The trip that probably changed the course of my life to travel is probably when I traveled to Bolivia at 17. I signed up with an adventure travel company, Where There Be Dragons, and off I went with a dozen other teenagers to South America.

This trip was certainly more adventurous than any other I have done since. In Bolivia we hiked through the Andes for weeks at a time reaching peeks of more than 16,000 feet. We stayed in villages with limited electricity and running water. I seriously shared a rock bed with straw underneath a straw roof with hanging corn. I bathed every few days in a bucket of freezing cold water. I herded sheep at ate a bland grain for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Of course I stuck some Mike & Ike’s into each meal since I smuggled them all the way from Miami.

I picked out one photo that really sums of this trip. During our 5th day into a two week long trek we arrived at a very long river. The only way around was to walk far out of the way. Our group, including three leaders stopped, thinking about what to do.

I can be pretty lazy so i’m not going to pretend I did this for the adventure but because I really did not want to make this trek any longer than it had to be. So I suggested we jump across and before anyone could really argue with me I jumped.

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I had a nice start as soon after we crossed the border between the Czech Republic and Germany a man in his 30’s entered my carriage. He was eager to share information about Berlin and at the same time he knew when to shut up. A respectful combination that is necessary to me. It’s even better since I really have not many locals in the 4 weeks of my Euro trip. But I had good feelings about Germany.

I initially forgot to write down the address of my hostel in Berlin but the German man looked it up on his netbook for me so by the time I arrived at Berlin’s train station I was confident about where to go. Still, I had to take the subway one stop and finding it was more difficult than I imagined as the subway was more like a local train line so I was searching for something that did not exist. As with most problems abroad they are easily solved by asking a stranger.

That evening I reached the point where an actual human connection was absolutely necessary to stay sane so I dragged myself to the rooftop bar. Traveling alone really means being alone much of the time unless you are naturally super outgoing. I am not. And the people traveling in Europe during the summer seem more interested in staying in hostels for a cheap vacation rather than meeting people. So as I said, at the rooftop bar everyone was glued to the TV watching a worldcup match.

I sat with my beer and as everyone left soon after the match I approached a group of two girl travelers. They were from Scotland but without the thick accents. We had a nice conversation going and brought it downstairs where we met a German. Together we had some drinks and talked about travels and Germany until the German convinced us to come along to a bar with him. So that you really understand this guy you have to know that as we passed men negotiating with hookers he would comment with something  in German, “offer her less”, just for fun. He was fun and took us to a bar, and then a small nightclub where he took us into the VIP section about bought two bottles of champagne to impress the girls.

One day in Berlin I wandered and it took me little time to declare that Berlin is the least photogenic city I have visited. It’s not ugly but there is very little that is special. I tried hard to take some interesting photos but found my camera stuck in my pocket most of the time.

View a few blocks for the hostel

You can tell it’s summetime

The restaurant’s in Berlin are very reasonably priced but I still ate German’s famous “Donor Kebab” at least once a day. It’s really not that great with the low quality meat but it’s filling and cheap.

Another evening I met the type of solo traveler that gives the rest of us a bad stereotype. I saw him sitting alone so I asked him where he was from. His response was to ask, “what do you mean”. He told me he was confused why I asked because it’s the first time someone asked him first, rather than the other way around. Well, he is from Quebec, Canada. We related about traveling solo and he appeared normal. Through him I met a group of other Americans traveling after a study abroad program. I could tell they though he was annoying and then I could tell why. He had no self awareness. He could nott understand how to have a conversation with more than one person. He repeatability interrupted to change the topic to Berlin’s architecture, which museums are best to visit, and other equally uninteresting topics.

We soon met an American/Portuguese brother/sister and pair of Americans. Our group later wandered out in the night to find a disco but in the end settled for drinking in the park. Sometimes this sounds so spontaneous and cool but every time this has happened it’s because we couldn’t find anything better to do. So we spent the night drinking in a park and it was just as uneventful as you can imagine.

Another day I went on one of the free tours offered by a local company. I saw much of the same as before when I walked around the city. The subjects in these photos are pretty important and have historical significance but I can’t be bothered to explain them or even pretend I really care all that much.

Since this photo is going to seem strange I will at least explain that it’s a memorial for the Jews murdered in the holocaust. The blocks do not have any specific meaning but is meant for each person to interpret them self.

