Welcome back, you fantastic piece of shit.

Ah-ha! I’m insulting you at the beginning now! Gotta keep you on your toes, you know? But now that we’ve got the pleasantries out of the way, a thing.

In about five months I’ll be flying back into the US (maybe). Following that, somehow I’ll get to Prescott from Phoenix and voila, life resumes as usual. Or does it? Once again, there’s an interesting thing that I’ve read about in the past 3 months, and that thing is reverse culture shock. Of course regular-ass culture shock is gonna happen a whole shit ton during my excursion, but that’s boring (Ooh, they call French fries crisps that’s so fun and different), so instead, the opposite!

One of the biggest aspects of reverse culture shock is obviously the transition back to wasteful as shit America, with our big roads and expensive steaks and extreme nationalism, but I probably won’t give a fuck about that stuff cause I won’t be gone SUPER long, but I might. Maybe just a little. One thing that I do think will slap me hard upon return to the US is that I’m gonna get lonely and bored as shit. Three months of constantly experiencing new people and food and sights and then boom, you’re back to your 9 to 5 with your average old stuff going on? I’mma probably be apathetic as fuq for the first month. My views of home are also likely gonna be dashed, since I’m gonna remember them with a rose-tinted shade and idealize the hell out of Prescott. The grass is always greener on the other side, especially if your family lives there. And what if everything’s all different and not what I expect when I get home? How am I gonna deal with that surprise twist?

Another thing that I’ll have to come to grips with is the fact that people probably won’t give that many shits about that weird guy I met on the train from Holland or the really good kebab I got in Athens; I know for a fact that I’m going to want to tell everybody fuckin’ EVERYTHING that happened on my trip, but it’s probably only going to be interesting to me, so don’t that just suck the big one? Maybe Hector will humor me and let me explain to him just how detailed David’s dong was when I saw the statue of him in Florence.

Maybe I’ll go literally crazy.

Maybe I’ll just not return. That’ll solve the whole problem!

123 VIEWS.

Yo I’mma talk about my stupid idea of not actually planning anything.

Essentially, all I actually have mapped out are the first two weeks, as that’s when my sister is gonna be joining me, and since she’s only gonna be there for 10ish days, actually knowing where we’re going is probably a good idea. But, after she takes off from Paris back to the US, my entire plan is “I’m currently in X country. Next is Y country.” I don’t even have cities planned, aside from various things I would like to see, such as the Anne Frank Museum or the Sistine Chapel. So there’s a very vague guide I guess. But I also don’t give a shit, so I might end up in Russia.

I’ve read that this isn’t a very good idea because trying to book hostels and train rides and shit on the fly is obnoxious, and some cities will suck if you don’t research them, and you’ll likely spend more money cause you fucked up and have to buy another ticket or whatever.

BUT I DON’T GIVE A FUCK.

I’ll be researching cities as I get wi-fi and shit, so I won’t be completely blind, and my Eurail pass essentially takes care of all my major transportation needs, and I guess I’ll just wing it with the hostels I mean how much can go wrong am I right

(Plus I wanna be a free spirit, and being confined by my itinerary ain’t in my vernacular, man)

All this not-planning-shit is probably not the best way to travel, but eh, I can take that into account when I visit Asia in the future. I also really don’t wanna book a billion things online before I get there because that is so much work and I am so much lazy. Furthermore, I like the idea that if some crazy German is like “Hey mang, you wanna check out my place in Hanover? I’ll let you crash there for a few nights and I’ll show you around.” I’ll probably say no because he’s likely to badtouch me, BUT THE OPTION IS THERE.

On a related note, since my goal is to simply see Europe, I’m not super concerned with hitting particular cities for specific reasons; so much to do, so much to see, so what’s wrong with taking the back streets? I’m gonna be enamored by goddamn hobos asking for change on the street corner and the silly trash bins the Greece probably use, and that results in me not being too worried about where I end up, so long as it’s not an Albanian prison camp.

Fuck you.

Ayyyy what is up my dudes? 29 views, we’re really soaring now!

The next few posts will chronicle some random thoughts I’ve had in the past few months as I’ve planned the shit out of my expedition. Today’s topic: BURNOUT

I’ve read a few accounts of people who go on a trip, usually longer than two weeks, and sometime during their travels, they get sick of it. Be it homesickness, loneliness, the fact that they went to three museums a day for a month straight, frustration that the goddamn train is late again Jesus Q. Christ I have to be in Prague by three to catch my bus this is fucking bullshit

They get burned out, and I, in all likelihood, will too. It seems like an inevitable thing that’s quite likely to happen, so I’mma just accept that there’s probably gonna be that one day where I’m in Berlin and just bored as fuq. Not gonna lie, probably gonna sleep all day and then wake up and get mildly drunk at 6pm and then I dunno hope there’s someone interesting in the hostel I can chill with until I pass out again. It might even last for a few days, I dunno. Hope not. Or maybe it won’t happen at all. That’d be neat. But whatever happens, that’s cool. You gotta have the downs as well as the ups on this roller coaster of life, and Europe’s rollercoasters are probably not as good as American ones, I mean come on, this is America. Bigger is better.

