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 blog is a record of my spending my life savings, and there is not a single thing that would give me more joy and life experience than this trip has.
I am so grateful for my parents who helped me pay for college and graduate early, to scholarship programs like Coca-Cola that invested in me, and for the students at UW-Madison that funded one of the two jobs I worked during my studies. My heart feels so full with gratitude to think about just how many things needed to fall into place perfectly to let me experience this adventure of a lifetime.
To be fair, some of these experiences were drinking games that resulted in me kissing and trading clothes with strangers. Or, worse, when one unfortunate dice roll resulted in a new friend licking my ear for 10 seconds.
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But other mishaps resulted in stomach-rumbling laughter. For example, in Brasov, Romania I climbed to the top of a local mountain with two tall blonde Nordic men. When we took the cable car down, we realized everyone else had round trip tickets up and down this mountain. When the cable car stopped, my six foot something friends realized the mistake, only to immediately jump the gate and begin running. I threw up my hands and followed, over the ticket counter (with slightly less ease) and we scurried down the mountain in the rain as the smallest scale criminals the world had ever seen.
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I learned that highly fermented beer is absolutely disgusting, after some lovely Italian guys made the mistake of ordering it. As a beer-lover, I was prepared to trade my good beer, until I tried theirs. Awful. Then we watched the man next to us throw up and fill an entire pitcher with vomit and the five of us went home when the other table of forty year old American men started trying to grope my friends.
We decided not to push these creeps down the stairs in retaliation due to our lack of knowledge on the Polish justice system, and the Italian men got us home safe.
The majority of Polish interactions were positive, however - like the man who owned the kebab shop and let my Portuguese friend and I in after 2am. They were completely shut down, but opened to make my friend a kebab and feed me free chicken and garlic sauce. (Aka my new favorite food).
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At the very least kebabs are more delicious than the chicken noodle soup I bought when feeling sick, only to realize it was cow stomach soup one bite too late.
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Now that I think about it, most of my favorite stories involve kebabs. Waking up in the morning with my American friend we found a kebab with one bite out of it sitting on the windowsill, and were completely unable to determine who it belonged to. The other people in the hostel didn’t claim it (and obviously it wasn’t mine because I definitely would eat the entire kebab if I started it) so Warsaw authorities are still on the case.
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Another traveler investigation I was involved in consisted of trying to find a yacht in Croatia. Sitting on the porch of our AirBnB in Croatia, my two girlfriends and I schemed to acquire a yacht through Tinder. We revamped our profiles, changed our bios to “do you have a yacht” and swiped right on anyone who had pictures that included a boat.
The best offer we received was a paddle boat, but we definitely would have found a yacht if we had more time.
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We loved our private little home on the Croatian island, but most of our time was spent in hostels. Hostels were an essential part of my solo travel experience because they are the conduit to meeting new people. That doesn’t mean hostels come without faults, however - especially when you are like me and choose the cheapest one available without a second thought.
I had stayed at hostel Ana my first time through Split, Croatia, and it wasn’t particularly nice but I had no problem with it. It was by far the cheapest hostel in the area, so when I came through Split again I booked another night.
My American friend and I show up at 9pm after a full day of hiking Plitvice National Park and bus hopping. We were exhausted, ready to shower and crawl into bed.
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It was already dark when we arrived on time for our check in, but the receptionist was nowhere to be found for half an hour. In that time, a friendly American warned us that some of the bunks are not stable and that we should check them before we climb in to ensure they do not collapse. When the receptionist finally did show up, he promptly took off his shirt and doubled the price of our room, tacking on extra fees and charging us for sheets.
“No,” my American friend and I said simultaneously. “Thanks for wasting our time,” my friend remarked. We booked another hostel only to find it was full, to be rerouted to another that was hosted by Hostel Ana’s cousin. It was crawling with bed bugs, so we left to find another that was also full, before finally being relocated to a fifth and final hostel. A French couple feeling each other up in the bed next to us were not thrilled when we walked in, but we were just grateful to have a place to sleep. It was a long night.
Most hostels were much more accommodating. One hostel in Krakow didn’t even mind when I checked out and “returned” a key that was jammed in the door.
“We need the key for you to check out,” they explained to me.
“I know, I have it - it’s just stuck in the door. I can’t get it out. It’s been there all night.” I figured it was safe from theft because it was impossible to remove.
With some effort the staff member jimmied out the key and returned my deposit.
Interacting with new cultures also formed some of my fondest memories. For example, the world’s saddest children’s carnival on a street in Budapest, Hungary. One ride had hanging baskets they put children in and then pushed them in circles (at least half of the kids were crying). Another was a wooden crate that you put your kid in before pushing them down a wheeled ramp. A seatbelt was haphazardly tied onto the crate, but I don’t think it would pass any safety tests.
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Or in Belgrade, Serbia where I scared the children with my overenthusiastic musical abilities.
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Or the time I volunteered to sing karaoke in Finland, in Finnish.
Note: I do not speak Finnish.
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These are just a few of the memories that made me smile during my time gallivanting across Europe, and I cannot wait to collect even more stories as my trip continues to Southeast Asia.
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