this would be “the moment.” After all, I was feeling like a failure in so many aspects of my life—stuck in a cycle of missed promotions, passed over for bigger opportunities, and endlessly getting criticised by my mother for the life I should be living; getting married and having children.
I needed a win, a sign that I wasn’t wasting my life. The pressure was intense, and the hope of a “happily ever after” was tempting. People kept saying it would be the trip of a lifetime, that I’d come back engaged. I started to believe it, desperately wanting that fairy tale ending.
But fairy tales are just that—tales. And life, as I learned, is far more complicated.
The Unexpected Trip
As the trip drew closer, the people-pleaser in me wanted to fulfill everyone’s expectations, to craft one of those storybook moments that would make them happy. The seed of that idea grew even bigger.
Our European road trip itinerary was ambitious: 1-2 nights at each destination.
- Fly into Milan, Italy
- Munich, Germany
- Vienna, Austria
- Bratislava, Slovakia
- Budapest, Hungary
- Zagreb, Croatia
- Ljubljana, Slovenia
- Venice, Italy
- Florence, Italy
- Rome, Italy
- Fly back out from Milan
We spent New Year’s Eve in Munich at a house party with friends that he knew from a previous trip. Embracing the night in a different country, I experienced new traditions—Dinner for One, traditional German food, local beer—and gained a fresh appreciation for immersing myself in local culture. It was the same but different from a typical party I was used to. There was dancing, food, drinks and fireworks but I felt it was different. I was having deep conversations, and making genuine connections with strangers I just met. I don’t remember spending any time with the guy I was dating that night, but what I do remember is the hangover that followed.
The rest of the trip was a whirlwind: 1-2 days in each city, driving, checking into hotels, walking through major sights in each city—the bathhouses in Budapest, the canals in Venice, the Colosseum in Rome.
During that trip I realized two things:
- Traveling to a city just to see the sights didn’t bring me as much joy as the human connections I made along the way.
- This relationship wasn’t going to last.
Looking back, I should have anticipated what was coming. While everyone was cheering for us, the truth was that we weren’t even at the “boyfriend/girlfriend” stage. Though we had fun during the trip, it didn’t align with the expectations everyone else had. After visiting the Museum of Broken Relationships in Zagreb, Croatia, we finally had the conversation about where we stood. He had recently ended a long-term relationship and wasn’t ready for anything serious, while I was young/naive and still absorbing other people’s hopes and expectations as my own. We were just at different places in life. By the time we got back on the plane back home, we weren't even sitting next to each other.
I had gone on this trip thinking something big would happen. In the back of my mind, I knew I was putting pressure on a situation that didn’t feel right. But because of the stories I’d been fed my whole life, I expected something magical. And something did happen—but not in the way I anticipated. Life, as it turns out, has a way of surprising us.
This trip showed me the difference between genuine experiences and human connection versus the curated attractions that draw people to a city in the first place. The stories I grew up with shaped my expectations, but they weren’t rooted in my reality. They were just that—stories.
Other Memorable Highlights/Moments of the Trip
- Vertical Hotdogs in Vienna, Austria
- Getting a morning run from Buda to Pest
- Ruin Pubs in Budapest
- Eating street Pizza while looking at the Colosseum
- Toasties in a small pub in Ljubljana, Slovenia
- Feeling like a rat in a maze in Venice and always feeling lost
- Almost being late for the flight home because we took a detour to the Scooter Museum
