Until last summer, I had never traveled outside of North America. Now, I’m only days away from a one way flight to Copenhagen. How could I, only 8 months after returning from Europe, be moving there? Simple. I fell in love.

Let’s start at the beginning, shall we? A few months after I moved to Minneapolis in 2011, a college friend of mine who was living in Spain posted a video on my Facebook wall urging my roommate and I to come to a music festival in Europe the following summer. This was the first I had ever even heard of Tomorrowland, an electronic music festival in Belgium. In all honesty, I didn’t even watch the video but that didn’t stop me from giving a generic affirmative response. But was I really going to go to another continent for a music festival? Probably not.

Shortly after I moved into my first solo apartment, I found myself unpacking and getting bored watching Super Bowl XLVI. So I scrolled down my wall and found that months old post. I’ll never forget that moment; the first time I watched the Tomorrowland 2011 After Movie. I forgot the rest of the Super Bowl and watched the video again and again. Any free moment I had over the next few weeks was spent watching that after movie. My mind was made up. I would go to this festival and nothing would stand in my way.

I realized pretty early on that the 2012 edition wouldn’t be possible because I couldn’t convince anyone to go in that short of a time period and I had no money. So I set my sights on Tomorrowland 2013. I started saving every dollar and recruiting other people to join me (my mom was not going to let me go to a rave on another continent by myself no matter how independent I am). I began planning an extensive Eurotrip entirely around the festival; 5 countries in 18 days. I had traveled by myself/with friends before, but never to another country so this would be an entirely new experience.

By Fall 2012, my friend Shannon and a couple of her friends were set to go to Tomorrowland with me while my friend Yun and I were going to travel Europe for the rest of the trip. My flight was booked using airline points (free flight woohoo!!) and I was saving enough money thanks to my elaborate Excel budget sheet. I only had to figure out how to get tickets to the most popular EDM festival in the world that sold out in mere minutes the year before. But I wasn’t worried; I had a plan.

Yun had a good friend living in Amsterdam, Xavier, who was friends with some Belgians. We skyped a couple of times and arranged for some of his friends to register to get the special Belgian-only presale tickets. I also registered and would have a week to figure out a way to get tickets if my Belgian pre-sale plan didn’t work. After hours of being online trying to get tickets, I heard from X that his friend was able to get them!! Almost a year to the day after this all started, I finally had my tickets to Tomorrowland 2013!!

On July 18^th, I boarded a plane to Stockholm to begin my long awaited European adventure. I can’t begin to describe the overwhelming emotions when I first climbed the stairs from the tunnelbana to Birger Jarlsgatan. It was quite literally a dream come true.