Capsule Tour

Location: Budapest, Hungary On our way to most destinations, we skimmed Lonely Planet to learn about a country's history, culture, etc. On the train to Budapest, Lonely Planet informed us of a scam that's common in Hungary: tourists are lured to a bar, encouraged to buy drinks without knowing the prices, and later find out that e.g. a beer cost $100 instead of the $5 they were expecting. On our second night in Budapest, we were wandering around town looking for something to do. We walked by a side street that was deserted, except for two attractive girls who were holding a map. They called out to us. They said they were tourists and asked if we knew of any cool bars in the area. After pretending to examine the map with us for about 10 seconds, they suddenly "remembered" that they had "heard of" an awesome bar that was nearby. They led us directly to the bar, which was a block away. The doorman nodded at them. The bar seemed to be a hotel restaurant bar. It w...

Location: Budapest, Hungary We decided to go to Budapest. We bought train tickets and used Hostelworld to book a room. The hostel we picked had a nice listing but no reviews, which was a cause for concern. On the train, about half an hour before we got to Budapest, a man entered our car and sat down next to us. He had brochures for college dorm rooms that we could rent. He explained that, because it was summer break, everybody had moved out of the dorm rooms and the university was trying to make some money by renting the empty rooms to backpackers. It seemed plausible, the pictures in the brochures looked nice, and the price was less than half of what the hostel was asking. The man assured us that the dorms were in a central location. He wasn't asking us for money directly. He said that if we gave them his card when we checked in, we would get a discount and he would get a referral fee. Mike, Jacob, and I went back and forth about this for a few minutes. It felt like a scam, but we...

Location: Train from Venice to Budapest We knew what time our train was supposed to arrive in Budapest. A few minutes before said arrival time, we got ready to disembark. We had our backpacks on and we were standing at a door. The train stopped at a big station and a lot of people got on and off. We weren't sure if it was the main station, though, because it was still a few minutes before we were supposed to arrive. We looked at the signs outside. They said "Budapest" with some Hungarian words after it, which may have meant "main train station," or something completely different. We didn't know what to do. We asked another passenger, but he didn't speak English. The train started moving and the doors started to close, although we could hold them open with some effort. We made a snap decision to jump off the moving train. Mike and Jacob were in front of me and jumped first. By the time I jumped off, the train was moving pretty quickly. I had to let go of ...

Location: Train from Venice to Budapest We took a sleeper train from Venice to Budapest. In the middle of the night, the train staff woke us up for a passport check. We must have crossed a border. (Slovenia?) Bleary-eyed, we presented our passports. There was some commotion at the front of our car. A handful of men were arguing with border control officers. There was a debate about their passports. The argument lasted for a few minutes and the men were forced to get off the train. Mike, Jacob, and I looked out the windows. It was dark, so maybe we missed something, but all we could see was tall grass and a small, unmarked concrete bunker about 50 feet away from the train tracks. The men were standing in the grass, looking confused, as the train pulled away. We wondered what happened to those guys for the rest of the trip.

Location: Train from Venice to Budapest We reserved tickets for a sleeper train to Budapest, got on board, and found our cabin. The cabin had six bunks, three per side. There was barely enough room for one person to stand between the bunks, and the top bunks were comically close to the ceiling. If I had slept on a top bunk, I wouldn't have been able to turn on my side. There was an Eastern European man in the cabin when we arrived. He was in his 50s, appeared disheveled, and smelled awful. He said a bunch of stuff to us, eagerly, in a language that we obviously didn't understand. Jacob knew a bit of Russian and spoke with the man for a minute or two while we took off our backpacks and put them on our bunks. We left the cabin to look for the bar car. On the way, we asked Jacob what the guy had said. Jacob had no idea, and wasn't even sure the guy was speaking Russian. How they were able to talk for so long with each other is a mystery. The bar car was terrific and we were ha...

Location: Southern Europe Not only were we backpacking through Europe when the exchange rate was historically unfavorable, it was also during a record-setting heat wave. The heat mostly affected southeastern Europe, but temperatures were 10-15 degrees higher than usual all along the Mediterranean coast. The heat when we were in Lisbon, Nice, and Rome was oppressive. In Nice, we stayed in a large, historical home that had been converted into a hostel. Our room was on the top floor—essentially the attic. It had several windows and minimal ventilation. Heat rises, and it was probably over 90 degrees in the room at night when we were trying to sleep. In Rome, we stayed in a hotel that advertised air conditioning. The air conditioner was pointed directly at my bed. Between the 100-plus degree temperatures during the day and the constant stream of freezing cold air throughout the night, I caught a cold. I was sick the entire time we were traveling in Venice, Hungary, and Vienna. I started to...

