Why I do travel?

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And the answer is quite simply: Because I always wanted to. Well, not always, but ever since I was 10 and for the first time in my life saw backpackers in Piccadilly Circus in London, where my loving but unimaginative parents had taken me for a holiday (one could give them credit for choosing Armenia, Soviet Union to be the first foreing country I ever went to, but I think my mom is a commie, so no wonder.).

It was a group of two guys and a girl. I remember them having huge backpacks and looking stranted in the rain, peering into a book which I now assume, was a guide book but which at a time was in the process of getting wet. They looked like they were having so much fun! "Backpackers", my mom informed me. Later on, back home in Äetsä (population 5000) I read about InterRail in Teen Calendar, a must-have for every teenage girl in the extremely hip community of Äetsä, where all women worked at a zipper factory and all men at a chemical factory, which once exploded. I was infatuated and planned a rail route to Spain. Long term travel however requires dough so I had to set my self a plan:
1. Graduate from a great university with a diploma in billionairing.
2. Get a job in organized crime.
3. At 25, retire, and just travel.
The plan, like most plans I make, unfortunately backfired. I ended up being a philosophy student with a job in a tabloid paper, which people who don't know better might say, isn't too far from step 2, so congrats on that. In January 09 I then made a new plan: Rent out the flat, sell all my stuff, save as much money as I can and get moving in September 09.

Follow the preparation for the trip and the trip itself at

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Photos

Me and scary parrots
In Tower of London, 1987.

Comments

[David Stanley]

getting started
The hardest part is deciding to go. After that, everything is easy.

[Merja]

So true
It took me ten years to decide. But now it's all bliss.