re: Does it piss you off when someone says Europe is too dangerous?

I understand that the statistics probably show not too great of an increase in risk, or possibly even less of a risk, in traveling in Europe vs. living everyday life in the US. But I absolutely understand the stigma.

I went to Europe for 2 months for the summer of 2016. We travelled through the Brussels station and I'd be lying if I said that the bombing wasn't on my mind. I was in Cannes with my girlfriend the night of the terrorist attack in Nice. People in my class were in Nice having dinner steps from the boardwalk. I have a friend that was in Barcelona at La Rambla at the moment of that attack. All of these incidences have impacted me more than someone being murdered in NOLA while I was in the FQ.

I think that generally, you're not going to be murdered in the US if you aren't doing something illegal or stupid. Obviously there are many exceptions, but that still is a reasonable perception. The terrorist attacks in 2015-16 were numerous and they were severe. Hundreds of people died in that time, and most of the attacks were in areas of high concentrations of people (ie tourist areas). If you travel to Europe to sightsee and experience the culture, there's really no way to avoid these areas.

I'll never forget that when we flew into France, there were armed military squads of 4, with full body armor and ARs walking through each terminal performing bomb checks, in both the airport and the train station. France was hosting the Euro Cup the summer I was living there. Each weekend when we travelled we saw more security than you could imagine. This partly made me feel safer. But it also made me realize that no matter how many guards there were, any one bag in a train station could kill hundreds of people, and there's no policing every single piece of baggage with the current system in place in European train travel. I seriously don't see how there aren't many more bombings at those train stations than there have been with how target rich they are.

Those are just my experiences and my perception. I'm not going to let some minuscule chance keep me from living my life, but when I travel through Brussels or attend some highly populated event, I'm going to still remember how close my friends and I have been to some pretty bad things. I'll still most likely be traveling to Europe this summer (and if I don't it won't be because of safety risks).