Belgium is cold. This is the first thought that occurs to me after I cross the English Channel. Not that the wine and the beer and the chocolate—which I ate with two friends in quaint holes-in-the-wall that shame all the shops in England—was the best I have ever had and the best I ever will have, perhaps, in all of my travels in Europe. Not that the cobblestone streets and gilded cathedrals of Brussels, its capital, are exactly the same as they were when Napoleon invaded. Not that three gypsies in threadbare scarves attacked my roommate’s waffle. All I can think about as I stare at the white cliffs of Dover is this: that country is terribly cold. Even on the Channel, its winds come back to haunt me.

***

In the middle of a square in Brussels, the three of us—my roommate, my friend from Vanderbilt and I—bought waffles at a nearby stand. We took them across the square to a white plastic table and sat. A little girl approached us. She said something in French—none of us speak French—and opened a tawny hand. In the cup of her palm were a few bronze coins, all glinting. She pointed to our pockets and asked us again for money. We shook our heads. She implored us again; we resumed eating our waffles. A mother and a grandmother appeared from behind the girl, yelling. We picked up our plates and got up to leave. The eldest gypsy swatted my roommate’s plate. A fork clattered. We turned from the table and ran, huddled around our waffles, out of the square and into the sunlit street.

***

Today in Shakespeare class we discussed Othello in groups. There were three girls in mine—two American, one British—and me. We tackled romantic ideals. In the middle of our discussion a lull came over the group, as the four of us searched together for a decent thing to say. The voices of other students seemed louder, harsher. The British girl noted aloud: “This is the first time I’ve been in a class where Americans outnumbered Brits.”
The three of us looked around sheepishly. “Sorry,” we said, and laughed.

***

My third day in London, I spent an hour or so walking around campus in a vain attempt to perfect my mental map. Near nightfall—indistinguishable, as fog was filling the streets—I saw a man in a phonebooth, one foot on the pavement. He spotted me and called: “Mate, can you help me?” I wondered faintly if he was planning to mug me, rob me, pull me into the booth; no, no, too late, I was already walking over. “Mate, can you lend me a pound? Just one, I’m out of minutes and need to call my girlfriend. One pound.” I opened my wallet, already fat with change, and fished from its darkness a thick, heavy coin. “Is this it? I’m new here.” He examined it as one might examine a pearl, then snatched it up and said: “Brilliant, just brilliant! Thank you!”
In later weeks, I would err on the side of caution. That night, though, it was worth it to hear his phrase.

***

I could write that the weather here has been awful, unbearable, bone-chilling, but that would be a lie. Nothing is nicer than a cool, foggy day in London: the coastal wind lets down the battered flag, and every oncoming car emerges from miles of mist. A foreign vapor beads above my eyebrows; I lick with the tip of my tongue a water tinged with smog. No sun, no beach, no azure day, just a little dose of mystery courtesy of the sea. Gift of the Arctic, howling far above.

***

What once took days—traveling from London to Paris—now takes a couple of hours. The Eurostar, a high-speed train system that monopolizes the route, passes through the Chunnel in under half an hour. Since the bilingual announcements no longer point out its entrance, the tunnel is easy to miss; a dark blur and a single bar of steel are all I can see as I speed under the ocean. I wonder what it felt like to cross two centuries earlier, when rickety ships were the only way across. In those days, an army on the move would head directly for Belgium—whoever held Belgium, the wisdom went, “held a pistol to England.” And now, weary commuters make the journey weekly, with as little fanfare as commuters on Long Island.
Is travel slowly dying? Will it mean anything, in a hundred years, to fly across the world?

***

Here I am in London, a billowing black speck amongst eight million others, savoring the sights as I squint against the wind. If it changes me somehow, in some way I can’t yet name, I’ll return to the States with a sense of our country’s ancestors. If not, I can already tell that I’ll be glad to have earned these stories.