Rainforest frustrations and jungle revelations

October 15, 2017October 16, 2017 | Sophie

So it turns out that the rain forest is actually a fairly harsh environment to live in. Who would have thought?

Gone are our misguided delusions of tanning in the sun, swimming laps across the river, being fluent in Spanish within the month and keeping up our physical fitness.

These activities have been replaced with 1) doing everything we possibly can to not sweat buckets constantly and 2) limiting insect bites to just a handful a day. Sometimes we’re successful, sometimes we’re not.

My biggest complaint of life here are the bites. They are everywhere. The soles of my feet, behind my knee, the base of my neck, those too hard to reach parts of my back. There is no relief from the constant itching. No object is above being used as a scratching implement, sometimes I’m completely unaware that I’m even itching. Once, I only realised when I needed to put the lid back on my bottle and saw that I had been using it to itch the bottom of my feet. It’s become an unconscious reflex. Bite spray, tiger balm and long clothing only get you so far. Those bastards are canny. They get you when you’re distracted, unsuspecting and vulnerable.

Heather and I have insects fly straight into our faces on the regular. Sometimes they hit an eye or fly up a nostril, and they come out of nowhere. The main culprits are moths, crickets and giant flies. The sound of buzzing or a slight skin tickle is enough to set us both on edge and start flapping about at an invisible enemy, deranged and panicked.

Insects are also annoyingly good at crawling into food and drinks. It’s a rare occasion when you can get through a meal without the appearance of a boiled ant. Heather once found 3 moths in her stew, she was pretty shaken.

The weather here is almost always hot and humid. The temperature is mostly mid 30’s and the humidity above 60%. This causes a lot of sweating. Constant, all-consuming, itch-inducing, salt-producing sweating. Sometimes the only thing you can do to not go crazy is just sit still, calm down and distract yourself. Waking up in the middle of the night sticky with sweat and tangled in sheets is not very pleasant. So tanning isn’t much of an option, sitting in the sun exposing your skin to insects is the last thing you want to do. Relief from the heat only really comes with a storm; it’s the only time the dense air lifts and a cool breeze travels across the river.

Other minor complaints are that the water tastes like chlorine: we put chlorine tablets in the water to purify it. And it’s actually pretty difficult to do anything without a conversational level of Spanish. The station manager, Javier, is great and looks after us really well here, but his English is basic and so we are constantly uninformed about stuff that’s happening and have to blindly follow him around sometimes, not knowing where we’re going or what we’re doing. We are getting Spanish lessons and have downloaded DuoLingo, at least on this matter we have some control.

We are both hoping that we manage to acclimatise somewhat to the heat, and become less appealing to hungry insects, although we’re not sure when this will happen, if ever. This post will serve as a reminder of how we felt during the first couple of weeks, and be interesting to compare to how we feel in a few months time.

I think I need to mention, just at the very end, that we both love life in the jungle. We’re in awe every single day at the life that exists here and both feel so amazingly lucky to be living here; but that’s for a different blog post.

My first week in Ecuador

September 22, 2017September 28, 2017 | Sophie

Did you know that the capital city of Ecuador, Quito, is the ‘highest’ capital city in the world? (but only when Sucre is considered capital of Bolivia, if it’s not then technically La Paz in Bolivia is higher) sitting at 9,350ft (2,850m) above sea level. Altitude sickness is a real danger in Quito, and unfortunately I found this out the hard way after drinking on my first night in Ecuador. I didn’t overdo it on the night out so when I woke up on deaths door, unable to keep anything in my stomach the whole day, I was totally confused and convinced I had contracted some awful stomach bug, but after talking to some of the volunteers at the hostel, it turned out that this was actually completely normal, and that it was the altitude at fault, and not some nasty Ecuadorian disease.

