Bailey Sandin got an opportunity after her freshman year of high school that many people don’t get in a lifetime. She got to go to Europe.
Sandin, a sophomore at Canfield High School this fall, traveled to Italy, Austria, Switzerland and France with People to People, an organization that has been offering student ambassador programs since 1956, from June 15 to July 3.
Sandin received two nominations for the program: one in fifth grade that she declined, and one in eighth grade that she decided to accept. After going through an interview process, she was accepted, along with 45 other people from Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas.
First up on the itinerary was a six-day visit to Italy.
“No matter where you went, all the pasta was cooked perfectly,” said Sandin. Besides experiencing Italian pasta, she got to visit the Coliseum. “The Coliseum was amazing to see. We saw the inner workings of it, like where the people and animals came out.”
Another thing she found amazing was the Catacombs, where martyrs and saints were buried and where masses were sometimes held during the time of Christian persecution.
“Just walking among and seeing the remains of people that lived thousands of years ago just gave a whole physical sense to everything.”
“The Vatican was crazy,” she continued. “I have never been so crowded and rushed and hot in my life. The art was so beautiful but I didn’t get to fully appreciate it. One of my favorites was a picture of a fallen statue and in its place was a cross. The fall of polytheism and the rise of monotheism. Beautiful!”
The following day on a visit to the Academia Gallery, the group got to see Michelangelo’s statue, David, which is so detailed “you can see the skin where it puckers on the knuckles of his hands and you can see the veins in his neck and in his arms and in his legs. Pictures do not do it justice,” Sandin said.
She saw the Leaning Tower of Pisa, leaning because of the slipping of its foundation and got to ride in a gondola through the streets of Venice during her last day in Italy.
Sandin also got to experience World Cup excitement in Italy, as well as in the rest of Europe.
“Italy was playing another country and our tour guide said the streets wouldn’t be that crowded. We get there, the entire city is dead.”
After their last day, spent in Venice, the group packed up and traveled by bus to Austria, where the residents and officials in the town of Sirnitz welcomed them.
“It was probably the coolest little place I’ve ever been. It was a little farm town. It was adorable,” said Sandin. There, Sandin and the rest of her group learned about traditional dancing and about the life of the Austrian mountain farmers.
In Friesach, the group got to attend a medieval banquet.
“I probably had some of the best ribs of my life,” she said. They also got to play medieval games.
The next day in Vienna, they attended an evening concert at a famous Viennese concert house where Mozart played. The following day was a guided bike tour through Vienna.
“I didn’t die!” Sandin said. “I didn’t even get hit by a car. I was so happy.”
The night brought a stay with an Austrian family.
“Just like you and me, they’re normal kids with average problems, like lots of breakups,” Sandin said of the kids she met during her stay with the family.
After the end of her home stay came a much darker experience: a trip to the concentration camp Mauthausen, a labor camp so grueling that approximately 150,000 inmates perished within its gates.
“There wasn’t that much to see in general, but when we got to see the gas chambers, none of us wanted to go in. We all knew what they were used for, that we were walking on the ground that people died on. I guess you could say we were a little jumpy. That and the crematorium made it real,” said Sandin.
The group left Austria the next day, briefly touring Switzerland, including a boat tour across the lake at a mountain region called Heidiland. Then they headed off to France, the fourth and last country on the tour.
“Fashion, so much fashion. They have the largest Louis Vuitton store there,” Sandin said.
In addition to eating French food like crepes, the group got to go to the top of the 899-foot Eiffel Tower during a thunderstorm.
“Paris was really cool just to go to the top during a thunderstorm.”
The group departed for the United States the next day.
“I am amazed at how close I became with these people in 18 days. They all became my best friends.”
As for how this experience made her reflect on America, Sandin said, “I appreciate the little things, like having to pay only $4 for a cup of coffee instead of having to pay close to six. I missed American food. Just little, simple things that I’ve come to appreciate more.”
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