Hello faithful and new readers! I have returned from the epic summer travels to my quiet little home in Korea and tomorrow I start the fall semester’s classes and resume my life as a mild mannered (ha-ha) teacher. Along with my return to my office comes the joyous task of sharing my summer adventures with you! I hope you all had a great summer as well, and thanks for hanging in there during the silent months. Let the blogging resume.
Why Europe?
It is possibly the most quintessential rite of passage for young Americans (and I think quite a few Europeans, Australians, etc) to spend a summer abroad between finishing school and starting work life. I didn’t get the chance to do so upon my BA graduation, and although I did go abroad after my MA graduation, it was to take a job in China, not to explore and adventure. Finally, finally, no longer a university student by a couple decades, I managed to be at a point in life where I could do my “summer in Europe”.
I feel exceptionally lucky to have had the opportunity, but having done it, I am also glad it came to me later in life. I think that the purpose for the young to travel abroad should be to see new ways of life, to get outside the comfort zone before that becomes too scary.
I’m not saying Europe didn’t push my comfort zone, it did, but some of that may simply be that I’ve gotten so used to Asian and Southeast Asian travel that I had to readjust my parameters. Nor am I saying “don’t go to Europe”. Oh hell, no. Go go go. But it’s expensive AF, and it’s not the coming of age story that I think it was when my parents’ generation made it famous. Now, everyone speaks English (it’s still polite to try to use their language, tho), and other than some extra stairs and a lack of free water (seriously it comes out of the tap, why can’t they just serve that at the restaurant?) it’s just not that culturally different from whatever Western European descended culture you came from. (Obvi. this advice does not apply to people from non-European descended cultures)
There are a million wonderful things to see and do, I’m simply saying I’m glad I did it now and not at an age when I might have passed them by. It’s culture, and castles, and museums, and history, and food, and it’s expensive. Of course you can have a good time on a budget anywhere, but why?, if you are on a budget and don’t care so much what you see, only that it’s “abroad” go to someplace less expensive. Save up and go to Europe when you want to see Europe for it’s own sake and not for some Hollywood version of summer backpacking.
I spent more on this trip than any 3-5 other vacations you’ve read about on this blog, and yeah, it was 3-5 times longer, but I was still skating the bottom edge of a reasonable EU holiday budget at around 100$ a day (not counting airfare). It was challenging and caused problems from time to time. I could have easily spent twice that and not been in the lap of luxury. But, I wanted Europe bad enough that I was willing to do it shoestring, and overall, I think it was a good experience.
Where are the stories?
I’ve been thinking a lot about how to write 51 days of holiday travel into this blog. Past vacations that have ranged from 5-12 days often end up with a 1 post per day ratio. I’m not going to write 51 posts about Europe this fall, and I’m going travelling again in January, so I only have 4 months to write and edit everything! AAAAHHH!~!
Usually, I come home and spend a few days (a week) writing down everything I can recall in a “rough draft”, then decide how I want to present the story: chronologically, or thematically. Then I divide the draft into draft posts based on content and size (I really try to keep each post under 5k words), and finally I go through each one, edit it, add research details and photos, and publish it. It took me 6 months to finish posting a two week vacation this way. It’s not sustainable.
I did keep a kind of journal on the trip, well most of it. I stopped after Germany. I had very little “me” time in Copenhagen to write in, and I thought, “meh, it’s fine, there’s only like 2 weeks left and I know I can remember that much without notes”…. we’ll see.
I imagined that I could write up the last two weeks of draft and then start sorting and it just loomed ahead of me like a hurricane on the open ocean and I realized it could take me over a month to just draft and organize the information. So, instead, I’ve decide to just tell you stories of my summer as I’m able with absolutely no relationship to chronological or thematic ordering. Stories that left an impact on me will get much more time, other parts may get glossed over or dropped entirely. Sometimes I’ll tell you more about a place, sometimes I’ll tell you more about how it affected me. Sometimes I’ll have lots of history, other times I’ll have very practical travel advice. Always, I’ll have a story.
I encourage comments (polite and constructive of course, this is a troll-free zone after all) if there’s something you want to know more about or hear more about. This was not only a whole new kind of travel for me, it’s now a whole new kind of travel writing after 4 years of perfecting my “short holiday” style. I don’t really know where it’s going. Let’s find out together.
Gallivantrix 