Unfortunately, I never seemed to recover from altitude sickness and spent the whole week feeling nauseous and fatigued which was slightly inconvenient. Couple that with being vegan and finding it semi-difficult to get proper meals, I ended up feeling a bit weak and malnourished by the end of the week. Saying that, being vegan wasn’t too difficult and I did manage to eat out and not starve. So day number 2 was a complete write off: caught up on GoT and watched The Angry Birds Movie in bed feeling really sorry for myself. Even traversing the many stairs in the hostel proved too much for my fragile stomach so I was pretty much confined to my bed all day.

I had gone out with some people I met at the hostel as well as Amy who had just done 3 months at the research station as part of her masters’ project and was staying at The Secret Garden on her way home. It was my first night in Ecuador and Amy’s first night out of the rainforest so she had a touch of cabin fever and a night out was the perfect remedy. Then on Tuesday, while I was dying in bed, Lucas arrived in my dorm and we became fast friends. We ended up exploring Quito’s old town the next day together which was pretty but was also very run down. Ecuador is famous for the chocolate they make here which is really good quality, and we discovered this shop which at first appears like just a door with its paint coming off, surrounded by traffic and pollution and other run down stores, but you step inside and enter this haven of quality, money and a lot of chocolate. We had coffee and cake in there, feeling rich for half an hour.

The next day (Thursday), Amy, Lucas and I went on a tour to the active, but dormant volcano, Quilatoa. We went via a Kichwa community which was amazing because they keep 100’s of Guinea pigs which are so, so cute and puppies which they were selling for $5. I so wanted a little Ecuadorian puppy during my stay here but knew, of course, that it would be stupidly irresponsible to get one. We learnt that the Guinea Pig is a speciality in Ecuador, and as live animals they are celebrated and well-cared for. Shamans claim that Guinea Pigs can be used to diagnose human illnesses better than Western Medical technology. It’s not a very nice method, but our tour guide swore by it, explaining that his dad was a Western Doctor and he had seen the Guinea Pig method live. The Shaman rubs the Guinea Pig all over the patients’ body, and then immediately cuts the Guinea Pig open, and the Guinea Pig will have become ill with the exact same thing that the human is. They use them to detect past and present illnesses. A Guinea Pigs anatomy is similar to that of a human, and this method has been tried and tested again and again by South American Shamans, maybe there’s something in it? The world of Western Medicine has recently started training dogs to sniff out cancer, and claim it may be a better diagnostic tool than current strategies. Who knows what’s possible.

Once we got to Quilatoa, we had lunch then started the hike to the bottom. This was the fun part as it was sandy and steep and quite easy to walk. There was a lady selling pictures with a cute little alpaca on the way down, and of course I had to get one. Then at the bottom we rented kayaks and had a paddle down in the crater. The way up was the hard part. The sandy road was a mile long, ascending by 1,650ft up to an altitude of 12,841ft. The average time back up was an hour, so Amy and I set ourselves the goal of doing it in 50 minutes which we did, but it was so hard! We were both so out of breath, her because of her asthma and me because I’d already been suffering with altitude sickness all week. Each step set my heart pounding, and my lungs craving more oxygen than was available. Needless to say we all were knackered after this and slept on the bus the whole way home.

There to greet us at the hostel was Heather, fellow student of Manchester and doing the same placement as me for the year, having arrived that afternoon from England. The three of us had a huge catch up and talked about the station for hours before crashing in bed.

Amy had told Heather and I that Javier the station manager wasn’t going to be at the station until the end of September, and our academic supervisor at Manchester, Richard, wasn’t replying to any of our emails regarding our arrival at the station, so we were faced with a bit of a dilemma. Both of us had flights booked that weekend to Coca from Quito, however it seemed as though we would get there and be greeted again with silence like in the previous weeks. So we took a risk (which has paid off, it’s been another week and we still haven’t heard anything) and decided to spend 3 weeks in Peru, so we rearranged our flights for September 28^th which gave us a 3 week window to do whatever we liked. So on Friday (the day after we went to Quilatoa), Heather and I spent the whole day sat in the hostel bar coming up with a general itinerary and deciding what we wanted to do in Peru. I got a lot of my inspiration from a blog post by “twoscotsabroad” outlining a 3 week itinerary in Peru, starting in Lima. So task 1 was finding transport to Lima, which was actually way more difficult than expected. Websites, blog posts and reviews took me round in circles and it seemed that we wouldn’t be able to travel to Lima for at least a week. Flights were out of the question being $400/$500 each (it would cost as much to get to England!) so we were reaching a dead end, when I got a recommendation to try Cruz Del Sur, which turned out to be absolutely perfect. They had a bus leaving the next day at 11am, taking us straight to Lima. The downside was that it cost $110 and the journey was 33 hours (it actually turned out to be 36 hours). Lucas decided to join us, so we booked it at 9pm and started packing, gearing ourselves up to leave early the next day.

