My goals for this trip varied between catching up with friends and visiting some new places. Eastern Europe and Slovenia were completely new and quite exciting. Amsterdam/Stockholm I’ve visited before many times. Therefore, it was a mix between going out all the time and wandering around versus hanging out, grabbing a beer, and catching up. By the end of my trip, after having been to a dozen or so museums and galleries, I just was not interested in going to more. Having fun is the ultimate goal of my travels and sometimes relaxing and laying back is fun.

I really have to thank my many friends I stayed with on the trip, for offering a couch to crash on, but also for taking time to show me around and hang out. When I was kid, my dad worked for the gov’t, so I was a military brat and grew up traveling around. Moving around every couple years really limited my ability to grow long term friendships and as such, it’s an entirely new thing for me to “know” people for years at a time. I love having this ability now though! It’s such a great feeling to catchup with someone, see what has changed in their life, and congratulate them on their achievements. Friends are one of the many great things in life.

It was my first time in Europe in 3 years and since then, Europe has changed a bit, but I have changed a great deal. Graduating from college, living in 2 major cities (NYC/SF), and visiting many more has given me a wealth of things to compare. Biggest differences all around were size. Everything in Europe was so small and I never really got used it. You go to a bar, it fits maybe 20 people max, I’m feeling pretty cramped, and everyone is saying how large this bar is! Europe is a much smaller space than the US, but I feel the mentality to think small, or to perhaps think more conservatively about a space is definitely the norm, especially in the cities. I love my vast open spaces though. I felt on average, most people I met were happier. There was a certain balance that most cities had, in terms of food, life, size, housing, everything just seems more balanced. I can’t think of a “perfect” large city in the US, but certainly some cities in Europe come far closer. Europe cities are much more walkable and that is a big thing that helps.

It was great to talk German again while in Berlin, I am definitely going to look for some weekly meetings in my city, to try and keep speaking it. I have let my language skills languish and while everything seemed familiar when I was speaking, I definitely had forgotten some words.

Countries that I visited, in order of travel:

Switzerland (couple hours), Slovenia (2 weeks), Italy (couple hours), Croatia (8 hours), Austria (8 hours), Slovakia (2 days), Hungary (3 days), Germany (1 week), Sweden (5 days), the Netherlands (1 week)

Things Well Planned

• All of my gear: having a big clothes bag and a small daily bag, new hiking boots, right amount of pants/shirts
• Small hand towel for drying off after a shower. It doesn’t take long to dry out.
• Under Armour Cold Gear – I wore it everywhere, thin and light, just as good as a huge wool sweater
• Bringing along Woolite packets for cleaning my socks. At one point, I hadn’t washed my clothes for like 2 weeks, so I had to clean atleast my socks.
• Earplugs for hostels. ’nuff said.

Things Poorly Planned

• More socks. Cotton socks suck and get wet really easily, especially in Winter. A friend recommended Tilley Travel Socks, which are wool and apparently awesome. I am going to buy a bunch.
• Poor planning for New Years week. I didn’t book a hostel or anything and just imaged that everything would be fine. It wasn’t. Everything booked out, something I didn’t even consider. Very poor planning.
• I brought an extra pair of shoes that I never used. Hiking boots were all I needed.
• Only bring 2 books max. I brought like 4 and didn’t read any of them. If I had finished a book, there were plenty of places to swap them out or buy another.

Hopefully I will write some more stories and post some more pictures from the trip in the future, but if you really want to find out more, sit down with me a for a few hours and buy me a beer!

My latest theory is that traveling is something like being a pinball in a giant machine or a domino that you want to push over and start a chain of awesome events. You want to be as extroverted as possible to meet new people, who open up new opportunities for you or give you help. This applies to real life as well, but I find especially while traveling in foreign country with completely different language and culture, knowing someone local can make a world of difference in understanding things.

For example: I got the idea to come to Berlin because I asked twitter where I should go in Europe last week. Someone suggested 26C3, a hacking/social conference. It looked like something interesting to do for 4 days, so I made the plans! I showed up the first night of the conference without housing, so I sent out some emails to people and eventually found a free bed for the last night of the conference with Paul, a CS student here in Berlin. The conference finished up on the 30th, but Paul’s housing contract/lease was up this month and he had to out by January 1st! So, he let me stay with him in exchange for helping him move out. I spent most of the morning of the 31st carrying boxes and a couch down a couple flights of stairs. I then showed up at 7PM at Alexander Platz for Journey to the End of the Year, a massive Pacman style game, which I found out about via Paul and other people from the conference… I spent a couple hours running around Berlin with another German, Stephan, from the Blackforest. We got lost during the game, but met up at the after party, around 10PM. That party sucked, so I jumped ship with some other guys I met from Darmstat, Florian and Lucas, and we picked up fireworks from their apartment to shoot off at midnight. Florian and I traded emails and I kept hanging out him for the next few days, hitting up a science museum, since we are both engineers.

Long story short, I had a great time running around meeting random people in Berlin. With no plan, a bit of luck, and throwing myself out there, I’ve gotten pretty far!

