Once there were two teenagers whose parents persuaded them to accompany them on a trip to Europe. The kids went along with their parents enthusiasm against their own better judgment. What did Europe have that their own neighborhood could not also provide? How could foreigners who didn’t even speak good English compare with their closest friends. Even if they could send e mail complaints back home to their friends about how BORING it all was, that was no substitute for the long phone call. Galway was an old city with a lot of rain. Dublin reminded them of Gary Indiana. The English were insufferably rude and London smelled like a sewer. Paris was old and dirty and the food was terrible. Florence was awash with sea water and it smelled too. All the people in Rome were crazy, especially the priests and nuns who never smiled.  The trip was monumentally boring. They hated all the museums, nothing more than the Sistine Chapel which was not only boring but so loud you couldn’t think. They could hardly wait to get home and catch up on all the gossip. The summer was like a total waste. Much later when they discovered that going to Europe was extreme cool, they told wonderful stories, some of them even true, about their trip.