Metro Chic
PEN WORLD|August 2017

STAEDTLER’s Corium Urbes celebrates cities of the world.

Nicky Pessaroff
Metro Chic

The Eurail Pass is an amazing thing. I used it almost 20 years ago on a whirlwind tour of Europe over Spring Break. Backpacks on our backs, my friend and I traversed Spain, France, Sweden, Denmark, Italy…at this far remove, I’m not even sure anymore. My memory is a haze of Alps, bars, late-night searches for hostels after staggering out of the train station in our next European city, and then further museums, city centers, tours. As our last train pulled into our final stop, I realized someone had stolen my Discman while I slept. The whole trip feels that way to me now, somehow stolen, as if all those cities—Paris, Stockholm, Frankfurt, Prague—were a dreamscape, ephemeral glimpses only made static by my photographs.

This story is from the August 2017 edition of PEN WORLD.

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This story is from the August 2017 edition of PEN WORLD.

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