Western Europe
Among all the regions of the world, Western Europe is the most popular destination for studying abroad. This is likely due to several reasons: Its significance to the history of our world, its glorious cultural heritage, the relative centrality of its location, the wide range of cultures found within its borders and the romance associated with them in foreigners' minds, and the ease and safety of traveling throughout it.
Of course, these reasons help us understand its allure, but they do not fully explain it. For indeed, Western Europe is so much more than this. How else to explain the formative effect it has on most everyone who has, at one point, lived or studied there?
At the end of the day, there is something different about Western Europe, something far more special than any listing of appealing characteristics can capture. However, since lists like these are all we really have—and since quantifying the ineffable is bound to be an effort in futility—it's worth our time to bear out these reasons in an effort to better understand Europe’s draw.
The history of Western Europe (which includes Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, Portugal, The Netherlands, Spain, and Switzerland) is central to the history of the human endeavor. Except for China, perhaps, there has been nowhere else in the world that has had such a profound effect on the human endeavor on this planet.
But more than simple geographic classification, Western Europe also refers to a specific cultural tendency…at least in the popular American imagination. This last caveat is important to note, of course, because there is no overarching European culture: The French and the German and the Austrian ways of doing things could not be more different, yet there is nonetheless a certain thread that runs through all the cultures that must be experienced first-hand to be fully appreciated.
As for study abroad students, they are drawn to this part of the world for a number of reasons, not least of which is its history. From the Medieval history of Germany and Belgium to the glories of Renaissance Italy to the French Revolution and all its rights-of-man philosophies that it brought to the fore, Western Europe has shaped the modern world as much as anywhere else ever has…and it continues to do so today.
And this cultural heritage is not just a thing of the past. Today, walking through the streets of any major Western European capital is a veritable tour through the history of western culture, its achievements embodied in buildings like the Louvre and the Prado Museum, its disgraces in the remnants of the Berlin Wall and the concentrations camps, and its future in the Euro coins jingling in your pocket. Indeed, more than even the best history text book or television documentary, walking through the streets of Western Europe, breathing in the air, drinking the coffee and tasting the food, reminds you of where we, as westerners, came from, and perhaps where we might be going.
From a study-abroad perspective, its location is also one of its great draws: Located a mere 7 hours or so from the East Coast of the United States, Western Europe is very easy to get to, and, these days, relatively affordable. This, of course, means that you will not only spend less on travel expenses than you had perhaps initially assumed, but also that your friends and family can visit you with little hassle. And once you’re there, traveling from country to country is very easy. From the rail network criss-crossing the continent to the relative ease and affordability of bus-travel, taking a weekend in another country from the one you are studying abroad in is not only easy, but convenient. And with a mere three or four hour train ride, you can be in a completely new and unexpectedly exciting culture. For example, it is possible to have a croissant in Paris at your local café for breakfast and then, for a late lunch, enjoy a bratwurst sandwich in Germany. Such is the nature of living as a student in Western Europe.
And while traveling through Western Europe has always been easy, these days it is rather safer than it ever has been, too. Indeed, one of the great benefits of the European Union's increasingly important role in the everyday lives of Europeans is the effect it has had on safety: With a standardized currency and easier communications now possible between the constituent countries of Western Europe, students can make the most of their time studying abroad and get a real sense of much of the continent.
And then, of course, there is the romance. From films like Sabrina that highlight the transformative effects of Western European culture to exhortations like Ernest Hemingway’s that "If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast," the almost magnetic allure of Western Europe cannot be overstated (www.brainyquotes.com). And, in fact, its very real transformative effects cannot be ignored: Living and studying in Western Europe is often one of the single most influential experiences of a person’s life, and the effects of having lived there generally stay with you for a lifetime.
In the end, then, Western Europe is a veritable cornucopia of experience, history, and adventure. There is a very real reason that so many American students are drawn so inexorably to it, and why virtually all of them are changed forever by the experience. Such is the power of Western Europe. And such is its importance.