Don’t think I could get burned out on roller coasters, though.

Maybe if I lived at Six Flags.

TO COMBAT THE BURNOUT I’ll probably do simple stuff like I dunno, going to the movies. Or maybe volunteering at a soup kitchen. Camping? Perhaps I’ll go skydiving. I’ll definitely get an ice cream cone and just wander around the town at some point, but that’s unrelated. Another thing that I’ve read a bunch is just fucking slow down, man. Trying to see everything and experience literally all of a culture is dumb and stupid, and you won’t even remember any of it any way because you’re going too hard in the travel game (I assume, I don’t actually know, I just read this shit), so I wholeheartedly plan (and so look forward to) sitting on a patio with a 7 dollar cup of coffee and a 4 dollar bagel for like, several hours, just chilling. Hopefully I’ll meet some not shit people to share in the chills with, who knows, certainly not you, you sniveling mound of dog excrement.

Oh no, I’ve insulted my readers again, and even worse this time. I am so sorry, friend. Perhaps when I get back from Europe I’ll be more cultured and less prone to such boorish outbursts. Until then, I suppose you’ll just have to deal with it, you fuck.

Sup ya’ll. It’s been a whole week since I made this site, and we’ve soared to a zenith of 27 total views! Wow, what a journey this has been. To commemorate this momentous occasion, I think I might make a second postPREPARE YOURSELF

I’mma talks (I put talks there because Word told me to) about how this shit all began and my planning process.

Basically, it all started like 3 years ago when I was at a diner at 3am with my dear friend Hannah Palazzi (shout out to Hannah for being neat) and she told me about her crazy plan to backpack across Europe after graduating from college. I forget the details, but as we talked about it she was like “dude go with me” and I was like “okay” and she was like “for real” and I was like “yeah”.

So that was a thing for a while, but eventually she decided to hit the LA scene after graduation to do the whole acting thing out there. So now the plans were dashed, but I was like “nah fuck it” and I started looking into WWOOFing, which, if you aren’t a dirty, tree-hugging, craft-beer-drinking, almond-activating hippy, is World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms. Basically it’s craigslist but for farm work. There’s like 70 countries to choose from, and you usually work for room and board, but there’re not many hard rules, so shit changes a lot.

The plan at that point was to work on some farm in like Scotland or something herding sheep for approx. 6 months to forever depending on whatever. But as I looked into it, it seemed that there were more and more hurdles. Most jobs only lasted for a week to two (hey we gotta pick a bunch of apples; hey we gotta build a shed; hey we gotta take tons of produce to market), so finding new farms to work on constantly would be shitty, and each country has its own registration fee, so visiting multiple countries would be a hassle, but the plan was still feasible!

THEN I LOOKED INTO VISAS.

Long story short, visas suck ball, and I didn’t want to go through that shit show to milk a cow. Essentially, WWOOFing, though volunteer, is often seen as a de facto job by the various governments, and I don’t wanna break international laws, so the plan went full Power Ranger and mightily morphed back into backpacking across Europe. At this point I had to do two things.

1. Save all the money.
B. Research the shit out of Europe.

I’m still currently in the money saving process, but I’ve got a pretty good handle on all the countries I wanna visit and the rest of the shit. I just looked them all up and planned out a rough travel route based on what was interesting to me. Then I started looking into what to pack, and at this point I found the fantastic website thesavvybackpacker.com. Their tagline is “How to Travel Europe on a Budget” so holy shit what a boon. The entire site is about backpacking Europe, and its content made up 90% of my research (I literally read the whole site over the past few months).

As for travelling through the continent, I’ve opted to spend one thousand fucking dollars on a goddamn train ticket. Granted, it’s good for 3 months across 28 countries, but holy shit. It’s the Eurail Global pass, and it was recommended to me by Mr. Lane Burkitt (shout out to Lane for being wise af). I looked into it and what sold me was the flexibility it afforded. Wanna take a train from Brussels to Berlin? Kay. Paris to Barcelona? Whatever you want dude. So that takes care of my moving me expenses between cities.

I’ll be staying at hostels for the most part, as is the norm for assholes travelling Europe. I’m assuming around 100 bucks a day between food, lodging, in-city transportation, and attractions (museums and booze). We’ll see how accurate that estimate ends up being. As for my airfare, I got a ticket at a steal of 429 bucks ONE WAY into Manchester, England (that means I might not come back yolo).

So that’s where I’m at right now. A bunch of shit from Amazon just came in that I bought for the trip, and now I gotta fit it all into my 50 liter pack, since that’s the only luggage I’ll be bringing. For those who give a shit, I’ve attached a Word document (IT’S RIGHT FUCKIN’ HERE OH MY GOD TECHNOLOGY) that outlines my trip and my pack. If you’ve got any questions or suggestions, shoot them at my face. Also, share the fuck outta my blog. I want people to read my verbal diarrhea.

BYE.