Eastward
In the Fall of 2017, I departed for Slovakia on an exchange program with Rotary International. I kept a blog, documenting my travels, as well as Slovak culture and history. Now I’ve returned to Europe. Starting with a month back in Slovakia, I’m traveling across Europe
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Hello, Slovakia.
A surreptitiously taken photo of the inside of my first European cafe in years. There's a table in the back corner of a cafe, lit ...
The Great Venetian Scavenger Hunt
Rotary ended our 2-week journey through Europe with a grand adventure. Our bus pulled up to a seaside hotel on the Italian coast outside of ...
Červený Kláštor
Just setting foot within the first courtyard of Červený Kláštor (the Red Monastery) it is evident why this place inspired legends. The orderly cobblestone underfoot ...
Slovenský Raj
Waterfalls are abundant in the Blue Ridge Mountains of my home, but our paths force hikers on long detours through the forests to circumnavigate them, ...
A Week of Skiing at Jasná
My breath wet the mask through which it passed, quickly freezing and collecting flakes from the densely falling snow, glued even harder by the rushing ...
The Tatras’ Symbolic Cemetery
Every so often a day will pass when circumstance conspires to bring you adventure. So it did for me one snowy winter morning not long ...
Viennese Christmas Markets
The size of the Viennese Christmas markets is not what makes them exceptional. If that was so, any shopping center with a half-a-theme could compete ...
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Birmingham
This was my week off after two weeks of travel. So… No photos. (Featured image by newkemall via wikimedia) But I’ll describe what a week in the suburbs of Birmingham was like. I stayed with a woman from Malaysia who’s lived in the UK for over a decade. She was ...
Newcastle upon Tyne
Newcastle… was an actual city. I really hadn’t done any research into my ferry’s destination, thinking of it as little more than my entry point to the UK. I'd pictured it as some small port city, with maybe a few historic sites in its center. Given that I had never ...
Amsterdam
Hostel People Not every hostel is social, and even the ones that are have their dead periods. Particularly in January. That's why I expected my stay in Amsterdam to be a solitary one, as Florence had been. My hostel, EcoMama, was certainly quiet, yet it seemed designed to encourage conversation ...
Florence, For the Second Time
After a month of self-imposed isolation in the hills around a Tuscan Castle, I got off a bus and stepped onto a street clogged by construction and full of giant buses, Italian cars and mopeds. It was a jarring welcome back to the real world. That “real world,” however, only ...
Castello Di Ristonchi
Resort. Wedding Venue. Farm. Medieval Castle. I sat on a bus twenty minutes from the castle, rounding a bend that I knew would provide my last look at the old honey-colored retreat that I’d lived in for over a month. I was ready to move on, but still found myself ...
Lugano, Switzerland
"This is the longest railway tunnel in the world." That's what the sign above the passenger car door finally revealed, halfway though the long dark of the Gotthard Base Tunnel. It had cycled through German, Italian, and French before getting to English. At 57.09 km (35.5 mi), the tunnel takes ...
Santa Village
On the line of the Arctic Circle, in the far north of Finland, you can find the "Hometown of Santa Clause." Rustic wooden buildings sit haphazardly among a wealth of twinkling white lights and a sea of white snow. Reindeer pull sleighs full of visitors in laps through the woods, ...
Rovaniemi
The northern-most destination on my trip was Rovaniemi, a city in the remote Finnish Lapland. The arctic circle passes through the northern tip of the city, bisecting one of the region's biggest attractions, Santa Village. I'll save that for next post, though. I arrived at my hostel around 6pm and ...
Tampere, Finland
Just an hour north of Helsinki, I arrived in Tampere to meet an acquaintance from Rotary Youth Exchange who studies there. Unfortunately, he was too busy with finals to see me, and I instead spent much of my time there in the hostel catching up on some sleep—if I'm being ...
Tallinn, Estonia
The trouble with rushed travel (and being a novice blogger again) is there's hardly enough time to learn about, photograph and share all that I discover. Today, I opted to learn. I awoke in Tallinn, Estonia, with the light of a country I knew nothing about filtering in through the ...
Morning in Bratislava
Hostel life has been more all-consuming than I imagined it would be, however, I have still managed to find some precious time to get out and document the city. I went out early the other morning and just wandered, capturing whatever struck my eye. I do think it would be ...
Slovak Nightlife
Okay. I'm a week into my trip as I am writing this, and I realize that I'd be reminisce to not mention a new, but authentically—perhaps quintessentially,—Slovak experience I've had since returning to the country. Nightlife. Now, that's not something I've experienced a lot in my life, if I'm being ...
Slovak Food
It occurs to me that I only ever mentioned Slovak food in passing while writing an Eastward Exchange, or, at most, a brief mention when it came up during my various hikes or trips. Most Slovaks would tell you there isn't much to say, and it is true that Slovak ...
Hello, Slovakia.
A surreptitiously taken photo of the inside of my first European cafe in years. There's a table in the back corner of a cafe, lit by a spot light hanging from a peeling, plastered arch, and by the cool morning light reflecting off the warmly painted walls of the courtyard ...
Goodbye, Slovakia.
It is the 26th of June, 2018 as I write this post. It has been a day of many lasts for me. Last day in school, last visit to my favorite cafe, last time on the bus from my village to Poprad, last time seeing one of my dear friends, ...
Once More in Bratislava
In the previous post, I wrote of the outing I took to Devin Castle with my Slovak friend, Milan. Those ruins were just one part of our larger trip to Bratislava. We toured much of the city and I learned a lot that I hadn't over my two previous visits ...
Devin Castle
From the highest of Devin’s towers, Slovakia wraps behind and around you, Austria sits across the Danube River flowing at the castle’s base, Hungary rests over and past Bratislava to the south and on a clear day the hills of the Czech Republic can be seen way in the northern ...
The Great Venetian Scavenger Hunt
Rotary ended our 2-week journey through Europe with a grand adventure. Our bus pulled up to a seaside hotel on the Italian coast outside of Venice. We unpacked, only one last full night of EuroTour ahead of us, and then went down for dinner. As we ate, the Rotarians made ...
