In the year I spent abroad, my friends and I had ample time to traverse Europe. Young adults (old kids sounds more appropriate) with low budgets and limited responsibilities, 60 euro round trip flights to Prague and free breakfast deals at hostels practically screamed our names and drew us in their web of irresistibility.

For eight months, when we weren’t busy attempting to cook for ourselves or trying to find our classrooms, often labeled in Gaelic, we took great advantage of proximity and newly born adventurous spirits. We jumped from place to place, necessitating hours of planning and too many Ryan Air flights to possibly count (I did, though, and it was 20). We sank our bank accounts on night sledding in the Swiss Alps and boating to the isle of Capri, never quite getting enough.

It was a relatively brief flirtation with something that gave us what we wanted yet in too small portions. I left wanting an exclusive relationship with traveling, where it never ended and was mine forever. I felt the undying symptoms of being infected with the desire to see and experience more and more.

It is not possible to see absolutely everything in the world, which perhaps makes it even more exciting. You can never run out of places to see or people to meet or experiences to have. This knowledge has sparked the desire to do as much as I possibly can.

We didn’t have time to see the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, to do the Montserrat tour in Barcelona. We didn’t make it to the Galleria dell Academia in Florence to see Michelangelo’s David or see the interior of the Louvre in Paris. Though we made it to the Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna, we didn’t see it in all its springtime glory, with flowers blooming and weather that doesn’t include rain and near-freezing temperatures.

Making a mental list of all the things we were able to do and see is amazing and makes me feel beyond accomplished and blessed, but it is also productive to bring to light the things we didn’t see in order to understand the extent to which I have left to explore. Though I have nearly exhausted the years I have available to travel without the responsibility of being an out-of-college adult, I know I will do whatever it takes to carve out the time to travel under any obligation.

I will perhaps never be completely satisfied with where I go by the end of my life, for because of this experience I will always want to do and see more. But at least it gives me something to do the rest of my life.