The travel that I've done since June roughly falls into four categories: backpacking, study abroad, activities-based, and volunteering. I'll elaborate a little on each. Who knows, maybe this will help somebody down the road.
Backpacking: this is your standard hostel-to-hostel trip. It's a good way to stay in places on the cheap, you meet a lot of young people, and you can see a lot in a relatively short trip. Charlie and I did Madrid, Switzerland, Vienna, Prague, Berlin, and Brussels in hostels, and we had a great time. However, we met mostly fellow travelers, which included some very cool people and great times, but it got a little tiring after a while, and it didn't feel like anything near experiencing another culture, just seeing the main sights.
Study Abroad: we spent four weeks in Barcelona. The city was great, but I didn't quite get as much out of it as I did when I did 6 weeks of study in Argentina, which I largely attribute to the program (IES), which didn't really do anything to help us meet local students. With only 4 weeks, our time was quite limited. I would say that study abroad is a really great way to make friends, get to know a place, and learn a language, but on this trip, it wasn't quite perfect.
Activities-based. For me, this was playing in ultimate frisbee tournaments. This was incredibly fun. It was an easy way to meet locals, who gave me a place to stay or helped show me around their city. My friend Travis Martin (aka T-Money) basically played in ultimate tournaments through Europe for his summer vacation (with some good old fashioned tourism thrown in). These tournaments usually included camping and food, so they ended up being a good deal money-wise versus staying in a hostel, especially when you throw in meeting locals who can give you a place to stay. Apparently some tournaments let you volunteer a few hours of work for a free entry fee. I'll definitely look to see what other tournaments I can play this fall, and I think I'll come back to Europe one day for another summer of ultimate.
Volunteering: Currently on my second stint of volunteering through HelpX. This is a great way to see cool places, learn interesting skills, and stretch the money while traveling. You put in 4-7 hours of work and receive room and board. Most places looking for volunteers are farms and hostels/hotels, but there's all sorts of things. I've seen a pinball machine salesman looking for someone to assist him as he drives around Spain, a man in Egypt looking for a tutor for his son, and a buddhist cafe looking for baristas.
My education and work so far in my life hasn't really included busing tables or cleaning toilets or chopping wood, so it's good to get a little background in these sorts of really basic things. HelpX, I think, could be really useful to people looking to take some time off. It'd be easy and cheap to spend 3 months in a hostel in Costa Rica or a dairy farm in Germany, if you have the time and want to get away.
In the future, I'd like to try my hand at CouchSurfing, and hopefully geology will continue to give me opportunities to travel as part of my job.
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