The Art of Broadening

Posted on 22 June 2014

The raw rock in my stomach grew firmer as the plane flew higher. I peered out of the window and watched my familiar Finland, my friends, sink further and further beneath me. I was 19. I had flown internationally on my own plenty of times. I had just spent a semester in Russia. But I hadn’t truly traveled alone before. And here I was, on my way to the first of four countries I planned to visit before my summer program began in Berlin. Soon enough, we would be landing in Vienna. I waited for my baggage and fiddled with my mostly useless, not-smart cell phone. Unable to confirm my plans, I took a breath, stomached the fact that there are no certainties in travel,…

Categories: Travel

Tagged: austria, couchsurfing, europe, growth, hospitality networks, travel, vienna

For I Have Learned, Homes Are Not Places

Posted on 18 May 2014

Relief. It’s the feeling that embraces me, comforts me, as I ascend the hill, pass through the gates. People whom I very much respect remain here. People who I suspect, despite my idiosyncrasies and my flamboyant flashes of weirdness, respect me too. People who have always embraced the overeager, odd child, and who I think always will. Embraces at airports now, rather than train stations. In Finland, it was always train stations. Now we’re meeting in the U.S. It has been four years, almost. Four years out of how long? Ten or so years, much of it spent across the world. But we watched each other develop through nerdom, music festivals, midsummers, stumbling down streets, stumbling through relationships, and settling. I shove aside the…

Categories: Life, Travel

Tagged: college, finland, friends, gambier, growth, homes, kenyon, life, Ohio, travel, united states

The Value of Camping with Strangers

Posted on 27 April 2014

It’s daring, but not in the way many people think. Traveling without set plans, staying with strangers, relying on others rather than solely on yourself and your chosen guides—this is not a confrontation of the world, but facing up to yourself. I am less afraid of the evil without than I am of the gnawing within. Traveling sans hotels and itineraries means pushing yourself beyond the relative comfort of certainty into something much more. It means training your mind that things will be fine, even those beyond your control. It means that you’ll experience more than your own limited plans. It means that you allow your knowledge to be expanded by others. I am less afraid of the evil without than I am of…

Categories: Travel

Tagged: camping, control, couchsurfing, eldfell, growth, iceland, travel, vestmannaeyjar, volcanoes, waterfalls, westman islands

Break Your Shoes Rather Than Your Heart

Posted on 17 March 2014

Alone, at 5am, I stepped off the bus. Alone, I took the U-Bahn to Friedrichstraße. Russia, Estonia, twice Finland, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, and the Czech Republic were behind me and Berlin was my final destination. A month of classes, and then my sojourn abroad would be complete. By now, I was used to drifting. I became a walker, a wanderer, gliding down endless streets, avenues, alleys as languages flowed over me, understood in varying degrees. Friends faded in and out as I moved around. But often, I was alone. I was toughening. I was learning I am who I can trust. And now, shaping myself, I could sense the future, both certain and unknown. I was gaining some control as I wore down my…

Categories: Life, Music, Travel

Tagged: berlin, dancing, germany, growth, kaffee burger, life, music, russendisko, Russia, travel, wandering, wladimir kaminer

Finding Food in Kenya

Posted on 18 January 2014

Among my first visions of Kenya: darkness, potholes, and eerie stick structures illuminated by the bouncing headlights. I really wasn’t sure what they could be. The tarp draped over them glared back through the night. I arrived in Muguga, where I was spending the summer as an intern. For the first few days in the guesthouse, I was alone. It got dark around 6pm, so after work I sat in my room and quietly gnawed on protein bars that I had brought along for the long plane rides. I refused to pay the relatively expensive $10 equivalent charged by the guesthouse for dinner, given my tight student budget. I was by myself, in rural Kenya, and the only apparent buildings around belonged to the…