The bus journey went quicker than we expected. We set off at 11am, and arrived in Lima at 11pm the next day. The first day of the journey was travelling through rainforest in the mountains going South-West through Ecuador. This was honestly amazing, I hope my words can do it justice. We spent hours climbing in altitude until we reached the clouds at the tops of the mountains. Half of the time we were driving through the clouds, and occasionally we would descend a little bit and see where the clouds hung into the crevices of the mountains. When inside them, the clouds looked like fog and wet the windows of the coach, however when looking at them from below, you could see the bottom layer hanging down into the sky forming silvery-white wisps, like the water wanted to fall but still clung to the clouds above. The flora was all deep green, healthy and continued as far as the eye could see. Interspersed with the green, were trees with silvery leaves which grew where there has been disturbance in the rainforest. Occasionally there would be gushing rivers down the sides of the mountains lined with rocks and pebbles, and the occasional glimpse of wild-life. We saw a group of about 10 vultures surveying a particular area, a sure sign that a death recently occurred. We passed a dozen or so areas which were inhabited by people; some were big enough to be villages but others were just a few shacks selling food and drink. Eventually we left the rainforest and drove through areas of farmland that were more inhabited. Most of the farmland was cocoa and coffee, with the occasional banana farm and rose garden. The main exports of Ecuador are chocolate, coffee, cut flowers, shrimps and banana’s.

We reached the border of Peru at 11pm, by which time most of the coach had fallen fast asleep. So after we got our passport stamped everyone went straight back to sleep. I woke up in the morning feeling really ill. I had awful tummy ache and cramps and felt really weak. I spent the whole morning shivering and in pain, then took an ibuprofen and started to feel better and warm up. Amy got Typhoid in the rainforest despite having had the vaccination, and another placement student contracted a parasite, so a fairly serious illness seems to be on the cards for our year there. Just got to pray it doesn’t end up being too bad! But anyway after a few hours I started to feel better and I spent the rest of the day reading and staring out of the window. We had entered Peru and were driving down the West coast which is endless dessert. Occasionally we’d glimpse the coast, but most of the time we were driving across barren, rocky, mountainous dessert. In the space of 24 hours we’d crossed from the depths of the Amazon rainforest into the Peruvian dessert. Quite amazing. We reached Lima 3 hours later than expected, and got a taxi to the hostel I’d booked us in for the night at midnight, only to be told that they had no record of our booking. After digging a bit further, it turned out I had booked us in for the night after so at 12:30am after our 36 hour bus journey we had nowhere to stay. The night manager pointed us in the general direction of more hostels, and we ended up finding somewhere nice enough, and ended up in a dorm with 3 bunk beds all to ourselves with an ensuite which was so comforting after a week of zero privacy. And that marks the start of our journey through Peru!

To be continued…

San Jose, Silicon Valley, Santa Cruz and San Francisco

September 6, 2017November 20, 2017 | Sophie

So it’s been an amazing 11 days in NorCal staying with my aunt, uncle, Charchie and cousins in Los Gatos in Silicon Valley. I’ve explored a lot in the time I’ve been here, but of course there’s always more to see and more to do!

I’m not quite sure what I expected from my first trip to the states, but it wasn’t really that. I arrived on a sunny day and immediately felt like the flora, weather and architecture was reminiscent of Southern Spain. Los Gatos is a colourful, clean and beautiful town with a healthy, rich vibe. Certainly a lovely place to live complete with good schools and easy access to the beach, Santa Cruz, San Francisco and massive outlet stores.