The Berlin Wall of course. If anyone travels to Berlin just to see this you will be really disappointed.

The following night I went out with the same group plus a few others – a random Canadian traveler, and one of the group’s friends from Hong Kong. When we left the hostel it was 7 of us. At the metro one of the American girl’s drank too much and was passing out so we were down to 5 of us. Their friend, the girl from Hong Kong, asked me to show where we were on a map. I turned around a moment later and she had jumped on a metro heading home. Now we were 4. We arrived at the club and both the Canadian and I entered and waited for the two American/Portuguese. They never entered. Down to 2 of us. The Canadian was really drunk and screamed obscenities so I quickly ditched him. I was alone but soon met a group of Germans. It wasn’t an ideal night but I spoke with one of the guys about our countries for a few hours. I would have rather met a cute girl but the most important thing I took away from our conversation was this. The Germans don’t hide the past and are very serious about making sure nothing like that ever happens again. Which means that in most situations its looked down upon to feel any nationalism. Well he and apparently many others are quietly fed up with this attitude since they feel they had no involvement or responsibility for what happened.

Another night I went out with a bunch of Americans working on an American military base for the summer as camp counselors. We all went out to what I later learned is one of the best discos in the world, Beghain.

“The club is located in a former power plant in Friedrichshain, behind the Berlin Ostbahnhof railway station. The building is distinguished by its enormous dimensions, which accommodate an 18 meter high dancefloor and space for 1500 guests, and also its minimalist interior design, dominated by steel and concrete. The club contains a “cavernous” main room, as well as a smaller upstairs space called the Panorama Bar, which is decorated by enormous Wolfgang Tillmans photographs and tall windows with a view of East Berlin. Only half of the building is currently in use.^{” – Wikipedia}

Towards one of my last days in Berlin I went on an “alternative tour”.

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Welcome to Prague, Czech Republic.

It’s a beautiful city if you like depressing architecture that makes it feel like a Sunday every day. I don’t even really have a schedule and I still felt like I had to get up early for work the next day. I think that’s really the only way I can explain how I felt in Prague.

I flew with Wizzair which as a tip is the most reasonable airline for booking flights without much notice and still finding very good deals. I digress. Earlier that day I stepped on my glasses and was left with only contact lenses which I only where when necessary. I felt pretty confident I could manage navigating a new foreign city with all of my belongings without really being able to see well so I didn’t bother with contacts. After an ATM withdrawal I caught an airport shuttle to the city center for $5 and from there I walked to my hostel without the aid of a map. Just the name of the plaza I needed to find.

After checking in to Prague Square Hostel what excited me most was the street food staring at me. I went absolutely nuts trying everything I could find.

In the city’s main plaza, Old Town Square, I stuffed my face and watched glanced at the world cup match every few moments.

And of course ate more and more.

The tourist industry in Prague is very well developed. Many backpackers think they are hitting the unknown Eastern Europe but it’s anything but that. I embraced it joining one of the pub crawls where I met a Canadian and girl from California I spent the night hanging out with as we moved from bar to bar, ending in a club.

The club had 5 dance floors on 5 separate floors. One floor was called the ‘black music room’.

I did buy a new pair of the most economical glasses which cost $90 and from there on I began my long walks through Prague.

Books in a foreign language

Bricks for sale anyone?

I found the local metalheads looking ridiculously out of place as always

I crossed over the Charles Bridge into the more normal but still almost equally touristy downtown Prague

A real Czech citizen not involved in tourism walking his dog

As I was walking the streets I looked down and saw this guy who at the same time startled another woman walking by who had her own freak out of sorts.

One night I was close to falling asleep when my eight bed dorm room came alive as a group of 6 American originally from India entered to prepare for a night out. We got to talking and they insisted I come. They were loads of fun and brought and extra smile to my face as some people passing us gave me a wtflook as they no doubt wondered how I fit into this group.

During the day while working I mostly camped out in Starbucks for the free Wifi. The highlight of Starbucks was not the coffee but understanding how nice it is to be able to understand conversations that I overhear. I miss out on many gems when people speak in foreign languages but enjoyed a group of cute Americans talking about how often they crap. One said this will be her third of the day and then excused herself from the table to hobble over to the bathroom.

