Two weeks in Europe, a lifetime of memories revisited

In “High Fidelity,” John Cusack bemoans his ongoing obsession for an old flame: “Some people… In “High Fidelity,” John Cusack bemoans his ongoing obsession for an old flame: “Some people never get over Vietnam or the time their band opened for Nirvana. I guess I never got over Charlie.”

In my life, a vacation I went took during the summer after I graduated from high school is my cross to bear.

For most of the 13 students, it was the first time we’d been on a plane, let alone to Europe. We were supposed to go to bed early every night so we’d be awake enough in the morning to fully appreciate the onslaught of culture.

But we never made it to sleep before 3 a.m. We were up playing stripping games and having those kind of big talks you’re only capable of when you’ve finished the high school experience but are not yet deflated by the realities of college life. We talked with fake German accents, forsook Italian cuisine for good old McDonald’s, and took pictures of one another pretending to hold up the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

The group that went on the trip the previous year had famously gotten legally drunk every night. The chaperones never had to worry about that problem with us — we were too busy being idiots in love. There were at least five couples, most of which had at least one partner with a boyfriend or girlfriend at home. It just didn’t seem to matter. It was as if we were on borrowed time.

I had spent virtually every moment of the trip with someone special. She was too good to be true — an entirely unattainable girl during high school. But we were finally done with the high school social stratification and about to begin college. It was Paris and Barcelona in summertime. And she liked me. I knew she had a boyfriend at home. But for two weeks, it was a completely perfect thing. It was like a movie.

When we got home, it seemed like things would carry on the same way. And for a few weeks, we tried. But as the weeks passed, we stopped going to each other’s houses and looking at the pictures we’d developed. We stopped sharing our common experience. She got back with her boyfriend. I got back to — “whatever it is I do,” to quote “The Simpsons.” We split to different colleges and, in the name of living life to its fullest, it became necessary to remove all mention of the past and get on with our lives.

The bad thing about life is that you can never be sure when the credits roll. Is there an epilogue around the corner? Or has someone been cleaning popcorn out of the aisles for hours?

I never wanted to write about this, mostly because my roommates will invariably roll their eyes when they see the headline. Anyone who’s known someone who went somewhere exotic knows it sucks to be his or her friend, especially when all they want to do for weeks afterward is gush about how awesome it was.

I was a prime example of this. So I try not to talk about them, but I think about those two weeks a lot. Everyone seemed to go through a lot of changes as a result — one girl has transferred universities three times now. Another guy has become a drag queen on weekends.

If anything, the trip showed us that we could make anything of our lives that we wanted. Next semester, I’m going abroad for the first time since the trip — and so is the girl. We don’t talk much anymore, and we’ll be on separate continents, but I hope that she is able to continue making great times in her life. I’m trying to do the same.

I still get an ache if I ever catch “Forget Paris” on television and Billy Crystal asks, “How do you forget the best week of your life?” to which his wife responds, “Maybe that’s all we ever were — one great week.”

Daron Christopher will come back with an entire semester’s worth of stories that his roommates may or may not want to hear about. E-mail him at djc14@pitt.edu if you don’t mind hearing his tall tales of adventure abroad.