Some interesting stories, conversations, intuitions...

This post will be unlike the others. I am writing this to fill you all in on some personal experiences that I have had thus far during my trip. It will not talk about where I am, what I have done the past couple of days, etc., but rather my thought process on multiple occasions.

First: About 3 weeks ago, I was faced with the decision about whether or not continue travelling with James and Adam - my travel partners from Birmingham, England. After we left Prague, James and Adam had a place to stay in Salzburg, Austria and I ventured on my own to Munich, Germany. Munich turned out to be in my top 3 cities that I have visited, and the hostel I stayed at (The-Tent) was the most fun I have had the entire trip.

Rewind to three weeks ago. I was reading a book that Elisha had given me called "Blink".

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking is a book by Malcolm Gladwell, in which he explores the power of the trained mind to make split second decisions, the ability to think without thinking, or in other words using instinct. Gladwell describes his subject as "thin-slicing": our ability to gauge what is really important from a very narrow period of experience. In other words, spontaneous decisions are often as good as—or even better than—carefully planned and considered ones. "He finds that experts often make better decisions with snap judgments than they do with volumes of analysis."

As I am reading this book, I am at the same time convincing myself (by making a list of pros and cons in my head) that it will be good to travel with James and Adam. But something inside me, the feeling that I got from the beginning, told me that I should keep going on my own path. I was not sure what to do. In the end, as you know from reading my blog, I made the decision to continue traveling on my own path. Although it is much more difficult, lonely, scary, and uncomfortable to travel alone, this is the main reason why I came to Europe:

To get outside of my comfort zone, do something that others deem crazy, and become a mentally stronger person because of it.

---

I get the following message from Adam just the other day: "It's a good thing you ditched us while you could, we've had a fucking mare (nightmare) trying to get to Athens, took like 3 days with no hostels, a Greek train strike, loads of slow trains, tons of fucking passport checks."

---

Thank you to everyone who is reading this blog (you are all, very very important to me) since you have helped shape me into the person I am and taught me how to make good decisions on my own. Thank you to Malcolm Gladwell for writing the book that helped me to know when to trust my first instinct. Most importantly, thank you Elisha for recommending such a wonderful traveling read. Without you, I would be having a much more stressful excursion here in Europe. You are great :)

---

This entry is getting fairly long, but I want to now just copy a few paragraphs that I wrote in my personal travel journal. This will give you an idea of how my mind works while I am travelling solo through the European continent. I wrote this on July 10, midway through my 33 hour train ride from Munich to Seville.

"It has been a grea past 6 or 7 days...since my last night in Ceske Krumlov. Hiking Mt. Klet, the three wicked nights in Munich, and these long train rides that I really do not mind. Calling home was also great for my spirit. Hearing familiar voices from home was very uplifting for me.

Day 3 at the tent (more like day 8, since this was my second visit to Munich). I had my breakfast (the usual which consists of cereal with yogurt and some tea) and sat on a bench just thinking and relaxing. Mid-breakfast a girl named Jill who I met the day before asked if she could sit with me. I said yes and we began to talk. I love that aspect of The-Tent. It is very communal. I remember looking around and seeing all these people interact / eating together at the picnic tables. The same thing happens around the fire each night. This is how life should be, or what it should be like: community interaction, meeting new people, having conversations with them during meals and throughout the day. Eating in general with new people is great. There needs to be more places like "The-Tent" around the world. Everyone who stays there says this. My goal is to create this, whether it be in the long-run (a permanent place, a community, where people will live) or something that is temporary for budget travellers like me. Near Boston maybe. A non-profit. Perhaps one day.

Anyway, I talked to Jill (she looked like 30 but is only 22. This is something you do not tell a girl obviously) and she tells me about the volunteer work that she did in Africa. Apparently she paid them to work there, her whole life savings, and spent about 3 1/2 months volunteering and travelling in Africa. There was another volunteer, a guy, who came off seeming like he really had his life together. He came off impressing Jill from all the stuff he had done and accomplished as well as his future goals. But he turned out to be a not-so-great guy in the end - a cocky and over confident person that she could no longer stand working with. He made comments to her that made her feel very uncomfortable.

Jill left after 2 1/2 months and did some travelling on her own around Africa. When she was volunteering, her work entailed building walls around water silos / tanks that farmers used to store water. Elephants there are smart enough to know that by kicking over these structures, they will find water. The elephants, however, are a big nuisance to farmers and it can be detrimental to their crops. They actually have permission from the government to shoot and even kill these massive creatures. Pretty sad stuff. So she built these walls out of stones (heavy lifting, not an easy task) to help the farmers but also saving the lives of the elephants. "

---July 10, 6:30 PM on the train from Madrid to Seville, Spain---

We also went on to talk about safety in Africa, especially for white females, since I have heard some horror stories about what goes on there. It was very interesting to hear her take on this, since she has had this particular life experience.



This is just a random elephant I found on google, since I felt this post needed a picture after all. The meaning of this blog entry was just to inform you all on a particular conversation I had, a good decision that I made, and to make you feel a little bit closer to me even though I am many many miles away. I hope you all enjoyed the read and in a little over 3 weeks, I will be home! Cannot wait to see you all and share some more stories with you.