FLORENCE, Italy — April 19, 2015, Firenze Santa Maria Novella

After 11 weeks of hopping across continental Europe on endless overnight trains and low-cost flights and navigating through cities that now seem more similar than different, my travel bug seems to be satisfied. My feet are now tired, my shoes are worn out and my mind is weary. My suitcase isn’t packed yet, but my mind has probably left Europe a couple of weeks ago, somewhere between Salzburg and Zurich.

So what now? Florence, Zurich, Rome, then Slovenia. Cities after cities whose names I can't pronounce, whose history I can't remember, but whose streets I march through nevertheless, in temporary awe of yet another Gothic church around the corner. Ljubljana. Bratislava. Budapest. Innsbruck. More trains to catch, more buses to time, more hostels to check in and out of. The smile becomes automatic and the stories are standardized so that new people I meet can digest them easily. Yeah, of course I'm from the U.S., you can totally tell from my accent and my excessive use of the word like. I'm among the millions of students who flock to Italy as part of study abroad programs in the hope of grasping the famous yet elusive dolce vita. No, of course I don't have an identity crisis because of where I'm from and where I think I'm from, because of the languages I can speak and what I should be able to speak.

Somewhere in between the midnight trains and the countless buses, German mixes into Dutch and French and Italian. Renaissance architecture mashes into Gothic and neo-Gothic and Baroque. Nothing is distinctive anymore, no city, no people, no food. It's as if I'm floating through new cities and trying to grasp them by finding the familiar indicators to what I've seen before — the kebab shops, the bridges, the Gothic arches of some church, the subway, the train station — and they, together, become the cities I remember in my mind today. There are the Hauptbahnhofs and the staziones and the centrales, there are the gyros and the shawarmas and the tortillas and the kebabs, reliable and unwavering. Traveling, too, becomes a routine; free walking tour, more walking, eating street food, wandering around the central market if there's one, racing to the must-see sights mentioned in Wikitravel, sitting down on a public bench to rest and contemplate life while feeling philosophical, then taking the public transportation home. Dinner may be an elaborate affair, or it may be some pre-packaged meal from the supermarket, or more often than not, a kebab after much debate about money versus making the most out of the moment. Back to a hostel, trying to take a shower while blocking out the voice inside my head that questions what kind of nasty stuff has been on this tile floor that I'm standing on barefoot because flip flops are too inconvenient to bring, some last minute planning for tomorrow, then passing out at 1 a.m. after trying to find justifications for why I'm not going out and enjoying the night-life. Is there more to Budapest and Vienna and Munich and Innsbruck that I'll never get to see? Most definitely. Will I want to go back someday to visit that museum I walked straight past because of its 20 euro entrance fee, or to sit in a Viennese cafe and savor a piece of tart while life passes by? Unlikely, because if the magnet that says Vienna on the fridge at home indicates anything, it's that Vienna is a place in my past, and that I should surge forward to find new destinations. I don't ever know Vienna or Budapest or Munich. I passed by them the way that millions of other tourists pass through them every year, with even less time to spare. But I can say I've been to Vienna, Budapest and Munich without it being a lie — I just wish there could be something more intimate between me and those cities than the crumpled day passes on the S-Bahn or the BKK or the ZVV or whatever the public transportation systems are called. Maybe that's asking for too much in too little time.

At one point, I used to think that backpacking around Europe was what all privileged 20-somethings dream of as their ultimate life-changing experience. What's not to love about living on the road, meeting new people, eating new foods and seeing new cultures? But Europe is exhausting because of how different, yet how familiar it all is. Traveling strips me down to my most basic needs —- a roof over my head, some running water and a full stomach at night — and shortens my future vision to the next 24 hours. When new people I meet ask about where I'm from, it forces me to GPS myself into a place in this world and determine the place I call home — whether New York, Ho Chi Minh City, Florence, Abu Dhabi or somewhere else. None are satisfying; there's not a single place I can pin down that can explain why I look the way I do or what I am doing in Europe at that particular moment. At one point, that freedom to pick was liberating and pride-worthy. I'm cosmopolitan, I'm in and of the world. But the more dorm-room conversations start to resemble one another, the more eerie it becomes. I'm not rooted. I don't have a place I'm comfortable enough calling home, not right now, not in the next few years. Yet I'm still here, meandering around strange cities with impossible-to-spell street names, looking for some obscure things about identity and self in the hope that when other familiar parts have been stripped away, I'll be left with the deepest, most honest and utterly strange part of myself that I'd never discover otherwise.

That part is as obscure as it sounds. I've yet to find it, and I don't think I will in the next few trips around the old continent. If those future trips make me realize anything, it will be that I'm so, so broke, and that I'm so, so ready to go home, wherever that is. Traveling makes me long for the comfort of having one phone number and one mailing address, of going home to the same bed every night and of relying on my memory to navigate the city around me. It's such a luxury to be able to see and experience so much at 20, but it's also a luxury, I think, to be able to appreciate the steadfastness of having a home. I willingly gave that comfort up when I was 16, when I left home for boarding school, and NYU Abu Dhabi has continuously pushed my limit after two years. Amid three-day stopovers at home, countless flights across continents and constant changes in mailing addresses and visa statuses, I often joke that I'm not homeless, I'm just traveling too frequently. Yes, I'm not homeless in the sense that I always have a roof over my head wherever I go, but whether or not I have a place I can call home now is another question that may be best left unanswered.

Being 21 may be overrated and exhausting, the way European backpacking is. Everybody tells you they've had the time of their lives, but nobody tells you about the long hours spent in the train station aimlessly looking at Tumblr while waiting for the next train, or the smelly hostels with the perpetually high stoner on the top bunk, or the absolute panic that washed over them when they realized they were in a new city and there was no excitement anymore. So next time you sit down and browse through Kayak and think about the new horizons you're about to uncover, think about Europe and how you traveled. Think of what you've learned, but more importantly, what you haven't learned about yourself and about life. Think about how you can ground yourself more in the moment, about how a place can be home and how these journeys get you to where you see yourself in the future. You may never find a home in the next two years or so, but that's fine. That's the joy of it. Don't let it go just yet.