Location: Florence, Italy We found a bar in downtown Florence that looked fun. It had about forty Vespas parked alongside it. We ordered Peronis and sat down at a table. Eventually I went back to the bar to order another beer, which I did in English. The Italian at the bar next to me, maybe in his early 30s, asked me where I was from. He was pretty drunk and did not speak English well. I said I was from Seattle. He asked if I was from America. Well, yes. He yelled at me in broken English about how America is evil, how George W. Bush is evil, and how the Iraq War was evil. He told me Americans were not welcome in Italy, said I should go back to America, and physically backed me up against a wall, next to the dart board. I did not want to be in a bar fight while traveling in a foreign country but it seemed like he was about to hit me. I was watching his shoulders, trying to anticipate the punch, when a few other patrons grabbed him and pulled him back to the bar. People today forget how ...

Location: Florence, Italy We were walking down a street in downtown Florence one evening and decided to stop at a Starbucks for some drip coffee. It was difficult to explain "drip coffee" to the baristas, but they finally informed us that they didn't have any. We pointed at the drip coffee machine behind them and asked why they couldn't just make some. "That machine? We have never turned it on." I guess that sums up the opinion Italians have of drip coffee.

Location: Florence, Italy My wallet had been stolen in Lisbon and I needed a new one. Jacob had read in Lonely Planet that Florence is known for making leather goods. It seemed like a good option. We walked through downtown Florence and found a leather shop. The wallet they had on display cost $400. Outside the leather shop, there was a street market. Several of the vendors were selling fake Italian leather wallets for about $10 each. I'm sure they were made in China. I bought one that had "Valentino" embossed on it. It ended up being one of the best-looking, highest-quality, most durable things I've ever purchased. I used it for over 10 years before the stitching started to come loose. People frequently noticed it and admired it for the entire time that I owned it.

Location: Nice (and Cannes), France We walked to the beach in Nice. It was full of rocks. I have since learned that these rocks are called "galets" and the people who live in Nice are very fond of them. I don't know why. It makes relaxing on the beach impossible. Or even just walking on the beach. Somebody had told us the beaches were nice in Cannes, so we took a public bus to Cannes. It only took about half an hour. It dropped us off right at the beach, which was full of sand. The road alongside the beach was full of Ferraris. Definitely worth the bus fare.

Location: Nice, France We met a nice woman in Nice. She was from Australia, and had been traveling around for a year. We had been traveling for two weeks. A year seemed almost inconceivable. She showed us her backpack. It was about half the size of Jacob's. She explained that it was incredibly easy to travel as a woman if the weather was warm. Dresses could be rolled up, and many types of women's shoes are essentially flat. She had fit eight dresses and four pairs of shoes in her bag with a ton of space left over. She said the French Riviera was great to travel around. You could just walk around Cannes, for example, and rich people would invite you to parties on their boats. She raved about the casinos in Monaco. She said you didn't even have to gamble at the casinos, you could just walk in and admire the architecture and interior design. "Cool, maybe we'll check it out tomorrow," we said. She looked at us, slowly, up and down and back up again. "Well... ...

Location: Barcelona, Spain Jacob was in dental school. He frequently started conversations with girls by telling them they had excellent dentition. "Dentition" is a real word. It means the arrangement and condition of teeth. I didn't know that at the time. I was hearing "dentician," which is not a real word, but seems like maybe a fancy Latin way of saying dentist. So I was hearing "you have excellent dentist" and it annoyed me every time. Jacob also had a girlfriend at the time. He would often start conversations with girls by telling them he had a girlfriend, and showing them a picture of the girlfriend that he kept in his wallet. He wasn't necessarily hitting on the girls, but it did seem a lot like the episode of Seinfeld where George Costanza wears a wedding band to attract attention from women. On our last day in Barcelona, we had a few hours to kill before catching the train, so we did our duty as tourists and trudged through the 100-degree ...

Location: Barcelona, Spain There's an amazing pedestrian street in downtown Barcelona called La Rambla. It's super-wide, and lined with trees and sidewalk cafes. At night, during tourist season, it becomes a giant open-air party. It's also famous for drugs, prostitution, pickpocketing, and combinations thereof. If you walk along the edge of La Rambla and pass by a small group of prostitutes, one might approach you and stick a hand in your pocket, both as an attempt to drum up business and to steal your wallet. Of course, my wallet had just been stolen in Lisbon, so I didn't mind the attempted theft.

I didn't realize how ill-prepared I was to have my wallet stolen until it happened in Lisbon. I had to rely on Mike and Jacob to pay for everything for the rest of the Europe trip. Who knows what would have happened if I had been traveling by myself. Since then, I've tried to have contingency plans for things being stolen: wallet, backpack, passport, laptop, cell phone. Ideally I'd be able to keep traveling after a theft, or at least be able to get home without it being too much of a hassle. An important part of these contingency plans is to have digital copies of important stuff. Before I go somewhere, I take pictures of my passport, driver's license, credit cards, prescription medications, etc. I copy the pictures to an encrypted drive image (fairly easy to do with MacOS) and copy the drive image to the cloud, my laptop, and a tiny USB flash drive that I carry around in my pocket when I'm traveling. Then I delete the photos from my phone. It's more important t...