Slovenia is a wonderful little country that has really surprised me with how beautiful everything is. I perhaps had some misconceptions about the country before coming here due its proximity to some not-so-modern Eastern European countries, but I have seen that it is quite a modern country and has some very smart people here. Most people I have met speak fluent English, which has been great for me, along with a bit of Italian, and German. I’ve picked up a bit of Slovenian too, I’ve been told it’s a very hard language to learn, but I haven’t had much difficulty with the pronunciation of most words. The Internet here is faster than most home connections in the US and I’ve found plenty of free or open wireless for my iPhone. Despite the old exterior on many buildings, they are completely new and awesome inside!

I am staying here with a good friend of mine, Vesna, from my study abroad in Germany. We kept in touch and now I am finally visiting her! She has been trying her best to get me out and around Slovenia, also filling me in with plenty of useful facts and history, since she studies art history.

Over the first weekend, we hung around Ljubljana, the capitol, and where she lives. They have a nice Christmas market in the center of town, overlooked by this awesome castle that has been around for hundreds of years. The castle is one of Ljubljana’s most famous landmarks.

Tuesday, I went to Zagreb, Croatia by myself. 2.5 hour train ride from Ljubljana, about 21 euros roundtrip. Zagreb was very lovely, nestled between two large hills, it gives the city a nice upper/lower split of houses and a very nice view from the hill. I’m planning on writing up another larger post about Zagreb.

Wednesday, we borrowed Vesna’s sister’s car and drove to the coast! Trieste in Italian, Trst in Slovenian, is right on the Adriatic Sea, used to be Slovenia before WWII, and is still quite Slovenian. Great coffee and pizza in Italy, of course. Many beautiful views as we drove along the coast, heading South, to the 48KM of Slovenian coastline. We drove out to Piran, a small and old city out on a tip of land. Very beautiful to watch the sunset from there.

Thursday, yesterday, we borrow the car again and drove to Bled, in the Northwest of Slovenia, where there is the only island in all of Slovenia. There is a big church on that island, with a huge awesome castle overlooking the church and the lake. You are up in the Alps by now and it is just gorgeous.

Today was recovery and planning. This weekend/next week is travel to Wien, Bratislava, and Budapest! Keep reading for stories from my travels.

The main stops for my trip are a weekend in NYC, 3 weeks in Slovenia, 1 week in Stockholm, and 1 week in Amsterdam. I am currently a few days into the trip, writing this post from NYC. My itinerary includes:

• Dec 4th, fly from PIT to JFK.
• Dec 9th, fly from JFK to LJU (Ljubljana, the capitol of Slovenia)
• Around Dec 30ish, get to Stockholm somehow.
• Around Jan 7th, get to Amsterdam.
• January 13th, fly AMS to PIT.

I’m hoping to fit some snowboarding in during my time in Slovenia, in the Alps. The timing for some of these places is still up in the air right now and I need to figure that out once I get to Slovenia, which will be this Wednesday. I am quite ready to head to Europe!

Summary:

• About 2500 miles driven
• About $200 in gas

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The Outward Journey

I left Monday afternoon, Nov 23rd, heading toward Charlotte, NC. Marissa, my friend from highschool, is attending college there and let me spend a few nights with her. 7 hour drive from Pittsburgh to Charlotte. The hills of West Virginia are quite windy. I spend Monday and Tuesday night with her. I checkout the UNC-Charlotte campus and get some fast food from a place named “Cook Out.” You can get corn dogs as a side with your meal. I pickup some local Muscadine wine for our Thanksgiving dinner. Muscadine grapes are local to the South and have a very sweet, but kind of musky taste to them, a very unique flavor.

Wednesday, the 25th, I took off toward Sarasota, FL to spend Thanksgiving day with my grandparents. 11 hours of driving in the rain and holiday traffic. Florida has the most amount of: accidents, terrible “driving too fast” drivers, cops pulling people over, and people driving too slow. A terrible state to drive in, but a beautiful balmy state. It was great to see my grandparents after a few years and spend Thanksgiving with them. My grandmother is 84 years old and a great cook. She can barely walk, but somehow still has her driver’s license and is still allowed to drive. That amazes me.

The Return

Saturday, the 28th, I headed across the state to have my third thanksgiving with some other friends, Lauren and Phil. Driving East/West in Florida is terrible and the roads are not built to facilitate such travel. Florida looks exactly the same no matter where you go. Good food was eaten, Lauren is an excellent cook, and some pool was shot. The next day, I headed off toward Melbourne, an hour North, to visit my friend Haris who had just moved down there and also just graduated last year. I crashed on his couch Sunday night.

Monday morning, at a bright and early 8AM, I took off toward home. My trip had been a progression toward longer and longer drives, so this was my longest drive yet. It’s about 16 hours of driving from FL to PA, so I decided to straight shot it. I stopped off in SC for Bojangles, this awesome biscuit fast food place, similar to Popeyes. Such great food in the South! I managed about 12 hours of solid driving before crashing around 10PM to sleep for 2 hours. I woke up at midnight and then kept driving. I got home around 4AM, so 20 hours of traveling for 16 hours of driving. I was quite impressed with myself! Not something I want to do all the time, but sometimes you have to push it to the limit.

It was a great experience to see old friends and family! I am already packing for my next trip though…