Or, that one time I got stuck in Patagonia
Pandemic-Stranded, Part I: Hindsight is 2020.
Paso de las Nubes: Refugio Rocca
I stand at the edge of a blank canvas. Featureless mist swirls in its depths. My gaze hungrily scans the emptiness, but I find only ghosts and shadows. The light pulses: dark to light and back again; the sun is doing its level best to break through the veil. Functionally blind, I must rely on... Continue Reading →
Welcome to Venice
The scent of fresh brine wafts in through the window, a seabird's cry carried upon its back. I crack an eyelid and see a patch of pre-dawn sky, curiously watching me back. Fragments of human conversation drift up from street level through the cool humid air. The words are too quiet for me to even... Continue Reading →
ยฟTe gusta yerba mate?
Whether I like yerba mate isnโt really the point. Much like the anise-flavored rakฤฑ in Turkey, the allure is the shared experience. For those of you unfamiliar, yerba is a form of tea, the mate is a cup traditionally made from a hard hollowed gourd, and the sharing of โyerba mateโ is a pseudo-religious ritual... Continue Reading →
Tierra del Fuego and Rio Cruz
Two weeks ago, I was unceremoniously thrown into a Toyota Hilux with two complete strangers. I would spend the next 8 days and 1600 kilometers with them, hiking 75 kilometers up and down largely pathless mountain faces near the Patagonian cities of Ushuaia, El Calafate, and El Chalten, conducting research for upwards of fourteen hours... Continue Reading →
A PhD in Bariloche: First Impressions
The southern half of Bariloche, as seen from one of my field sites San Carlos de Bariloche is a town with a bit of an identity crisis. It's a city of overlapping immigrants: the first human settlers were the Mapuche, who moved in thousands of years ago in the same vein as the Inka, the... Continue Reading →
Not From Around Here: A thousand tiny mistakes
This is the fifth time I've moved to a foreign country. I've been an expat for almost four years, bouncing from country to country with whatever possessions will fit into two suitcases, trying to figure out the whole world by savoring disparate bits and pieces of it. I love it, but I'll admit that it... Continue Reading →
A series of fortunate mistakes
Or that one time I accidentally went hiking in the Andes
Relaxing adventures on the island of Madeira
โHold out the back of your hand, like thisโ the portly produce man tells me, showing me his fist with his fingers curled under. He picks up a small passionfruit with its top cut off: a tiny natural bowl filled to the brim with gelatinous seeds. He takes an appropriately tiny spoon and fishes out... Continue Reading →
Hiking Madeira
Waiting in line to board the plane from Basel to Funchal, I suddenly found myself engulfed in a sea of Germans in peak physical condition. Their feet were clad in hiking boots and their were bodies covered in Jack Wolfskin adventure gear (which is Germanyโs answer to Columbia or Carhartt). While โWolfskin Germansโ are something... Continue Reading →
That’s a weird balloon: A tale of two traditional Black Forest Carnival parades
Spectators dressed as pirates and Mickey Mouse line the sidewalks, waiting with nervous energy for the parade to start. A gang of children stands warily in the street, staring ahead at something I canโt see; their stances suggest theyโre set to flee at the slightest hint of danger. They stand motionless for so long that... Continue Reading →
What’s in a quote?