The night before my departure I was celebrating my good luck as I had the dorm room entirely to myself. By 1Am I chose a new bed for the fresh sheets and by 2AM a group of 7 Mexicans checked in I apologized for taking one of their beds and made up for it by making the bed with new sheets. They talked shit about me behind my back in Spanish but I understood. Ha.

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Yeah, I’m really posting this. Forget all of the embarrassment but my third favorite travel gear item is this 500 count Egyptian cotton sheet sewn together like a sleeping bag.

Fruit flies? No problem. I’ll just wrap myself like a mummy as I lay asleep listening to the buzzing but skip the biting.

Old toe nail clippings in the hostel bed? Again, the sheet saves the day.

Sand paper like sheets? I’ll stick to this comfortable one.

Extra 5 Euro charge for sheets in the European hostels. No worries. I brought my own.

Uncomfortable bus/plane/train/boat ride with no place to rest my head comfortable. Well in this case I wrap the sheet around my neck multiple times so it acts like a built in pillow.

It’s about time you travelers embrace this super resourceful blanket! Maybe some day I’ll open up an online travel gear store with the travel blank at the marque product.

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1. Packing List for Indefinite Travel
2. Gettin In Gear
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I left Venice with one of the more interesting stories from the past three weeks. I camped out in one of the train station’s indoor waiting rooms in a comfy chair waiting for a group of Dutch people to leave so I could plug in my laptop in the outlet. In walks in a respectable middle aged Italian woman. No signs of crazy were present. She walked up casually to the outlet and unplugged the dutch’s plug that was charging his ipod and then slammed her plug to charge her cell phone.

The Dutch studied her casually and backed off as all of us watched her take her charger in and out multiple times growing more frustrated each time. By the third time she broke her charger. The Dutch intervened and told her they had the outlet first. A few minutes later she again casually removed their charger and went at it again now trying to charge her phone with her broken charger. She grew more frustrated and began shouting at herself when it did not work. She did not stop. She stood up from her chair to try and shove it in at a better angle all while shouting. She was nuts.

The Dutch left for their train and I moved over to take the other empty outlet and continued to watch her go at it with the other outlet. She soon approached me for help, asking to help her fix her phone. I responded in Spanish and explained that she broke her charger. It would be impossible to charge it. She did not believe me. I demonstrated how a broken prong means it cannot work…I could go on and on about her but believe me even after that she did not quit trying or stop bothering me to help her.

I completed my first trip via train to Rome and it was a far better experience overall than bus or airplane. No security and no extra fees. It was painless as I watched Human Target on my laptop and listened to music after the laptop battery died. The train dropped me off in downtown Rome just 10 blocks from my hostel. But checkin time was 3PM so I had 5 hours to kill. Without sleep or a shower I picked up one of the free maps and spotted a picture of the Colosseum.

I took Rome’s easy subway system to the stop, Colloseum.

Just a few hundred yards outside of the subway I spotted this, the Colloseum

It’s summertime and super touristy

Inside of the stadium I realized how huge it really is.

The view looking outside

By 3pm I returned to the hostel finally able to check-in and sleep. I woke up later that evening to watch a world cup match with a Japanese guy and American girl at the hostel bar. The next morning I was back to work as usual. I conducted a mock interview with a client over skype for nearly two hours. But the hostel environment is so inconsistent that the internet crapped out every 20 minutes and some guys were doing construction. In the end I just refunded him

It gets dark much later in Europe so I still had loads of time to go do something that day. I checked into a new hostel and then took the subway to Vatican City.

I walked through the square and of course the humongous church which seemed to never end.

On the way back I took a bus to the hostel and met a Mexican lady who I chatted with in Spanish for a while, which I love doing. I still have my Spanish skills! Back in the hostel room I met a really friendly pair of Ausralians who invited me to play blackjack for peanuts. We dragged the mattresses in the center of the room and played for a few hours with some of girls until I won! That night I watched another world cup match and met and interesting young sailor. It’s one of the more obscure professions when Djibouti is a normal stop on the sea.

I dedicated the next day to food.

Sepia Pasta (squid ink sauce)

I walked around some famous area of the city after some lunch. I mistakenly ordered half a liter of wine so by the time I finished I felt like a zombie wandering the baking hot streets until I finally made it back to the hostel by bus.

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