Growing up, my hero was Samantha Brown as she trekked across Europe meeting new friends and showing the world how accessible travel could be to a small town kid like myself. I loved how she was usually alone, but would meet new people who she would inevitably befriend. They’d invite her out to dinner or show her the area in the only way locals could. This way of traveling was both terrifying and thrilling to me.  I first traveled out of the U.S. in 2004 at the age of 18 on a school trip to Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. It completely changed how I moved forward in my life. In…