Never have I eaten so much cheese.

The most interesting part of staying with people during my trek across Europe is far and away experiencing little bits of my hosts’ lives for short periods of time. For some reason, they allow me – encourage me – to barge into their home, plop down my giant backpack, and watch as they go about being a student or worker or whatever it is they do on a daily basis. I get to be there, on the sidelines, occasionally cheering, but mostly just watching, as they live their lives in a country that is entirely foreign to me. And somehow I’ve managed to time it so that I’m there right in the midst of chaos each time.

In Birmingham, my hostess, Jo, was frantically searching for a new flat because she’d just started a new job in London and needed to move closer to work. In addition to the stress of relocating all of one’s belongings and dealing with a new lease, her South African boyfriend’s Visa just expired and he was being deported back to Africa, so she was trying to spend some time with him during his few remaining weeks in England. For the few days I was in Birmingham, I watched Jo deal with landlords and rent discrepancies, new roommates and an impatient boyfriend, vacationing employers and bank statements, all while trying to keep her sanity despite not knowing what her life might be like in two week’s time. It was all very hectic and crazy and I got to see what living in England is like for someone who’s actually doing it. I’ve found that it’s not a whole lot different than the U.S. – they just say everything with an accent and drink a whole lot more tea.

And now in Spain my hostess, Laura, just found out that she’s moving back to Mexico in three weeks. She had an accident about a month ago involving a long set of subway stairs and her skull, and now, for reasons she hasn’t been able to explain in English, she has to drop out of school in Madrid and go back home. I stood in the kitchen listening, picking up bits of Spanish here and there, as she chain-smoked menthol cigarettes and talked to her roommate about this sudden life change. She’s not sure what’s to come of her college education, if she wants to go back to her husband in Mexico, and how she’s going to live on three hundred Euros for the next few weeks. All I could say was, “¿Lo ciento?”

I try not to get in the way. I’m a tourist – all I do is watch. I watch Laura talk to her husband on the phone. I watch Jo scribble notes about security deposits on a pad a paper. I watch them sit and stare out into nothing, wondering which decision is the right one to make and how to go about making it. And then I leave. My time is up, my days are over, and I’m off to a new country, a new city, a new language, a new set of people to meet and problems to endure. I leave Laura with her time running short and Jo with her new life starting and all I can do is wonder how things turned out and hope that I get an email every once in a while.

But these snapshots are half the fun of traveling and I like that I get to start out with a clean slate every four or five days. It’s amazing how immersed I can feel after living in someone’s house for a week. I learn their routines, meet their friends, shop at their stores and share their food, all with the knowledge that I’m just writing another chapter in this huge European book of mine and that there are many more to come. So far it’s really fun. But I feel a little sad each time I get back on the train.