โThe world is a book, and those who donโt travel read only one page.โ -St Augustine You may recognize this quote; itโs become ubiquitous in the travel world. I think there is a certain wonderful truth to it, but there are also many delicate caveats to its truth.ย The important thing is to restrict the... Continue Reading →
Keep the change
I stick a hand in my pocket and find a medium-sized coin, and I can tell which nation itโs from without even looking at it.ย The metal of it feels wrong somehow; the face that kisses the pad of my thumb is a little denser and softer than what Iโm used to now.ย Americanโฆnot Canadian.ย ... Continue Reading →
The mountains are calling
I broke up with Germany a little over a month ago.ย This sounds terribly dramatic, but that was how it felt at the time.ย I was unwillingly wrenched away from my former love and immediately snatched up by a new burly, flannel-clad suitor - Canada - without so much as a solicitation of my opinion... Continue Reading →
A year abroad in 1600 words or less
Iโve always been a runner. Not in the actual foot-on-pavement way (who has time for that crap?), but in the sense that I always need to be moving.ย Whenever I get bored with a place, or if life takes an unexpected turn, or even just if Iโve been in the same place for too long,... Continue Reading →
Emerald Isle
Iโm not convinced this place is real. I thought this so many times during this trip, it became my unofficial motto.ย Thereโs an untamed and ancient magic here that bleeds from every landscape we come across, an enchantment that seeps into the air and fills our lungs. โThe Emerald Isleโ is a nickname as fanciful... Continue Reading →
Prague and the Bone Chapel of Kutna Hora
How the hell did I end up here?! Iโm standing in the bowels of the Earth surrounded by the ancient remains of 40,000 humans, and suddenly I'm questioning every decision Iโve ever made.ย Iโd always been that person who heard stories about the catacombs in Paris and thought Nope, not for me.ย Iโve walked through... Continue Reading →
Pisa and the Cinque Terre
Our graffiti'd train is swallowed by a long tunnel almost immediately after we leave the platform in Pisa.ย I keep staring at the blackness outside the window anyways, hoping for something more interesting to look at than the featureless back of the gray seat in front of me.ย Within a few minutes Iโm rewarded with... Continue Reading →
Falling in love with Istanbul
Big cities and I have a complicated relationship. Despite my desire to like them, weโve never gotten along. I know many people who love cities and are drawn to their vibrancy, centering entire vacations around thriving metropolises and then encouraging me to do the same. I always try desperately to make it work: eating the... Continue Reading →
Cappadocia
By air It was dark and frigid when I woke up, a winning combination that would send most rational people scurrying back to bed. However, the promise of surreal adventure drove me out of my warm room and out into the night. The sky was just beginning to brighten from gray to pale lilac when... Continue Reading →
Pamukkale and Hierapolis
In the morning we took a packed train from Selcuk to Denizli, a three-hour ride through surprisingly verdant fields framed by towering cliffs and snow-capped mountains. Every seat was filled and it was boiling inside the car, but we were inexplicably the only ones sweating. A man walked down the aisle, carrying a tray piled... Continue Reading →
Selcuk
Weโre driving down a narrow two-track, windows cracked to let in the warm air thatโs spiced with a foreign scent I canโt quite place. The road is parenthesized by life, the silver-green of olive leaves on one side and carefully spaced rows of stunted peach trees dripping pink flowers on the other. Conversation in the... Continue Reading →
Mastering Life: Excursion to the Bayerischer Wald National Park
Once upon a time, I dove headfirst into a graduate program in a foreign country with no idea what to expect. Even though Iโm now in the sixth and last class of my first semester, I still feel a bit like I was tossed overboard during a voyage across the Sea of the Unknown. Luckily,... Continue Reading →
Holidays in a foreign land
When youโre stranded in a foreign country for the holidays and surrounded by people youโve only known for a few months, there are only three real solutions: fly back to your family, get out of Dodge and travel around, or band together with your fellow expats and make the best of it. Just for something... Continue Reading →
Differences
An in-progress list of cultural differences between Germans and Americans, three months later: Goodbye! Iโm not sure if Americans are just not very formal or what have you, but saying โbyeโ to each other is something we rarely do unless we are conversing with someone we know or weโre hanging up the phone. Iโve lost... Continue Reading →
Chasing the rabbit
When the sun sets on Freiburg - or really any city - its entire persona changes.ย The shops close and the sidewalks empty.ย Most nights, the city just rolls over and goes to sleep until dawn.ย But as the week comes to a close, sunset brings with it a whole other meaning.ย The shops still... Continue Reading →
Change
There are countless travel destinations in the world - sprawling cities, adorable villages, stunning national parks, brilliant white beaches, etc. etc.ย I can't find the statistics to support this statement because Google doesn't know either, but it's a fair assumption that you could travel every day for your entire life and still not see even... Continue Reading →
Settling In
[I've been in Freiburg for over a month now, and have yet to make a post about my new home city.ย I finally decided that my problem was that I was focusing solely on the city itself.ย Instead, I chose to write instead about my personal insights since moving here and intersperse it with pictures... Continue Reading →
Homeless
Everyone sounds the same when they scream. This creepy thought hit me with a jolt as I watched twenty terrified trachten-clad* Germans freefall towards the ground on a rainbow-lit carnival ride. Although I probably wouldnโt be able to hold a conversation with most of these people, their primal screeches of fear didnโt sound any different... Continue Reading →
Drei Tage, Drei Abenteuer
Three days, three adventures 1.... Waking up early on a Saturday morning is one of those unfortunate ideas that never seem to work out.ย ย It sounds so grandiose the night before: ah, yes, I shall sit upon my porch and watch the sun rise over the mist-clad Black Forest hills, but the reality the next... Continue Reading →