I never thought of myself as a museum kind of guy. As a kid, I was the obnoxious child playing hide-and-seek with friends, ducking behind the walls of art galleries and hiding in the shadows of displays at museums. Usually by the time the games turned into full-on tag, my parents would spot me running past a stuffed Dodo, grab me by the arm and verbally reprimand me in Chinese. You have brought shame to our family; you have brought shame to our country! I swear my parents have never seen Disney’s “Mulan.”

I guess as a kid, I just wasn’t mature enough to appreciate/have the patience for museums. But things change with time, and eventually, if you’re nearly 20 and still playing sandman inside the Field Museum, a security guard is going to hold you accountable for knocking over a 70-million-year-old dinosaur fossil.

So it was a little surprising that I found myself wandering the austere halls of museum after museum as I travelled through Europe. At first, I think the effort was a conscious one: If I’m going to travel to the cultural capitals of the world, I guess I’m going to have to go see the X Museum or the Institute of Y.

A warning to other would-be amateur museum-goers: Portrait galleries are not fun. Believe me. If we compared their relative levels of fun on a linear fun-o-meter with a high point of parachuting out of a supersonic jet and trying to grab as many $1,000 Barack Obama bills signed by Secretary of the Treasury Warren Buffet as possible while champagne droplets rain down the sky around you (new reality TV show, anyone?), spending an hour inside of a national portrait gallery falls somewhere between junior high sex ed. and getting mauled by a rabid bear.

After a few short minutes of feigned interest in the eccentric hairstyles of Scottish aristocracy, I decided that portraits were not my thing. The biggest hurdle was not knowing who was who and who did what in the pictures. It’s hard to relate to art when you have no understanding of its context. It’s too bad I wanted to impress my friends, otherwise, I would have gladly left immediately instead of faux-perusing the pallid, monotonous faces of 400 years’ worth of Scottish bishops.

Eventually, my museum hopping transformed from somewhat of a tourist’s duty to a more genuine desire to soak in culture and art. The moment of realization happened in London’s National Gallery.

Wandering the halls of the National Gallery, I was pleasantly self-satisfied by how many of the works of art I recognized. Yet, I had a hard time convincing myself why it was worth travelling around the world to see original art when, in a time of $20 poster reprints and infallible Wikipedia entries, I could easily see essentially the same thing from the comfort of my bedroom.

In a gallery of jungle scenes and countryside tableaus, I stopped at the gilded frame of Sunflowers by Van Gogh. And for the first time, I began to understand why fabulously wealthy people pay eight figures for oil on canvas. In a room full of masterpieces by Rousseau and even more work by Van Gogh, the 15 sunflowers in various states of wilt had a kind of immensity about them. As if the entire gallery were anchored by the existence of the picture, Van Gogh’s Sunflowers had an indescribable sense of gravity, drawing the eyes of all watchers in the room.

This summer, I discovered I am a museum man after all. But as a person who knows little about art, I think what I like best about museums is the environment. Often, I find myself watching other people watching art. At the Louvre in Paris, a French woman wrapped in a sheer scarf, elbow resting on one hand and pointer-finger drawing circles in the air describes the nuances behind a portrait’s beguiling eyes to her husband. Often, I find myself listening to the muffled voices and sounds of people observing museum etiquette. At the Cy Twombly exhibit in the Tate Modern in London, the footsteps of museum-goers echo off the stark white walls. Visitors talk quietly, trying to discern the scrawls of Twombly’s cryptic art.

Meanwhile, I amble from room to room, sometimes with the urge to shout MARCO, but usually gathering the maturity to just be a content witness to museums’ still wonders.

Henry is a sophomore in Business. Join him at the Art Institute of Chicago next week for a round of paintball.