I was given the tour of Silicon Valley and saw the HeadQuarters of Facebook, Google, Apple, Roku/Netflix, and shown where the owners of Snapchat and Whatsapp live, as they’re in the same neighbourhood as my family. Tech capital of the world indeed. The money in Los Gatos is evident in absolutely everything. The streets are pristine, each house is a work of art with architectural styles from all over the world, the flowers are colourful and healthy, the cars were all top of the range, and it’s a safe place to live. My aunt and uncle had neighbours popping round exchanging figs and limes that grew in their gardens, there was someone jogging past the window every time you glanced out onto the streets, wild rabbits played easily in the gardens and the sun shined every day.

Google HQ

Apple HQ

Anthropologie

A cool building

Gentrification is a big problem around San Francisco and San Jose. Because it is the Tech capital of the world, big earners are flooding into the neighbourhoods outbidding all the poorer communities which had given SF and SJ its soulful personality back when the city was building up. The house prices are extortionate which reflect the local economy.

Never the less it was fascinating seeing the HQ’s of these world-dominating tech companies. Also, we visited Stanford University which was incredible. No.2 university in the whole world, and one of the most beautiful. Palm trees line the roads approaching the uni; each building has its own character however the whole complex fits together so well, and is very well maintained.

San Francisco is super edgy, artsy, liberal, run down, chic, open-minded, multicultural, beautiful, interesting, and above all, just cool. The architecture is stunning. Each house screams out the personality of its owner and you’ll often see liberal political opinions written on the walls, signposted in windows and represented by colourful graffiti. You get houses in every different colour and style, from Victorian, to European, to Indian, to classic american, to Arabic… name a prominent culture and you can find houses that look like they belong there in San Francisco. It certainly is not a bike friendly place, the hills are absolutely insane and sometimes even a bit scary to drive down. Shout out to my amazing tour guides Sierra and Grace who gave me an insight into the culture I never would have got on my own. And shout out to Sierra for being such a patient photographer. I managed to time my visit concurrently with the hottest day in San Francisco on record, ever. 40 degree heat is just not fun to walk around in.

Me and Sierra also explored surfer town Santa Cruz with its edgy undercurrent full of thrift shops and run-down book stores. The boardwalk is like a mini theme park contained on a small beach, and there’s a long pier with restaurants and fish markets. The sea is littered with surfers in long wetsuits due to the icy cold pacific sea, and there’s a fog that hangs in the air most days.

All in all it was a great 2 weeks and I thoroughly enjoyed staying with my aunt and uncle. They made me feel so so welcome and I will definitely go back there on my way home. California has been added to my ‘could live there’ list.

Onwards to South America!

Take Off

August 25, 2017August 25, 2017 | Sophie

I’ve been waiting all summer for moments of inspiration, flashes of thought that creep down into my hands, urging me to write. But they have eluded me. I think writing is an art, for which you need creativity, passion and a purpose. It’s not like maths or science where you apply logic or reason to which there is only one true solution. As with all the arts, you can develop the instinct to write and with practice it becomes easier to skilfully tap into that, however for a beginner like me who’s immersed in science, it’s been quite hard to let my creative juices flow. So now is the time to put pen to paper (metaphorically; fingertips to keyboard doesn’t have quite the same ring) and start writing again. I want to document my imminent adventure, develop my skills as a writer and communicator, and share my discoveries: personal and professional. For I am going on a journey along a path less trodden. Out into the wilderness where my basic human instincts will be fine-tuned, and my need to impress and satisfy my self-worth upon Western standards will diminish.

This is my second long trip. My first was 18 months in Australia and Asia. I’m heading to a different part of the world this time: South America for 1 year. It’s quite exciting really, I go in the pursuit of knowledge and learning, rather than on a path of fun and self-discovery as was the case when I was 18.

