Who says I have to go back with him?

This year I will make my second trip to Europe. It will happen in one of two ways. The first way is that a friend of mine is about to finish up his PhD and we have been talking about taking a trip together afterwards. If this happens we will probably be going around the start of June. The other way, if things fall through and my friend can’t go, will be for me to just go on my own, probably around mid-September. I would really like to go with my friend, but the thing is that he is also going to be getting married this year and probably cannot take more than about two weeks for this trip. For me, two weeks is a bit too short and I had been puzzling over how to make this trip work. As I was staring at the map a few nights ago, I was thinking over what cities we could land in and how we could best work our way around and get the most out of our time, when I had a sudden realization. “Wait, who says I have to leave with him?” popped into my head. I wish there had been a camera filming me at the moment, just to see the grin on my face. It’s such an obvious thing, but I had somehow overlooked this solution. Now the possibilities have grown exponentially and I’m diving all the more intensely into research for this trip. Let the planning begin.