Travelling in a New Country

I would say that I’ve been fairly lucky when it comes to travel. My school program and internships have given me the opportunity to travel a decent amount. I’ve lived and/or worked in Ottawa, Waterloo, San Jose, San Francisco, New York City and Kalamazoo Michigan. But there was one thing I didn’t do while I was in those locations. I didn’t spend the time to experience everything they had to offer. I didn’t actively try to find the best parts of those locations whenever I had the opportunity to. How could I? I didn’t know any locals, and I wasn’t familiar with the area. I am not saying I didn’t enjoy being in those cities for the time I was there because having the chance to do that was nothing short of amazing.

I had a few small memorable moments while I was residing in each of those cities, but they were few and far between. When I compare this to my recent 36 day tour of Europe depicted below, I had memorable and life changing events in nearly every city, and (with the exception of Mykonos) I was only ever there for at most 2 days. I don’t think the fact that the European trip was leisure and the others were internships or work has as much of a bearing on the matter as you would think. I still had many opportunities to go explore and live the local culture when I was travelling around North America for work or school. How is it possible to have such completely differing experiences with travel? And how can I make future travel more filled with memorable or life changing moments?

I believe the answer is in how I travelled. Going down and examining my experiences during my internships and my European trip, I noticed a few differences. The first and most glaring was how I approached the travel. While I was in San Francisco, or New York etc., I arrived and began trying to find things to do on my own. I tried to organize other people who would’ve been just as content not doing anything to join me in my adventures. What often resulted was that they would cancel, and I would either have nobody willing to join me, and I would simply postpone or cancel the event. I was also trying to find things to do in a city that I didn’t intimately know. While I was in Europe, I travelled with a company called TopDeck. They offer pre-organized, (almost) all inclusive tours on several continents around the world, Europe being one of their more successful destinations. These tours consist of (usually) 40 people much like yourself, a tour guide that has been trained and knows a fair bit about each of the locations you will be going to, a driver for the bus, accomodations (hotel, hostel, and campground), and most of your meals. You spend a day and half in the majority of the cities you visit, and are provided with many suggested locations to visit along with good local food and entertainment hotspots. They also have many optional activities that you can join that range from Skydiving in the Swiss Alps to Venician Gondola rides and everything in between. So, instead of trying to coerce people who were uninterested in the first place to join me for activities that I had no knowledge about, I spent every day trying something new and exploring all that those cities had to offer with people who were often even more enthusiastic about it than I was.

Needless to say, my European trip, moreso than any other travel I’ve done, sparked a profound and lasting love and desire to travel and experience more of the world. Here’s just a small subset of the amazing moments I’ve had travelling Europe:

• Spent a birthday touring around Paris
• Went on a train to the top of one of the tallest mountains in Switzerland
• Explored the beauty of Monaco
• Gondola ride through the canals of Venice
• Seen Roman history
• Explored Mykonos Island on ATVs
• Ran a lap in the original Olympic stadium in Athens
• Seen the monasteries in Meteora
• Cruise through the islands near Dubrovnik
• Partied in Budapest
• Beer Festival in Prague
• Walked the streets of Berlin
• Sex show and cruise through Amsterdam

Alone, these would all be cherished memories and experiences. When you put them all within a 5 week span, and include all of the amazing friends I’ve made as a result, it dwarfs any other travel I’ve done so far. I also now know which areas of Europe I’d like to visit again, and which areas I’ve seen all I’d like to see. I probably wouldn’t do another tour with TopDeck for the same regions of Europe because I’ve had a taster and I know what I want to do when I go back. I’ve come to realise that I didn’t know anything about the areas I’d visited before I actually spent an extended period there. I had no way of knowing what was worth my time and what wasn’t. As a result, I’ve decided that in the future, if I travel to a new location and the option to do a trip similar to my European tour is available, I won’t hesitate to do so. I have no reason to believe that it would be any less of a breathtaking experience.

Looking back, I feel I owe it to myself to really experience the continent on which I have spent my entire life for what it really has to offer. This is why I plan to travel around North America in a similar fashion. I would highly recommend you look back and answer this question: Have you really experienced the area in which you live for what it has to offer? What about your province, or state, or, going one step above, your country?

I’d like to finish off by saying a special thank you to everyone on my European Pioneer Trip. That experience was by far the best experience of my life. And of course, it wouldn’t have been possible without our Trip Leader, Kendell. Thank you so much for everything.