I was lucky enough to be offered a research placement at the Timburi Cocha research station in the Amazon Rainforest in Ecuador, in order to complete a research project of my own during the placement year of my degree. Originally I was not enrolled on a degree with a placement year, however I made the decision to intersect my 3 year BSc with a year in industry while I was in my first year.

Before I tell you how excited I am, I want to preface that with a short summary of my first two years of uni. I study Biomedical Sciences at The University of Manchester: the biggest uni in the UK and situated in the heart of the northern capital. I chose Manchester because of its good reputation, the variety of modules and specialities available to me and the allure of a busy, metropolitan city. I can say, hand on heart, that Manchester has lived up to those expectations. I have loved most of my modules and I’m so grateful for the amount of choice I’ve been offered. I’ve studied some absolutely fascinating topics, from the more mainstream such as Biochemistry, Endocrinology, Genetics etc. to topics a little off the beaten track such as Parasitology and Gut and Renal Physiology. The city of Manchester is beautiful, offers a lot of culture and night life, and I don’t think I’ll ever run out of things to do there; and true to its name, Manchester boasts some of the best researchers and academics in the country, and is home to some major scientific discoveries.

Despite this glossy exterior, my experience at Manchester hasn’t been the easiest. For the two years I was there, I couldn’t escape this sense of isolation and loneliness. Even though Manchester has the highest student population in the UK, I never felt like I fitted in, or belonged, or truly ever found my niche. I had great friends, who are great people I would love to always keep in contact with and follow their journeys through life, I was also part of a sports team and had a job at uni. The issue wasn’t the quantity of my social interactions, more the quality. Everyone has a billion and one things to do and places to be, with their own agendas and priorities, and I just didn’t seem to make the cut. That’s what it felt like anyway. Perhaps I’m studying the wrong degree, hence I’m not surrounded by like-minded people; I’ve always fancied studying philosophy. In fact, I still might. Perhaps being an old soul and older in age created a distance between me and the people around me that was intangible but still unbearable. Perhaps, I didn’t prioritise my own social life as much as I needed to, because at the time I felt like there were more important things to do, like earn money, exercise and sleep. Too responsible for my own good.

So this summer I decided to take a bit of time to rest and recuperate. I prioritised my immediate friends and family, fitness classes that I enjoyed, and making decisions based on what I wanted to do rather than what I thought I should do or what was expected of me. I actually feel a lot better now, much more centred and fulfilled. But it wasn’t until I walked through Heathrow airport this morning that I realised what’s really been missing. Adventure. My soul yearns for it. If routine and conformity make me unwell, then travel and adventure are my antidote. So here I am, sitting on a plane heading to San Francisco, at the start of my next big adventure. It’s in moments like this where I truly feel like myself.

I’m visiting my aunt, uncle, grandmother and cousins in San Jose for two weeks before heading to the jungle. Over the last couple of years I’ve learnt a lot more about the USA and its culture, and I’m so excited to go there and experience a little bit of it myself and have a good catch up with my family. My life has turned in a direction I did not at all expect, not for a second, and I’m so excited.

Then in the beginning of September, I fly to Quito, the capital of Ecuador, where I’m staying for 6 days in order to explore the city and orientate myself, as well as complete a few missions like buying wellies / a hammock / a blanket and a few jumpers. I then fly to Coca with Heather, my placement buddy, where we’ll be picked up by the station manager, Javier, and escorted to the station. The station is situated in the amazon, and I will write all about what it’s like and put pictures up as soon as I get there and figure it out for myself.

Our purpose at the station is to complete a research project which will count 10% towards our final mark. We will spend the year deciding on a hypothesis (the big question, what do we actually want to find out), gathering data, (field work, getting the answers), analysing that data and compiling it into a report which we can then present and communicate our findings. The main area of research at the station is biodiversity in the rainforest, however after reading all about the station, its location, aims and involvement in the local community, I have set my heart on doing a public health project regarding diseases, healthcare and medicines in the local, indigenous communities. I would love to learn all about their common diseases and how they cure them, then perhaps compare them with a Western Medicine alternative. Or investigate why their own medicines are so effective, what is it in their remedies that are so effective at treating their diseases? I want to tap into their knowledge of how to survive in the rainforest and learn from them. The difficult part will be constructing a hypothesis where I can actually gather binary data in order to prove or disprove a fundamental question. I don’t need all the answers right away. I’ll have a few months to settle in and do a bit of research before I start my project.