Location: Lisbon, Portugal We were going to take the subway to somewhere. Probably a museum. We walked downstairs into a subway station. It was almost empty. The train arrived and we got on board. All of a sudden, a bunch of people came from seemingly nowhere and jumped into the car with us. They looked like they were actors cast as subway passengers in a Hollywood movie. There was a businessman with a briefcase. There was a skater kid. There was a professor type wearing glasses. All told, there were probably 8 or 10 people in the group. These people surrounded us (mostly me) to give us the impression that the subway car was full, even though there was almost nobody else in the car. Once the car started moving, they started jostling me. They were doing a poor job of pretending that the subway ride was very rough. Throughout the Europe trip, I had been wary of theft and didn't wear my backpack on my back when we were in a crowd. But the subway platform, and the subway car, had been ...

Location: Lisbon, Portugal We read the Lonely Planet section on the history of Portugal. Turns out, they had the biggest and most powerful empire in the world for centuries. I guess we didn't know that because, in the US, they mostly teach us about the Spanish and British empires. The Portuguese empire lasted, officially, until the 1970s. We wondered if they were sad about not being a world power anymore. We found a hostel in downtown Lisbon, checked in, unpacked, and headed out to get lunch. We ran into the owner of the hostel on the way out. Jacob had learned Portuguese in Brazil and was fluent; he talked with the owner for an eternity while Mike and I almost slit our wrists out of boredom and hunger. "What'd he say?" we asked Jacob as we walked out of the building. "No idea." "You talked with that guy for half an hour and you have no idea what he said?!" "Portuguese is completely different here. He may as well have been speaking French. I d...

Location: Saint-Émilion, France We found a great hostel in Bordeaux. It was very clean and modern: lots of glass, sharp angles, and bright solid accent colors. It would have been easy to confuse with a Google office building. A handful of people at the hostel wanted to go to Saint-Émilion. We hadn't heard of it, but we didn't have any other plans, so we went with them. It was about an hour away via public transportation. The group consisted of a German man in his mid-20s, a few young women from different countries, and us. The German was about 6'5, with wavy black hair and an athletic build. The women arranged themselves in a circle around the German at all times. We tried to interact with the rest of the group a few times; our attempts were politely rebuffed. Saint-Émilion is a tiny village that's thousands of years old. Basically all it's ever done is produce wine. All the buildings are the same color, with the same beige limestone construction and the same darker...

If you're backpacking and you only spend one or two nights in each city, the amount of overhead from traveling is enormous. To get to the next city, you have to pack up your stuff, check out of the hostel, get to the train station, take the train, probably get reservations for the next train you want to take while you're at the train station, get to the next hostel, check in, unpack, and then find an internet cafe so you can book the hostel after that. We figured out early on that doing all this and trying to see every possible sight is unsustainable. We had to come up with a system that would result in a productive trip (in terms of seeing sights, taking in local culture, etc.) without being exhausting. What we came up with was: culture points and drinking points. We would award ourselves a culture point if we did a "cultural" activity, i.e., seeing a sight, going to a museum, etc. The activity didn't have to take long. We would get a drinking point if we did so...

We had bought a copy of Lonely Planet (Western Europe) for the Europe trip. It had the footprint of a medium-sized paperback but was two inches thick and weighed almost two pounds. In terms of total volume, it was bigger than a MacBook Air, and weighed only slightly less. Mike and I took turns carrying it in our backpacks. Our intention was to travel to a new city whenever inspiration struck, and use Lonely Planet for hostel recommendations when we got there. But we found out about Hostelworld.com early on in the trip and it was so much better that we just used that instead. Using Hostelworld meant using the internet, and in 2007, that meant going to internet cafes. I'm sure internet cafes don't exist anymore in any meaningful way, but they were "cafes" that had rows of desktop computers. You could rent a computer by the hour (or, ideally, by the minute) and use it to access the internet. We welcomed any excuse to goof off on the internet for an hour or two. (We also ...

Location: Brussels, Belgium We found a hostel near the train station in Brussels. Before we paid, the guy at the front desk showed us the room we'd be staying in. It was a cavernous room that we would have all to ourselves, with ceilings that must have been 30 feet high. We were impressed and agreed to stay there immediately. After relaxing in the room for a few minutes, we realized that it was poorly-lit, musty, and most of the floor space was being used to store old, broken furniture. Never mind, it was unique. We left the hostel to go sightseeing. Lonely Planet said we were only a few feet away from "the most beautiful square in the world" (the Grand-Place). We walked to the square, agreed that it was very beautiful, and took pictures of each other standing in said square. There was a fancy beer store at one corner of the square. We went in and talked with the owner. He described his inventory, which was exclusively Belgian. "This beer won the world beer champions...

