Actually NJ Kpopper did go to London as a 7-year old, but doesn't really remember that. He just has artificially reconstituted memories from looking at the photos of that trip. And besides, it doesn't really count what with the shared language and all.
As a young teenager, I ended up in Austria taking side trips to Munich, Switzerland, Italy, and a few other spots. Kind of a standard European experience, but one that at least set me on a path of seeking more experiences. After college, another European tour that saw me swing in an arc from Paris to Vienna to Athens. Because I was travelling alone, that trip left deeper memories. Vienna was a special favorite, so aged and refined, along with the south of France because of a perfect combination of food and light.
Various other things brought me back to Munich and central Germany, which to me is a kind of comfort zone for my own view of the comfortable life in Europe - clean, well-kept, modest.
But I was still "oriented" towards the West at that point. Later, Istanbul began to point me towards the east, and it seems I have never looked back from then on.
I have never felt a great desire to actually live in Europe. Perhaps I am overwhelmed by the majority culture present in most places there, whereas in the US things are so fluid (at least where I live) that it is possible to avoid pigeonholing yourself and to continue to siphon up the best of what the world has to offer without ever settling on a single cultural definition like "German". But I have to tip my hat to that Mittel Europa experience that started me on the global road.
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