So I’ll sign off now and end this post with a few goals and a few fears. Goal no. 1: come up with a research proposal so interesting I can’t not spend every day finding out the answer; goal no. 2: learn Spanish; goal no. 3: live in the moment, in the present, take each day as it comes, go to sleep when the sun sets and wake when it rises, live with the Earth not against it, and learn as much as I can. Fear no. 1: get bitten to death, quite literally, leishmaniasis and malaria are a real danger; Fear no.2: my project doesn’t go to plan or I don’t manage to prove my hypothesis; fear no. 3: not having access to a well-rounded vegan diet. I had to think hard about those fears as I don’t really get scared or anxious about things.

Let the adventure begin.

How to kick-start your solo travels

February 18, 2017February 20, 2017 | Sophie

Travelling on your own can be a daunting and even seemingly impossible prospect. Glorified blogs and epic Instagram accounts make it seem like only the most accomplished travellers dare to wander the world independently, risking their lives everyday and partying with new people every night. These travellers usually have expensive GoPro’s and movie editing software, endless streams of money and a seemingly innate ability to talk to anyone.

However, from my own experience, I can tell you that it’s not as glamorous and scary as it seems. Most solo travellers are people who decided to set off on a path of self-discovery, step out of their comfort zone, take a few risks and ended up accidentally on a whirlwind adventure. The trick to travelling is to keep putting one foot in front of the other. No matter where you end up, who you meet, what you loose, what you find… just keep moving forward and don’t give up. You will learn how to make the next step after you’ve taken the last. There are lots of ways to ease yourself into life on the road that will make you answer the question ‘how did you find travelling on your own?’ with a confident ‘I was never on my own’ when you get home from your adventure, full of pride and amazing memories.

Now you’re all inspired to organise your first solo journey, I’ll give you a few tips on how to get going. There are several ways to start your travels, but the main ways are working, volunteering, backpacking or couch-surfing.

WORKING. Do you want to get travelling now but just don’t have the cash saved? Work your way around the world and you’ll never have to stop. The beauty of being prepared to work is that you can keep going for as long as you like. Whenever you’re close to running out of money, put down some roots and get a job wherever you are at the time. Working holiday visa’s for 18 – 30 year old’s are pretty easy to get for Australia, New Zealand and Canada. Buy yourself a visa, book 1 week in a central, popular hostel in a city of your choice, catch a flight, and get job searching once you’re out there. Look on gumtree, pop into STA, hand out your CV, speak to people and keep your standards low. My first job in Sydney was door to door sales. I quit after a week but I ended up moving in with the people I met on the job (who also quit after a week) and we became really great friends. Alternatively, you could get a seasonal job. Popular winter seasonal jobs are Ski Seasons: getting these are as simple as googling, emailing and persevering. During summer, you could work in a bar/restaurant in a party town around Europe, to do this you’ll either need to go through an agency online, or just rock up and start handing out CV’s. If the drink all day and party all night life just isn’t for you, you could get a job as an activities leader. Camp America is great if you don’t need to save, or you could try In2Action who supply activity coordinators to Holiday Villages all around Europe (and 2 outside of Europe). I worked in Tunisia for 4 months and absolutely loved the experience! Another avenue you could go down is working on a cruise ship! Whether you’re an entertainer, singer, dancer, restaurant staff member or cleaner, you’ll be paid to tour some of the most beautiful places in the world. Another option for those of you who want to travel a bit more permanently, is to do a TEFL (Teach English as a Foreign Language) course. This enables you to teach in schools all over the world, earn a decent salary and really immerse yourself in a new culture.

