Except I am not heading home. Not yet anyway.

While the rest of the group navigated customs, caught their connecting flights, and made their way back to Pittsburgh, I said my goodbyes at the hotel and waited for my dad to arrive in Munich. What followed was something I had been quietly praying for, for the entire trip: a few days in Munich with my father, in the city his family is originally from, walking the same streets we had spent two weeks learning about in an academic context but now with no schedule and no deliverables. Just the two of us in Bavaria. Last minute, he gave me word that he could get away from work, and we started planning!

We had a couple of lovely days in Munich, and then we made our way to Berlin, which was its own experience entirely. A city that carries a completely different kind of history and energy from the southern Germany we had been immersed in. After Berlin, I flew to London, where I swapped one parent for the other. My mom joined me there, and it happened to be her very first trip to Europe.

That last detail means a lot to me. London is the city I know better than any other outside the United States. I spent four months living there last spring, interning, traveling, and building friendships that have genuinely lasted. Showing it to my mom for the first time, through the eyes of someone who already loves it deeply, was a different kind of meaningful than anything on an itinerary. She got to see the city the way I see it, not as a tourist attraction but as a place that shaped me.

Tomorrow I head out to see friends from my London study abroad who I have stayed close with, in Ibiza, as they celebrate their college graduation. These are people I met in a foreign city eighteen months ago who are now genuinely part of my life.

That is maybe the biggest thing this chapter of travel has reinforced for me. Studying abroad does not end when the program ends. The friendships, the cities, the connections you build keep compounding. Augsburg gave me a new set of people and places I know I will return to. London already proved that to me once. The world keeps getting smaller in the best possible way.