5 countries, approximately 138,100 steps, and 55 miles – everything my three cousins (hereafter known as B for Bhaisab, Z and T) and I did in two weeks in Europe.

This was a long-awaited trip, not just by us four, but also by our parents, aunts, and uncles, who were very invested in living vicariously through us in our gallivanting about Europe. We had several weekly meetings from January onwards to plan out our itinerary, book tickets, accommodations, and debating how we were going to divide our time.

The itinerary:
Sweden (to visit my mom’s sister and my dad’s sister) – Malmö and Västerås
Italy – Rome (primarily) and a day trip to Florence
Nice – just for the beach
Paris – for a whirlwind day and a half to make some tourist-y stops

There was much debate over how to pack all of our stuff, and we pooled together our things for one big suitcase – half of which was gifts for all the family we were going to see. Several of my family members are aggressive gifters; I compare it to nuclear proliferation – everyone wants to give equally impressive and larger gifts, not because they’re egotistical, but because they just have that much love for one another. And no one seems to want to stop, anticipating the others will give bigger and bigger gifts. Which is really sweet! But it’s a problem when we only have the one large suitcase.

Anyways, we make it to the train station (we being me, Z, and T), and we ended up sitting there a lot longer than we anticipated because our train got delayed. Only by about half an hour, but it was enough to keep us on our toes.

While we were stressed about our train, B was going through a whole other problem: his train didn’t just get delayed, it got canceled altogether and brought him back to Boston. Thus began his extremely chaotic dash to the airport – he took a train from Boston to New Rochelle, where his father picked him up to drive him to JFK. He made it with barely a half-hour to spare.

Meanwhile, the rest of us were enjoying our scenic ride by the Hudson on the Amtrak. I moved seats next to Z and T to enjoy the view (I saw a bald eagle mid-flight and a heron too!). After the train stopped at Hudson, NY, I noticed someone who looked familiar sitting in front of Z and T. I thought to myself, “Oh my god, is that Malcolm Gladwell??”

It was in fact Malcolm Gladwell, and upon intense encouragement from my family, he was kind enough to sign an autograph for my father, who is a huge fan. To think that he would never have been there had I not switched seats!

So we all make it to the airport, and our flight gets delayed too. But we make it onto the flight, and in typical fashion, I conk out almost immediately. I have a very particular skill: on almost any moving vehicle, I can fall asleep very quickly. It is truly a blessing considering how many hours we all spent in various modes of transportation.

We land in Copenhagen and are met by my Khala (my mom’s sister), who meets us enthusiastically and takes us all to her home in Malmö. We got cleaned up, had some chai, and a couple hours after we got there, my other cousin, H, was there too! He was going to drive us to Västerås, his hometown, and back, since we had to fly to Rome from Copenhagen in three days’ time. We spent the rest of the day catching up and chitchatting, and then we ended the day with Sweden’s best burgers (according to H). They were, in fact, very good.

The next day, we hopped over to Copenhagen for a couple hours and strolled around the city center. While doing some souvenir shopping, my younger cousin, S, was walking suspiciously quickly to the register, and her hand slipped to reveal a coloring book she had picked up for herself. One thing you need to understand about our family, we take the responsibility of taking care of the younger ones very seriously; that includes paying for food and shopping and everything in between. As the eldest sister on either side of my family, this is something I do not compromise on. So it was absolutely hilarious to me that S would attempt to hide it from me, the Appi that sees all.

We then headed back to Malmö to get ready for our next trip to Västerås. We got settled into the car and had a series of interesting conversations – moving between what music we were listening to, political rants, and various hot takes. It was a fun ride, and we stopped at a fast food place that had surprisingly good vegetarian options – even the fast food is better in Europe!

As the drive went on and it got dark, at 11 p.m., each of us dropped like flies into sleep, until we got to Västerås and were greeted by a very enthusiastic Phoopijaan (my dad’s sister) at 1 a.m. We then went off to sleep (finally) after a very long day.

The next day, we all slowly coaxed each other out of bed and went for brunch of some really yummy sandwiches and walked near Lake Mälaren, Babba’s favorite part of Västerås. Of course, both Babba and Phoopijaan are the most social of butterflies, and so we ran into a bunch of people who knew her from work or were her friends in some other way. Her middle son remarked, “A lot of people like my Mamma.” This is undeniably true, and I think it’s mostly because she, like her brother, finds reasons to like a lot of those people too.

