The Guide for the solo traveler backpacking Europe

• Budget hours for people watching. Pass your time doing it in a restaurant, do it at free breakfast in the hostel, do it mid break in an art museum and do it to pass the awkward time between late afternoon and early evening. Observe the tourists, try spotting the locals. Realize they're all tourists and begin to wonder where the real residents actually go. 

• Engage in conversation with those in your hostel room. Realize they may only speak three words of English. Breathe a sigh of relief given the conversation turns into one with just you. And really, every solo traveler needs some time to talk.

• Head to a bookstore and scan the collection. Notice that all their "new" international books mean new back in 2005. Ask for the Hunger Games. Laugh a little when they ask if you're looking for the one in English. Um duh, what other language does it look like you're planning on reading? Opt for a sappy Nicholas Sparks novel when told Hunger Games is out of order. 

• Never rely on Italian tourist information spots. They, without fail, will be closed.

• Realize your converter doesn't fit into the smaller than normal electrical socket holes. Accept that your iPhone won't charge (no free wifi for you!) and that your hair straightener won't work. Decide to sneak using one of your roommates when she leaves the room. See sparks fly when you plug in your straightener. Go for the camp- style, braided pigtails. Disregard the strange looks you will receive while wandering the streets. 

• Realize mid-wander that your hostel map leaves out the majority of streets.  Refer to the five-page map out of the hundred pages of info in your chunky Europe, student travel book. 

• Welcome the extensive wait to enter museums. See it, rather, as a pleasant way to pass time. 

• Pretend Euros are fake money and stop trying to save. Take yourself to a sit down restaurant, lunch and dinner. Stop thinking others are staring at you. They probably are and for a split second, are wondering why a young one like you sits alone. Feign confidence and ambivalence. Open your book and read. 

• Smile as you watch tourists video recording the surroundings. Think back to the times your father once did the same, recording each family holiday you took... back in the 90s.  Smile even more as you notice the few using an iPad as a camera. Which, like, has yet to make it to the socially acceptable list.  

• Glance over and realize the man at the end of the bench sits alone. Look around and notice that out of the many, others too wander by themselves. Like you, they too travel alone. Accept that it gets lonely, experiencing Europe by yourself. But take comfort that others around you are doing just the same. And then pinch yourself, a reminder that you’re having these thoughts while sitting in Europe, while living the college student dream.

• Turn back and carry on. Europe awaits your adventure, and you, alone or not, are here to seize it.