Hey there!

Whether you happen to be a curious friend, worried family member, or interested stranger, a warm welcome to this blog!

I am writing [was writing – wifi expired before I could go online] this first post live from Trapani Airport, or more precisely, from the flattest of the not-so-flat benches which I could find outside the airport and which has become my home for the night after being kicked out of the terminal building at 1 am. And so, the adventure begins!

As a brief introduction, I’m a 21-year old student from Malta currently enrolled at Maastricht University, the Netherlands and studying International Relations/Conflict Studies. I’ve been travelling as frequently as studies permit ever since I was old enough to do so alone, planning a mixture of short trips originating from Maastricht and Malta as well as some longer ones over the holidays. So far my travels have been limited to Europe, but not for long. I’ve been accepted for a Semester Abroad Programme at UCLA (University of California – Los Angeles) from September till mid-December 2013, and so Maastricht University is shipping me off across the Atlantic to chart some new territory.

I’ll talk more about the upcoming trip in a separate post to follow shortly. For now, I’d like to share a bit of my underlying travel philosophy. During the past few years I’ve learnt a few major lessons which have come to shape the way I travel and which have made this trip what it is (or at least what I plan for it to be):

• Getting to the destination need not be a chore, a tiresome trip which by necessity must precede the actual fun part of the trip. Reaching the destination can, and to me should, be as much a part of the fun as anything else. Why, then, fly to Los Angeles the standard (not to mention costly) way via London or Frankfurt with a flag carrier? Why fly at all, if time is not really an issue? Why not, instead, build your own itinerary combining travel by air, land and possibly sea? That’s what brings me to Trapani in the first place, but more on that later.
• Linked to this, there is no need to have a single destination at all. Rather, once in a new corner of the world, see as much of it as possible. Why think of getting to Los Angeles as the aim of this trip, when uni does not begin until late September? Why not, instead, plan to visit as much of the US and Central America as possible before that?
• Thirdly, and probably most importantly, is the realisation and acceptance of the fact that we should still have faith in humanity; that most people truly are good people willing to lend a helping hand. You might think of hitchhiking and Couchsurfing (tracking down locals online and meeting them in person) as dangerous and unnecessarily risky, and you may, to a certain extent, have valid reasons for doing so. Yet after trying both out and using them quite extensively throughout my travels, I can report with confidence that never have I had a single problem. “All it takes is one bad experience to spoil everything” and “Someone wanting to deceive will hide behind good intentions too”, granted. As I said, you may, to a certain extent, have valid reasons for being unsure of such modes of travel. Yet I truly and honestly believe that we spend far too much of our lives worrying about hypothetical conditionals, the ‘what ifs’. What if a Couchsurfing host turns out to be a murderous rapist? Well, what if, yes. What if the person staying next door to me in a 5-star hotel turns out to be one too? I’ll leave the judgement up to you, but I feel much safer Couchsurfing than I do staying in overcrowded hostel dorms (though those can also be fine most of the time). And just for the record, there have been more cases of hitchhikers attacking or stealing from drivers rather than the other way around (thanks Ala!). No intention of doing either any time soon on my part.

Though I will be using Couchsurfing for most of this trip to the US and Central America, I have decided not to hitchhike for various reasons. Distances are far greater than in Europe and roads can often be deserted with sparse traffic. Besides, getting around by other means of transport there is so incredibly cheap. We’re not talking about a train ride with SBB in Switzerland setting you back €100 for a 3-hour ride, or even an hour’s journey with NS in the Netherlands costing €15. We’re talking about a $1 7-hour coach ride across two states, and an entire network of similarly-priced local buses covering most of Central America.

The bottom line; I try to travel as much and as often as possible, and remain open to meeting new people while doing so. I’ll leave it at that for now because La Bella Sicilia awaits. I introduced my trip and some of my previous travels in an interview with Cleo Freriks of Observant, so feel free to check it out here in the meantime.

A la prossima!