The primary reason we were visiting Sweden was to see Phoopijaan after her recent cancer diagnosis, and it was our familial duty to go visit her. But Phoopijaan being Phoopijaan, you really would not be able to tell that she was sick, and she abhors being treated as if she is Sick, much like her brother. But we went to visit her on the occasion of great news: the medication was working! It gave us all a huge sigh of relief, and that joy was palpable as we were spending time with her.

B is working on adding to a documentary about my paternal grandmother’s ancestral home, and we recorded (with many starts and stops) Phoopijaan’s portion of it and looked at a bunch of old photos of us kiddos.

We also went shopping, doing our very best to calm Phoopijaan’s gifting impulses, and then returned to their house which was full of the aroma of fragrant spices, as Phoopajaan was cooking up his famed lamb chops and pulao. It was, as usual, absolutely delicious, and we somehow ended up on the decision that we would watch Dhoom 2, which was so typically over the top for Bollywood in the 2000s – the action was fun though!

The next day we were headed back to Malmö, since our flight to Rome was via Copenhagen, and we had another drive ahead of us. This one went quicker though, and when we reached Malmö, we relaxed, had some chai and dinner, and then watched Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, one of my favorite Bollywood movies.

This was not a very wise decision, as we had to get up at 3 a.m. and we went to bed at 1.

The next day was a series of trials and tribulations, the likes of which none of us travelers ever want to repeat again. Get comfortable!

The day before our flight to Rome, we were told by all the locals that two hours was more than enough time to get through security and to the flight, so we decided to take the 4:59 train from Malmö to Copenhagen for our 6:45 a.m. flight. Normally, this would be cutting it a little close for me personally, but we trusted their experience. (Never again.)

Anyways, we got on the train on time, but in waiting for it, Z realized he hadn’t been able to check in properly online, so we had to check in and then get our boarding passes, drop off our suitcase, and go to security. I figured it wasn’t a huge deal, and that we would be able to check in pretty quickly and go on our way.

We get on the train, and it gets delayed significantly, enough that we are all getting nervous and tapping our feet and checking the time on our phones constantly. We finally get to the airport, and sprint out of the train to check in. But the check in counter was weirdly placed, so that took an extra five minutes that we could not afford at this point.

Here’s the timeline:

4:30 – We leave from Khalajaan’s home after having chai and bread.
4:59 – We get on the train to the airport
5:30 – We get to the airport because it got delayed like crazy
5:30-5:40 – We run around in the airport looking for our check in counter and simply could not find it until we stopped to read a sign (🤦🏽‍♀️)
5:40 – we get in line for the check-in thing, and the lady types with literally one finger: I could literally see her spell out M-A-R-Y-A-M
6:00 – We run to drop our bag and go to security
6:00-6:15 – We go through security… at least some of us do.
6:20 – B and I start running to THE LITERAL OTHER END OF THE AIRPORT. IT WAS SO FAR.
6:30 – We near the boarding gate and an agent peeks out of a corridor to get us
6:35 – Z gets there
6:45 – T does not.

I have never had to run to catch a flight like that before – and also, it was that time of the month for me, so I was already suffering from cramps and not feeling well – and I never intend to have to run like that again.

(above: live footage of me running through the airport)

Once we realized that T was not going to be able to make the flight, we all frantically started looking for flights and communicating with the rest of our family. Z bought T an e-sim, I called Khalajaan to pick him up, and B booked a new flight for him at 6:00 p.m. The last text I sent as we were taking off was to our big family group chat that T was going to take another flight later that we had already booked for him, and that Khalajaan was going to pick him up.

We all took a while to recover and I put my bag in the seat where T would sit, and the silliest joke came up in my brain, but I wasn’t sure if it was too soon or not. I nudged Z and pointed to the bag and said, “Look, it’s Bagvati!” (A reference to the very expensive bag that played an important role in the movie we had watched the night before.) He looked at me for a second and dug in his bag and handed me his sunglasses, so she was all set. Here she is pictured below:

We took some time to recover, but then when we landed and turned our phones back on, we just started giggling uncontrollably at T’s inscrutable expression in the photo Khalajaan sent as proof that he had been picked up.

