On Bulgaria

Bulgaria is a super interesting country, full of nice people, cool soviet relics, and a beautiful mountainous countryside, which was loaded with trees changing color when I went through it. However, I had my first negative experience with HelpX.

I was in a small village (Voditsa) working at a family's house that's run as a campsite/hostel during the summer months. I was doing a variety of odd jobs around the property, like building a fence and shelling walnuts. The village was nice, and the work was alright, but I really didn't get along with the boss, and it got quite cold there (note the snow), and the combination of the weather and the boss got to me. I had planned to stay for three weeks, but I ended up leaving after one, and luckily I got the opportunity to work at a hostel in Albania, where I am right now, happy and warm and getting to socialize with guests. I'll post more on the hostel later.

I think if I had been in Bulgaria in summer or spring, I may have enjoyed myself, or maybe if I just had more time to get along with the boss. But I'm only in Europe for so long, and I didn't want to spend another two weeks unhappy, so I left. The boss took it pretty well, and I'm glad I left early.

I spent a couple days in Sofia, the Bulgarian capital, after leaving the village, and I rather enjoyed just wandering around, taking in the city that was somewhat western, but somewhat soviet. The English graffiti was interesting (as above on the main shopping street), and the cheap street food was hard to beat. More photos here.

I then took a bus to Skopje, Macedonia, where I had an afternoon to kill walking around the city, and then headed to the hostel in Albania. I'll be here for another 3 or 4 weeks, then hit up Greece, Turkey, and head home for the holidays (and to finish my applications to grad school).

Italy!

I've been in Italy since October 3rd, and it's been great. I'll do this in reverse chronological order! I just arrived in Milan, where I will be catching a flight to Bulgaria, where I will be working on a farm/campsite for a few weeks. I most recently spent 2 days in the Cinque Terre, which is a stretch of coast with five villages connected by trails. Above is Manarola, where I stayed in a lovely hostel.

I joined my friend Megan (middle), who worked in Scotland with me, and her friend Emily, and we also made a new friend, Ruben, who was pretty much a Belgian version of my old ultimate frisbee captain, Jeff Loskorn (aka DJ). We spent one day hiking the five villages (about 5-6 hours one end to the other), which included walks through vineyards, olive groves, wild areas smelling of wild herbs, and gorgeous cliff views. We ended the day by going down to the water for a swim with "cliff diving" aka jumping off of 12-foot boulders and doing cannonballs. Also included: delicious lasagna and gelato.

Yesterday, we hiked to Porto Venere, which is further down the coast. The hike was quite incredible--everything from clifftop churches to pine forests to stunning views of marble cliffs. Around the corner of Porto Venere is this place nicknamed Lord Byron's Grotto, I think because he tried to land a ship there once (the descriptive plaque was pretty beat up). There are marble cliffs on three sides, a cave, two castles, and blue, blue water. We went for a nice dip before catching the boat back. For dinner -- walnut ravioli and local white wine. You can view my other photos here.

Before Cinque Terre, I went to Florence (by myself). I loved the Renaissance feel of the city, and I had gelato which definitely is in my top 10 desserts of all time. Seeing Michelangelo's David was spectacular, and so was the Uffizi museum.

I had one lovely evening where I went up to the Piazza Michelangelo and watched the sun set over the city.

Before Florence, I spent three days in Rome with my good friend from high school Alexandra Gloria. We had a blast. We saw the Coliseum, the Roman forum, a bunch of churches, the Pope, the Vatican, and an ancient city outside of Rome, Ostia Antica. I most enjoyed the Sistene Chapel, St. Peter's, and Ostia Antica. You can see my photos from Florence and Rome here (you'll have to scroll down past some photos from the UK).

Rome was great, but I think I would go back to Florence and Cinque Terre first (CT especially). All in all -- a great trip. Next stop: Bulgaria.

Goodbye Wiston, hello London

Alright folks, the nearly month-long post drought is over. Last week I left Wiston Lodge after a month there. It was a great month, and I'll have a lot of good memories.

