The following is the first in a series of columns chronicling my summer gallivanting around Europe.

I’m fascinated by airplanes. The idea of an oversized tin can, tin wings attached precariously, ferrying hundreds of people across continents seems slightly ludicrous. I always worry right before take-off that the laws of physics might suddenly realize our incredulously designed flying machines aren’t capable of flight after all and take back the sky. Yet time and time again this summer, I hopped aboard giant Pringles cans and they all managed to take flight.

As it turns out, from Chicago to London, and from London to airports all around Europe, the challenge of travel lies in navigating public transport, not the sky. My poor parents’ first concern when I suggested the possibility of spending my summer studying in England was that I would be doomed to wander international airports/train stations/city streets desperately lost. I settled some of their concerns by explaining that yes, they do in fact speak English in England and conveniently forgot to mention all plans to jet set across the rest of Europe. And that is how I tricked them into letting me study at the University of Cambridge.

The good news is in: Flying alone for the first time, I managed not to get lost. I realize now after traipsing around Europe on discount airlines, despite long lines and inconveniently baggied liquids and shoes-off-your-feet-for-bomb-inspection, flying is amazing.

Everything about airplanes excites my childlike sense of wonder.

Watching the flight path on the touch screen TV in front of me from Chicago to London, I tried to recall memories from high school physics I had long ago suppressed about the magic behind getting a jumbo jet aloft in the sky. After confusing myself about whether it’s the high pressure or low pressure air that passes over the top of an airplane wing, I looked out the window and stared down at an endless ocean.

I noticed that the condensation in the corner of the windows had frozen and turned into icy snowflakes, and I stared at them with wonder until a stewardess offered me a glass of cranapple juice.

That’s another thing I love about flying: flight attendants. Watching them click and unclick their seatbelts, gesture to the drop-down oxygen masks and pretend to inflate their life vests in synchronized unison, I sometimes forget I’m watching a safety demonstration and imagine them as dancers in some sort of ridiculous musical.

But what I love most of all about airplanes is the idea of time travel – and I say this without the influence of any mind-altering drug. Hurtling across the sky at hundreds of miles an hour, passengers aboard airplanes essentially time travel as they cross from one time zone to another. For example, it took me eight hours to fly from Chicago O’Hare to London Heathrow, but because Greenwich Mean Time is six hours ahead of Central Standard Time, I landed in England fourteen hours after I left Chicago. As if by magic, my eight hour flight not only transported me from Chicago to England, but also whisked me six hours into the future.

The idea sounds frivolous, I know. But I find it amazing that I can leave Paris at 3:00 p.m. and land in London at 3:15 p.m. and spend 75 minutes in the air. I find it amazing that I can log eight hours from London back to Chicago and arrive in just two hours.

The British TAs threw a farewell party for the Americans on our last weekend in Cambridge. The theme, “Flight of the Concorde,” seemed fitting as we celebrated the end of a summer that existed hours into the future before it could in America.

We traveled forward in time to get to England, and traveled backward to get back to the United States.

Think about it. Aren’t airplanes fascinating?