We finally make it to Rome, and here’s the kicker: we made it an hour early, because the tailwinds gave enough of a boost to the plane. So they could have actually waited for T.

We slowly make our way out of the airport and walk dragging our suitcases to the hostel, and we were completely red in the face and exhausted from all our trials and tribulations that day. We dumped our stuff and went to eat something, and then promptly fell one by one like dominoes into jet-lagged naps.

In the evening, after T’s flight was delayed, we finally were reunited, and could start our Europe tour in earnest.

Fortunately, the rest of our trip went surprisingly smoothly (everyone say alhamdulillah!). In Rome, we toured the Colosseum, the Roman Forum, and the Vatican Museum too. We were just walking around Rome, and the Colosseum was just right there down the street, which never failed to surprise us. We had incredible amounts of gelato, and Z and I discovered our newest favorite flavor was melon, which literally tasted like frozen whipped cantaloupe. It was delicious!

Speaking of food: we had a LOT of pasta and pizza. My personal favorites were a cacio e pepe that was deliciously creamy, a pizza we had in Rome on the first day that had pesto, tomatoes and cheese on it (super simple but super yummy!), the many rounds of gelato, and a black squid ink pasta with snapper and tomatoes in a creamy sauce that was really delicious. I also am at my core a sweet treat aficionado, so naturally I had to get an affogato with salted caramel gelato that was perfect, and we also got this delicious dessert called Bavarese al pistacchio, which was basically pistachio cream/pudding around a hazelnut and chocolate cream over a chocolate base – you can never really go wrong with the combination of hazelnut, pistachio and chocolate.

There really is something incredible about being in cities that have so much history – you can still see the aqueducts and the systems that powered the old Roman Empires. There were palaces and gardens built centuries ago that is just so incredibly difficult to imagine.

In Rome, my personal favorite was the Vatican – we walked into a room and our tour guide (an extremely entertaining woman named Margerita) gestured behind her and said, very casually, “And behind us we have the School of Athens.” We just stumbled into the room with THE School of Athens by THE Raphael. The guide explained the philosophers and scholars who we know are depicted in the painting, and I even got a mini puzzle of it from the Vatican gift store!

And then, of course, came the Sistine Chapel. Standing under it, right under the Creation of Man section, was kind of incredible. There are technically no photos allowed, so we were forced to simply look up and crane our necks. I could not imagine how long it took to paint the entirety of the Chapel in such excruciating detail by Michelangelo. AI really could never.

The gift stores were extremely dangerous, as I got extremely tempted every time we went. We made a day trip to Florence, and I personally really enjoyed the visit, and the train ride too. The train ride was a super quick hour and a half through beautiful Italian countryside, and we all grew exponentially more jealous of Europeans’ ability to go wherever they went with an actual reliable public transportation system. They just don’t know how good they have it *sigh*.

Anyways, we arrived in Florence, and spent a good amount of time just gazing in awe at the Duomo, the biggest cathedral there. I read up a bit on its construction too, and it was mind-boggling to imagine that it took centuries for the science and technology to reach the point where they could actually build the dome.

We also stumbled upon an extremely dangerous paper and stationery shop – dangerous in that I wanted to buy every single notebook and pen in there, they were all sooo pretty. We spent a good amount of time there, and headed to the Uffizi Gallery, where they had, in quick succession, works by Caravaggio, Raphael, Leonardo Da Vinci, and Michelangelo. We saw the Birth of Venus, the Medusa shield, and many more incredible works. (I got three different puzzles from this store… it’s a problem, guys.) Imagine living in Florence and being able to see these all the time!

We got back to Rome at a very reasonable 9 p.m. (yay high-speed trains!) and got to packing for our flight the next day to Nice, where the main plan was “beach.” After our Copenhagen incident, we got to the airport very, very early, and it was the quickest I have ever been through security.

