This is part two of a two part post. Part one is available here. 9. Wander (with a purpose). Be the person who fulfils the hokey quotation ‘not all who wander are lost.’ I spent my first week thinking that I needed to only follow the advice of Trip Advisor or what I had mapped out the day before. My favorite day was the one in which I buried my map into the pits of my backpack in Krakow and…
If I had to name this two-part blog post it would be: How to Make It In Eastern Europe Without Any Friends, A Little Money, and Five Changes of Clothes. After 8 long weeks of reading about King Arthur’s dwindling machismo and Winston Churchill’s drinking and its hand in saving international politics, I found myself six beautiful weeks of mindless vacation and an opportunity at empowerment. For almost four weeks I would travel to Eastern and Central Europe—places where few…
One of the benefits of living in Europe is that everything feels so close—at any moment, ancient monuments and breathtaking cities are only a brief train ride away. As if the destinations themselves weren’t attractive enough, my study abroad program provides a financial incentive to motivate students to explore France, offering reimbursements for up to 350 euros for travel within France and other Francophone countries. When my friends proposed a weekend getaway to Mont-St-Michel, a mountain-city in Normandy that is…
La Vita Bolognese One of the advantages of being abroad is that you’re already across the Atlantic Ocean, which means that traveling to different places for a weekend only costs about 100€ instead of $800-$1000. Anyone who’s traveled around Europe knows how wonderful it is to take a train or plane to another not-so-far-away place that speaks a different language, eats different food, and boasts different romantic stereotypes. Despite the convenience, however, I’ve decided to forego the traveller’s life for the…
The Usual Suspects For the short of mind, allow me to sum up the story thus far. I’m a PI—hard-boiled, etc—in a bad spot in a foreign country with limited options to crack the case, get the dame, and save my skin. How’d I get there? Like I said in my last brief reflection, I had just arrived in Oxford, England to retrieve some kind of treasure stolen from my home turf of Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York. I got to work immediately and found…