I recently went to a restaurant in Ottawa named Gezellig (gah-zell-ig). The restaurant characterizes gezellig as “convivial, cosy, or nice atmosphere, but also belonging, general togetherness, or time spent with loved ones…” It has many similarities to Hygge, a Danish concept I admire. I was not familiar with this Dutch adjective when I was backpacking. In hindsight, it’s the perfect word to describe the common room at our hostel in Rotterdam. It was gezellig. In my journal, I provided a detailed description of the common room where I spent many hours hanging out with fellow backpackers and watching MTV. It had a TV, three couches, a coffee table and another…

As a Canadian, my journey started with a plane trip across the Atlantic Ocean. Once on European soil, Sarah and I aspired to cover a lot of territory. So we backpacked for three and a half months. We met many Americans doing the thing. The Aussies and Kiwis we met took this to another level, often travelling for a year. It was less common to met Europeans on these lengthly multi country backpacking trips. Until we met Yöst. Yöst was Dutch. When we first meet him in Italy he declared he was doing Europe “the American way”. By the time we bumped into him in his home town Amsterdam, it…