We reached Nice in the early afternoon, got to our hotel, and relaxed a bit before we realized we were kind of hungry, but most places close at 2:30 or 3:00 after lunch. We still managed to find one place that was still open, and were received by a very typically French man, who muttered, “we’re about to close, but sure, come on in” in French. I then remembered that I would be the primary speaker this portion of the trip, as all three brothers turned to look at me in confusion. I stammered back an emphatic thank you, because we were really very hungry.

We proceeded to have a lovely meal, and even tried escargots, which were not as bad as I expected, but I don’t know if I would necessarily order them again. We thanked the owner profusely and made a quick exit, and then relaxed in the hotel, until we left for T’s birthday dinner. Remember how I said I loved sweet treats? Here we had the most delicious one of our trip: an almond crumble with pistachio and orange blossom cream, topped with grapefruit slices. The flavors were perfectly balanced and we did our very best to savor every bite.

The next day we made it to the beach! The water was really nice, but the beach was super pebbly – I didn’t feel like going all the way into the water, so I relaxed and worked on my drawing of the Colosseum. It struck me – I was so privileged to be drawing the Colosseum, where I just was three days ago, sitting on the beach in Nice, France, in lovely, peaceful weather, with not a care in the world.

We spent a couple very relaxing days in Nice, which felt like the vacation from a vacation, after walking so much in Rome and Florence. Nice is really beautiful, and we went way up to find a stunning waterfall and see it from above. We also got some gift shopping done, and even went to a perfume workshop, where I made a really nice fruity and flowery summer perfume.

After Nice, our next stop was Paris, from where we would be flying back. I was so excited to return to the city two years after I studied abroad there. But we only had about a day and a half, which we did our best to use wisely.

The main things I wanted to show the brothers were the Louvre and the Richelieu branch of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, where I spent a lot of days doing homework when I was studying abroad. We whisked our way through the Arc de Triomphe, Champs d’Elysées, and saw the Eiffel Tower light up with the sunset. The next day we went to get brunch at Café Angelina, where both my parents insisted we get the hot chocolate. Reader, it is some of the best hot chocolate I have ever had: it’s super thick and rich, and I was very satisfied to see how excited the brothers were to try it too.

We also went to the Richelieu library, which to my delight, the brothers enjoyed too (they were also very jealous of the fact that I could go there as often as I wanted when I was abroad). We then headed to Shakespeare & Company, one of the oldest English-language bookstores in Paris.

The next day was our last, and we were all so tired. We did some last-minute shopping, got some delicious crepes from a street stand, and then got into a taxi to get to the airport. From that car ride to the plane ride to the next car ride from JFK to Albany, I slept. The entire time. And yet again, I was very grateful for my ability to sleep in almost any moving vehicle.

We got back home at around 3:00 a.m., so I proceeded to crash until a very reasonable 11:30 a.m. We then unpacked our many, many gifts and went through a whole photo slideshow for my family, regaling them once again with the whole tale of T being left stranded and our occasional extremely petty arguments.

And here, dear reader, you have reached the end of my chronicle of the Ahmad cousins’ Europe trip. Inshallah, this will be the first of many.

It’s very weird to be enjoying yourself on vacation when the world is on fire. But everywhere we went, we saw “Free Palestine” in graffiti, posters, and stickers of all kinds reminding us and every other obnoxious tourist to not forget those who do not have our privilege and our luck of living somewhere else, especially in the heart of empire. It is also difficult not to be aware of how much of these grand monuments and palaces were built with stolen wealth from former colonies – especially in France.

After this grand Europe tour, my family and I also went to visit family in Canada, and the week after that, I went on a trip to Seattle with my friends. It was great to see them after so long, catch up, and get back in the rhythms of late-night chats and shared rants. Perhaps the best part was making the journey to Mount Rainier National Park, that is a towering, gorgeous peak that you can even see from downtown Seattle on a clear day.

And after all that traveling, I am spent (both physically and financially lol), and back to the job search and the grind! I got really close to a job this past month, but alas I got rejected (again). I fear it is time to just bite the bullet and be yet another writer with yet another newsletter.

I hope you are enjoying your summer as much as you can, and as always, please direct your attention to mutual aid organizations on the ground in Gaza like the Sameer Project.

In other updates, my piece on the Hunger Games fandom and its selective politics is out! Please give it a read 🙂

Thank you for reading this far!

Love and solidarity,
Maryam ❤