The measure of my July thus far: Four countries, three hostels, two guidebooks, one week.

The time has both flown and crawled, and now that I'm kicking off week two of The Month of Heather's Reckless Spending, I thought I'd buy enough Internet time to offer a few quick insights from my first week as a well-showered, but not nearly as clean-of-shirt European traveller.

1) If you don't buy a sweatproof money belt, then your money belt will not be impervious to sweat. There is nothing sexier than lifting up your shirt, unzipping the pouch suspended above your navel, and gingerly wiggling out a wrinkled, limp, and decidedly soggy Euro note. "Ahhh, heh, yeah," I mutter, blushing, handing it to the blatantly repelled sales clerk. Not that the sweating is shower-like in its quantity and spray strength. This one's more a problem of body heat: It's hot, you're lugging stuff all day, you're walking up and down cobbled hills, and your body jacks up its temperature -- and the temperature of everything affixed to it -- accordingly.

But hey, a Euro is a Euro, even when it's damp.

2) Uncovered and unprotected skin, when exposed to sunlight, will develop a reddish hue known as a "sunburn." More accurately, if your right arm is curled up because you're shouldering a backpack and clutching onto its strap to make sure no lousy little pickpockets can rape it of your passport and cash, then the sun will color only certain portions of your right arm, leaving it with a sexy streaky crimson tint.

3) Airing out your clothes at night means you can get away with wearing them more times in a row. This one is particularly useful if you're trying not to blow your wad on clean t-shirts in your first week of backpacking. No matter how much you think you stunk up that Old Navy tee, after a night of swaying with the breeze in the window -- or being draped over the ladder of the bunk bed -- it freshens right up and is downright wearable again. The same trick works with pants and socks (although my dark blue jeans could, at this point, get up and walk away and go drinking without me, and in fact are considering doing so if I spend any more time on the Internet tonight).

If this practice sounds in any way suspect or unclean to you, then do not go backpacking.

4) You do not speak the language. Really. No matter how many signs you've read and correctly interpreted, and no matter how many loudspeaker announcements I've listened to in a foreign language, it's still nearly impossible to remember that I do not speak a modicum of Czech or Dutch, and have only a cordial acquaintance with French -- greetings and numbers only. And yet after a day or so of total immersion, there are moments where it swells within me that, at any time, I could bust out with a stream of near-perfect foreign speech. This instinct is never accurate, but totally pervasive and persistent. Which brings us to...

4a) If you speak any foreign language that is not native to the country you are visiting, you will find a way to use it. To wit: I've taken more than eight years of Spanish, yet Spain is the country I ruled out of this trip from the very beginning. But so strong was my compulsion to speak something other than English that when I was riding the Metro in Paris and a young girl from Barcelona implored me, "Hablas espanol?" I replied, "Si, si, un poquito, puedo ayudarte." She needed directions, and I gave them to her in fairly accomplished Spanish considering that I've never used it outside a classroom, and that swell of pride carried me through the rest of the day, eliminating my irritating compulsion to speak French despite not knowing any.

5) The United States is far too strict regarding its public consumption laws. I refer specifically to the US's insistence that we should not be drinking outdoors, in public places, unless we paid some sort of entry fee for the privilege. In every city so far, people have wandered the streets -- me included -- with open containers, sucking back the brew with unabashed wobbling and and exhibitionist glee. It is a crying shame we don't allow it in the States.

6) European men like to piss outside a lot. Three times today, I happened upon a guy casually urinating onto something that was mostly shielding his genitals, but which did not mask the unmistakeable trickle of the golden shower. Not coincidentally, there are very few publicly available toilets over here; those that are around all smell spectacularly of vomit and stale excrement, which might be what bred the men's dedication to outdoor -- and relatively spontaneous and location-inappropriate -- urination.

7) People here really want you to know what's in the trunks of their cars. How else to explain why every second car is a hatchback? Even four-door cars have the windowed boot added on, rather than a regular, concealed trunk. I've no idea what the attraction is. It certainly doesn't help them parallel park with greater accuracy.

8) The Americans who are complete idiots really do ruin it for the rest of us. I've sat through more than my fair share of tales from other backpackers about the lame American traveler who asked a stupid question or five, or made a ridiculous statement, that exposed their lack of comprehension about the world. One Australian remarked that a girl he met asked, "So in Australia, does the sun rise in the West and set in the East?" And he had to explain to her that if that were true, the Earth's hemispheres would be rotating in different directions, split by the equator, like some kind of planetary pepper mill. She blinked blankly at him and said, "But... so, does it?"

He was dumbfounded. She was dumb. I was struck dumb. I know every culture has its idiot brigade, but it feels sometimes like ours is either bigger or louder than most, because all the really bad stories involve someone from the good old USA. I'm proud to be an American, but it's awfully tiresome when I have to prove that I have an IQ.

So, memo to people from other countries: We're not all like that, so don't be quick to judge, no matter how clueless the girl was who asked if Australia celebrates Christmas in July because that's when winter is there.

9) Two weeks isn't enough. I can't believe I'm half-done with my solo trip through Europe. Most other backpackers take at least a month, and although the fatigue and the short clothes supply can be burdensome, it's so, so worth it, and I wish I had at least another two weeks by myself to really cruise these countries.

Next time.