26 Signs You Worked For A Student Travel Company In Europe
After spending 1 year working for a student travel company in Florence, Italy, I can honestly say it was one of the most crazy-challenging-rewarding decisions of my life. This post goes out to all of my fellow student travel guides, former coworkers, and anyone who is looking to get a glimpse into the life of those crazy people who handed you flyers while you studied abroad! Without further ado, here are the 26 signs you had the time of your life exploring Europe-while getting paid to do it!
1. You’ve wandered around your city for hours at a time handing out countless flyers
2. As a result, you can spot an American study abroad student from a mile away #blessed
3. Your job description included running beer pong, flip cup, or various other nightlife events, much to the disbelief of your college friends (and yes, that is an embarrassing picture of me wearing a taco hat promoting Taco Tuesday)
4. And you probably ended up promoting for a club once…or twice…or weekly
5. You are intimately aquatinted with the inner working of Facebook, and have probably been forced to stop sending friend requests or messages
6. Because of this, you don’t actually know 1/2 the people in your Facebook newsfeed
7. You’ve become good friends with tour guides from competing companies, at least until its time to flyer! 😉
8. Friends from back home constantly comment “I want your life!!!” on your Instagram posts (and really, who can blame them?)
9. You’ve mastered the art of sleeping on a bus, thanks to weekly overnight bus rides
10. You are constantly making Facebook statuses and being teased about it from friends back home. Promo Code “insert name here”
11. There are tons of free perks to the job…like discounts on food and drinks all around town which really helped you save some badly needed €€€
12. You’ve made friends from all over the US and the world, and are already planning trips to visit them all
13. The best perk of your job was getting the opportunity to visit tons of countries and towns…for free (you know, provided you tour guide a group of 50 college students while doing it)
14. Despite all of this traveling, no place will compare to the city you’re based in (shout out to my fellow Florence workers!)
15. Many of your coworkers became your best friends
16. And you had the pleasure (or misfortune!) of living with, working with, and/or dating these people
17. You have a collection of tour guide horror stories where students get lost, too drunk, poop in hotel hallways (yes that happened) and you look forward to dishing about the latest tales at the end of each weekend
18. You or someone you know didn’t get paid on time (or ever)
19. After guiding students through different cities each weekend, you can find your way around a surprising amount of cities in Europe…
20. …and you probably give one heck of a bus speech
21. Above all, this job taught you that if you can lead tours in foreign countries, you can pretty much tackle anything that comes your way #problemsolving
22. You’ve lost track of how many hostels you’ve stayed in
23. Even though you get to travel for free all the time, you probably ended up saving some commission for a solo trip or two, and they were heavenly
24. You know that just because your job looks perfect doesn’t mean it didn’t take a lot of hard work and commitment…not to mention energy
25. Foolishly, when taking the job you thought you might cure your insatiable wanderlust, instead its just made you want to travel more
26. No matter how run down, stressed out, and sleep-deprived you were, you would 100% do it all over again if given the choice because your times working abroad were truly some of the best of your life
And so, fellow student travel guides, here’s to you, and this crazy-fun-adventure we were lucky enough to call our job! What are some of your best memories abroad? Comment below!
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