VOLUNTEERING. If there’s something more specific you want to do, maybe this is the way forward. The International Citizen Service is a great place to start if you want to really make a difference in a small community by working on a project. Their website is very helpful and the great thing about ICS is that all you have to do is fund raise £800, and all other costs are paid for. Something I’m desperate to do once I’ve finished University is to volunteer at a Yoga and Surf retreat. These are found all over the world (I want to go to Sri Lanka!) and usually say if you work in a cafe/restaurant for free, then you have access to surf equipment and yoga classes at their facility. If you want to volunteer while on the move, you can work for bed and board. This includes WWOOFing, (a popular option in Australia) or working in a hostel, on reception or cleaning, in return for free accommodation.

BACKPACKING. There are so many organised tours out there, visit STA or have a google to find some of the most popular tours for solo travellers. These are great for the first couple of weeks as you usually end up meeting some people you can stick with once the tour is over, and they give you a good feel for a new country whilst keeping you totally safe. Down side is these are a little more expensive. If you don’t fancy a tour, just rock up to a new place having pre-booked a popular, suitable hostel and researched a bit about the area and what you want to do there, and start making friends! People are much friendlier in hostels than they are anywhere else in the world – I promise. If you’re more organised, then plan your journey and your accommodation in advance. If you’re more spontaneous (like me) and get a thrill from last minute decisions and not knowing where you’re going to end up, then just book the first few days and see where life takes you.

COUCH SURFING. This one is fairly self explanatory! Get signed up on the couch surfing website, build a profile, and plan your journey. The benefits of this mode of travel is that you get to hang out with locals who can point you in the direction of some hidden gems as well as the obvious tourist attractions. The downside is that you may feel a little bit vulnerable if you don’t feel comfortable staying in other peoples homes.

So hopefully you now feel equipped with a wealth of knowledge about how to plan and implement your solo travels. Good luck! Find yourself, loose yourself, take lots of selfies – and don’t be scared to ask strangers to take your picture!! – and take care.

Europe trip – Berlin to Dubrovnik

September 19, 2016November 20, 2017 | Sophie

I travelled with one of my lovely best friends from home, Meri (pronounced Merry) and we decided earlier this year to get to know our European neighbours a little bit better this summer. (Side note: I’m heartbroken over Brexit, loved our European community). I would always choose more of a backpacker style holiday than an all-inclusive because I love immersing myself in new cultures, exploring and staying on the move; so we decided to do 8 cities in 3 weeks and get a little taster of each place. We travelled between cities by coach which was very cheap, comfortable and reliable and I would recommend.

Berlin

We’ll start at the very beginning, a very good place to start (Sound of Music reference fyi, this is relevant, you’ll see) in Berlin. First full day in Berlin we realised we’d made a packing faux pas as it was actually quite cold, but we managed in our summer clothes, albeit either cold or drunk. We had an amazing first morning; RECOMMENDATION: the free alternative walking tour. Our tour guide was a guy named Peter who had been living in Berlin as an artist for the last 8 years and was really passionate about the music and arts culture within Berlin that makes the city so unique. This was the concept of the tour really, history and politics from a music/arts perspective. The youth in Berlin are amazingly politically-minded, made me feel ashamed really for my lack of knowledge in politics but it inspired me to become more involved. There are absolutely no politics lessons in the British curriculum (unless you study it at A Level) so I still feel like a complete beginner, I might get ‘Politics for Dummies’ on my kindle. Anyway, so I learnt a lot about Berlin and I really encourage you to go and find out for yourself!

Graffiti in Berlin

That evening we met up with an old friend of mine from Bahrain, Aoife, and went to a vegan-friendly Vietnamese restaurant then a cool rooftop bar for the sunset, Klunkerkranich. The next day Aoife took us on a mini cycling tour of the city, we cycled through the iconic templehof airport which closed in 2008 and became a recreational space and home to thousands of refugees by popular vote in Berlin. We then saw the (underwhelming) Brandenburg gate and visited the holocaust museum which is very sobering but a must in order to appreciate past and present Berlin.