In 2007, I had quit my job and was living off of savings. Jacob had gone back to school and was living off of student loans. Only Mike was gainfully employed. Moreover, the value of the US dollar (vs. the Euro) had been decreasing since 2005 and, by the time we started our trip, it had reached an all-time low. We joked about this, but it wasn't that funny. It was understood that we were backpacking through Europe on a budget and saving money where we could. Being on a budget would make our trip more like the movie EuroTrip anyway. We found out early on that McDonald's was running a special across the EU: one hamburger for one euro. (Or one Egg McMuffin, depending on the time of day.) We decided to eat at McDonald's when we could, and put the savings towards meals at more expensive local restaurants that we otherwise wouldn't have gone to. Getting a drip coffee at Starbucks was usually half the price of getting an Americano at a local sit-down cafe, too. If you said that...

Location: Train from Amsterdam to Brussels For the Europe trip, we had bought Eurail passes. They cost about $1,000 each. Our understanding was that they were basically train tickets that allowed us to travel on any train in Western Europe for a month. The first time we used our passes was to travel from Cologne to Amsterdam. It was great. We walked on to a high-speed train and found a private cabin for ourselves. The ticket-taker accepted our Eurail passes without complaint. In Amsterdam, Mike read somewhere that we were supposed to get "reservations" for trains even if we had Eurail passes. After a couple days in Amsterdam, we decided to go to Brussels. At the train station, we had a debate about "reservations." Why did we need reservations if we essentially already had tickets? We didn't know. Ultimately we decided that, if we were able to travel on the previous train without reservations, we probably didn't need them. We got on the train, found some empt...

Location: Amsterdam, The Netherlands Being tourists, we leaned into the idea of doing mushrooms in Amsterdam. We picked a "smart shop" at random and walked in. The attendant sold us three clear plastic boxes of mushrooms—one for each of us. He told us three things: 1) The variety of mushroom he was selling us was good for first-timers. We would have a "happy trip" and we would want to "run and jump and do somersaults in a field." 2) We had to eat an entire box. Any less, and we would risk not tripping at all, and that would be a waste of time and mushrooms. 3) If, at any time, we wanted the trip to end, all we had to do was eat something. For best results, something with sugar, like a cookie. We felt well-informed. We went back to our apartment and chowed down. Well, two of us chowed down. Mike hates mushrooms. But he said he would be able to choke them down because they were drugs, not food. He lifted a mushroom to his mouth and, at the last second, decla...

Location: Amsterdam, The Netherlands Background: For the Europe trip, I had bought a new Canon PowerShot A710 IS. It was a pretty slick little camera and I was proud of it. Unlike point-and-shoot cameras, it allowed the user to have full manual control over focus, shutter speed, aperture, white balance, etc. So it was a halfway-serious photography tool while being a fraction of the size of a DSLR. It also had optical image stabilization (hence the "IS" in the name), which was a cutting-edge feature for a consumer camera at the time. It was raining pretty hard when we arrived in Amsterdam. We ran from the train station to a bar across the street and had a beer while we waited for the rain to stop. Once it did, we exited onto a street that was lined with produce stands. Jacob started talking with one of the vendors and, coincidentally, the vendor's family owned an apartment on the same street that was available for rent. The apartment looked great and we agreed to rent it. ...

In preparation for the Europe trip, I bought my first smartphone: an i-mate SP3, also known as a rebranded HTC Typhoon. The model had been introduced in 2004 and was discontinued by the time I bought it in 2007. I was able to find a new one on eBay for only $100. It was a small candybar phone that ran Windows Mobile 2003 SE. It had a 2.2 inch screen and a VGA (0.3 megapixel) camera. I maxed it out with a 2 gigabyte MiniSD (not MicroSD) card. It didn't have wifi, I didn't have cell data, and its web browser was garbage anyway. So I would be using it for entertainment, texting, and as a camera. Texting would be kept to a minimum because of international roaming fees, and the camera was a backup, since I also had my nice Canon digital camera. For entertainment, I loaded it up with a bunch of e-books, a few movies, rips of several CDs, a Sega Genesis emulator, and a copy of Sonic the Hedgehog. After setting up the phone to do so many amazing things, I spent 99% of my time playing t...

In July 2007, I went on a backpacking trip through Europe with my friends Mike and Jacob. In November 2007, I went on a trip to Asia: Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, and Thailand. In August 2008, I went on a trip to South America: Argentina and Chile. Each trip was about a month long. I'm going to post some stories from the trips here.