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We sat around an old, rickety table in the hostel's library, sipping cheap, frosty beer from tall glasses to the tune of a drinking game, sharing stories about where we came from and who we were. A chemist from London, a punk rock bartender from Switzerland, a pair of cheery, traveling students from Australia, an American me-- the hardworking, big city type working a corporate job in media. We all had our roles to fill, the pieces of a larger, more complex interwoven cloth of our backgrounds. "I write comedy," I heard my little brother say when it was his turn to talk. I'd wondered how he would introduce himself, and this was news to me. As the night progressed, accents became thicker, words became more slurred, hands and smiles became looser, and my brother became the funny guy in the room, cracking a perfectly timed joke that ended in a parading of hearty laughter. We stayed nestled on those sinking couches until he sun came up until our more adventurous counterparts made their ways back home from the clubs of Berlin, their pupils dialed from whatever had transpired behind the four walls of the universe they'd just left. But the six of us, we stayed glued to our seats, the tiredness making us delirious, reveling in each other's company. I stayed planted where I was mostly to observe the familiar stranger who sat before me, the one I'd known since the day he entered this world, but that suddenly, it seemed, I didn't actually know at all. I brought my little brother to Europe as a gift for his 21st birthday. All he had to do was get a passport, buy a flight and i'd take care of the rest, a claim I'd made before I realized what 10 days for two traveling around Europe would cost me. Even after crunching the number, though, I deemed the price tag worth it. I wanted to inspire him, I was worried about him. He'd dropped out of community college with no signs of re-enrolling, he lived at home with our mom, he worked as a pizza delivery boy. I calculated his life trajectory against my own, wondering why he wasn't more worried about his prospects. The one place I continued to land was travel. Maybe he just needed his world to expand; maybe, once he experienced the flashing lights of Amersterdam, the charming cobblestone streets of Brussels, the sneaky grit of Berlin, once he heard the foreign words on foreign tounges, once he met the strangers waiting to become friends, he'd feel different. He'd realize, I hoped, that the world was a giant place, brimming with opportunity and wonder, even if you only came from a small town in central Florida. He'd see th possibility of it all. But somewhere along the way, things started to shift, I watched his eyes when we got lost one night in the Red Light District, the two of us waking shoulder to shoulder, his body bracing in the unfamiliar cold air. Where I expected fear, uncertainty, he demonstrated confidence, approaching a group of friendly-looking strangers in a random back alley to ask if they knew the best way to get back to the main road. At a sweet little chocolate shop nestled on a street corner in Brussels, he struck up a conversation with another American tourist while I was ordering a second round of hot chocolate. I approached the table and heard the man laughing, saw beady tears rolling down his face. "This is my sister," my little brother said, introducing me to the man. I smiled, shook his hand, tried to take control of the narrative, but the man had no interest in me, he only had eyes for the witty young man in front of him. This magical.familiar stranger.