Year two of the Gap Decade - I moved to Haskovo, Bulgaria! I will be a Fulbright English Teacher at a local high school for the year.

Deena, how were you able to travel for this long? How did you pay for it?! I have heard these questions often on my trip - and I am so...

Choosing which bag to buy for a one way ticket backpacking trip is incredibly intimidating. When I went to my local sports goods store, I...

This post is not sponsored by Chacos. I don’t even like most of their shoes - just this pair. For $50 (there was a sale), my dream...

Day 22: Da Nang Today we hiked Marble Mountain, which was 10x cooler than I thought it would be. The mountain is a sprawling complex of...

Preparing a budget for an extended backpacking journey is no small feat, and I have spent countless hours pouring over my travel budget...

Bucharest After a few days in Sofia, Bulgaria to hike Rila lakes, I took a train north to Bucharest. I did not know anything about...

After years of hoping a trip like this would come together for me, it has been the most fulfilling experience to actually live it. This...

As Jewish people were forced out of land in the West, Poland and particularly Krakow became a place of refuge. The king of Poland...

My favorite part of Poland was by far my venture down to Zakopane. A few hours bus ride south of Krakow brings you to a ski resort town...

This mine just outside of Krakow, Poland contains over 300 km of tunnels. Miners, who didn’t possess maps, would pray to St. Anthony if...

We knew we wanted to explore the Croatian islands, but it wasn’t as easy as we thought it would be. Primarily, this is because we were...

The two most popular national parks in Croatia are Krka and Plitvice Lakes. While both of these are beautiful, Plitvice is difficult to...

In late August of 2018, we took a canyon exploration tour in the Osumi canyon. We rate it a creative/10. Staying at the Berat...

Herceg Novi The highlights of Herceg Novi are a couple of fortresses built into the steep city. However, Maddie and I were feeling...

Pula My first stop in Croatia was Pula, arriving directly from Ljubljana, Slovenia. I was meeting my friend Maddie, who was just wrapping...

The bus from Belgrade to Sarajevo is seven hours long, but far more beautiful than I had anticipated. Mountains and lakes and rivers,...

I was sitting on a beach 30 minutes south of Mostar with my new friends, an international group I had met at a hostel. Our team of four -...

Seasonal Fruits and Vegetables Unlike America, the Serbian diet looks completely different from summer to winter. In the summer, there...

When sitting at a café in Belgrade with my Serbian friend Lazar and his two co-workers, his co-workers ordered a bottle of champagne. ...