Prague

Next on our tour was Prague which was a little hotter thankfully. With beautiful gothic and renaissance architecture, Prague’s finest attraction is the city itself. We spent our days walking up and down the markets on the river, visiting churches and castles and soaking up the relaxed, happy atmosphere. We went out one night to this underground bar that used to be an old train station, the music was trippy and repetitive and techno; the air was humid and hot; the drinks were expensive, but the night ended up being good. We also witnessed the changing of the guard which we were very excited about until we realised it happened every hour, not such a unique experience!

Salzburg

Salzburg was one of my absolute favourite places. We only spent one night but I was already planning my next holiday there before we’d even left. A river runs through the city with mountains and beautiful buildings either side; the air was so clean, it really was such a picturesque place. With multiple classical music concerts happening every night, Salzburg attracts a slightly richer crowd and is subsequently more expensive however the hostel we stayed in, Yoho, was quite reasonable. The next morning we went on a Sound of Music tour which I loved and was one of the highlights of my trip!! I adore musicals, especially the Sound of Music so it was such a special experience to see where they shot the scenes and learn about the real Von Trapp family. Our tour guide was fantastic, a mix of cheesey and dry humour, very informative and friendly. I decided when I’m older and have more money, I’m going to visit Salzburg in the winter, stay in a nice hotel, see an opera or a concert and ice skate on the frozen lakes, it’s on my to-do list.

Vienna

From there we went to Vienna, another beautiful city but what made our visit so special was that we were a 5 minute walk from the famous Vienna Film Festival. There were loads of gourmet, international food stalls and a buzzing atmosphere all day. The first night we saw a Swedish Clarinetist and the second night we saw an opera. The featured image in this post is of the pedestrian traffic lights in Vienna, half of them were two men and the other half two women, in celebration of gay pride. Amazing. The city is beautiful, I recommend doing some researching and picking a few places you want to go/eat, because at first glance there’s not much to do.

Budapest

After Vienna came Budapest and the arrival of Jack and Charlie; Jack being Meri’s boyfriend. We went on another great free tour around the city, learnt all about Hungary’s interesting, lesser-known history and got orientated with its small capital. Our tour guide was very patriotic and portrayed Budapest (pronounced Budapesht) in a majestic light. We learn that Hello is pronounced ‘seeya’ and Goodbye is pronounced ‘Allo’ ironically. If you want to say ‘cheers’ in Hungarian, say ‘I-guess-she-can-drive’ fast and slurred. Budapest has churned out 3 Nobel prize winners (all of which were in the same chemistry class at school, I wonder if they were friends), is the birthplace of the Rubik’s cube and is the main exporter of various materials. It’s also where the famous magician Harry Houdini was born – we visited his museum. If you’re in Budapest, a few more must-visits are the hot spring bath-spa’s and the ruin bars which come alive at night. We visited a few amazing ruin bars, including one that was voted in the top 3 bars in the world a few years ago! Dedicate at least one morning to lying in because the ruin bars are a must-see.

Budapesht

Budapesht

Croatia

Our last 3 cities were all in Croatia, we spent one night in Zagreb to explore and 3 in Split then the boys went home and me and Meri had 4 nights in Dubrovnik. We had one of our best nights out in Zagreb then made our way down to Split the next day. We stayed in a beautiful apartment which we found on Booking.com and spent our first day chilling out on pebbled beaches. The second day we explored the old town and visited Sandy beach, a small cove which has the only sand beach in Split and the third day went on a tour to the national park which has the most amazing waterfalls!

Dubrovnik was spent reading, relaxing on the beach, swimming and drinking red wine on our balcony, a perfect way to end our holiday. It’s so important to get out there and see the world. To realise that literally anything is possible if you know where to look. You don’t have to settle for the lifestyle you grew up with and you certainly don’t have to end up in a 9 to 5 job you hate, praying that England gets more than 2 weeks of sun this year. I love the sun, it makes me happy and I want to live somewhere where it’s normal to wake up to sunshine. I also love experiencing new cultures and challenging the narrow perspective of social norms you’re used to and realising that everything you consider rude / polite / right / wrong is completely different in other parts of the world and that you don’t have to live your life according to the morals of the town you grew up in.