From Wiston, I took a bus to Aberdeen, which is a very cool city, with loads of interesting granite buildings. I had about two hours there (enough to walk most of downtown) before catching an overnight ferry to the Shetland Islands, the northernmost part of the UK. Shetland is renowned for beautiful shorelines, geology, and archaeology. I spent a couple days hiking the sea shore (pictured above) and visited a 4000-year old archaeology site.

Above is a tombolo, a sand and shell beach connecting two pieces of land. You walk across the beach from the mainland to get on this island inhabited only by sheep. The weather was pretty incredible too (although windy).

I had originally planned to spend a few more days there, but most of the lodging on the outer isles was already closed for winter, so I decided to go ahead and go to London, where I am now.

I've just been walking around the city a ton and bingeing on museums, which are free (!) here. Yesterday, I went to the British Museum (home of the Rosetta Stone and a bajillion other cool things), the National Gallery (home to a pretty exhaustive collection of western art from 1300-1900), and the national portrait gallery, which has, well, a lot of portraits, some of which are pretty cool.

I also ran across this little gem:

Yes I ate there, and yes it was good.

I head to Rome on Monday. After that...who knows!

some pictures of the grounds at Wiston Lodge

Yesterday, the weather was spectacular. 60 degrees and sunny. I went around the grounds and took some pictures. I'll put a few of the best on here; you can see the rest on facebook. Above is a picture of a large parachute which you can build fires under. the parachute billows and inflates when the fire heats up the air. I've been finding my time here to be almost a summer vacation type thing. It's allowing me to seriously recharge my batteries, and I'll be plenty well rested by the time I start traveling in earnest again.

The Lodge is surrounded by 50 acres of lush forest. Here's a nice example, with a bridge over a creek.

Behind the lodge is Tinto Hill, which would probably be a mountain in central Texas. It's a nice trip for the afternoon, if the weather is nice.

A cool lock.

Songs of the Summer

I've got some tunes that'll stand out from this summer, and here they are. They all happen to be from Charlie. He and his friends run a music blog, relentlessly easy.

first, My Favorite, a mixtape by Blalock. 20 minutes of awesome.
Down in the Valley by the Head and the Heart. Great song, that album has other gems too.
You Yes You by  by tUnE-yArDs. Proving that even bands with dumb capitalization can make awesome music. This live version is definitely worth a watch.
WHALE by Yellow Ostrich.

And, special bonus from summer 2010: It was a good day by Ice Cube. Gotta balance out all that indie with something, and this song= good times.

Catchphrases and Texans

The more observationally astute of my readers might have noticed that the title of this blog is "Witty Catchphrase," in reference to my love of catchphrases. Por ejemplo, here are the big ones from 2010: Don't fight it, Man's gotta eat, Fire up the grill, Cute face, Go big or go home, Give the people what they want.

It's been a dark few months for new catchphrases. In Barcelona, we had "that dog'll hunt," as in, "that'll work." It was best served with a big ol' Texas accent. Unfortunately, after then, I've been severely lacking in catchphrases. I've had two relatively weak catchphrases: "&*!#@$ nettles," in reference to stinging nettles, which were the bane of my existence for two weeks on the farm, and "Europe, man," which was used a lot when traveling with Flo and Caroline (the Austrians). "Europe, man" was always quite funny, but it died after a week. However, all is not lost.

Before I came to Europe, I was expecting to be greeted by a bunch of America haters, and especially a bunch of Texas haters. Imagine my surprise when I met person after person who loved Texans! I don't think I have had a single person be rude to me because I'm from Texas (perhaps because I haven't traveled to France?). Even though I haven't been finding many new catchphrases, I've been spreading the good news of "yeee-up," "ain't," and "ma'am." I don't really consider myself to have much of an accent, but I'm enjoying dropping a bit of a drawl every now and then.

Reflections on my four kinds of travel

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.