Month Four in Numbers

Month four was a bit of a harried, rapid journey through many capitals and major cities in Europe. I saw some truly amazing things - and it left me a bit ragged. You’ll see that style / pace of travel reflected in this month’s counts:

Cities This Month: 16; Total So Far: 54

Countries This Month: 12; Total So Far: 21

Countries I Ate Avocado Toast In This Month: 11; Total So Far: 17

Miles Walked This Month: 371.8; Total So Far: 1,496.3

A MONTH OF EXPLORING EXCESS

Like each of these summaries, I’m going to begin with my emotional journey and then talk about the trip itself. I’ve been thinking of my trip in seasons of Mara - of various temptations and patterns of attachment to work through. It’s probably in my head - but I find it a helpful lens to focus on the kind of self-growth work I’d hoped to do on this journey. In this month, not only was it in my head - but it was entirely self-created. I decided intentionally to lean into what may be my most severe lifelong struggle - excess.

In my own growth work, I’ve been consistently drawn to Pia Melody’s five pillars of emotional maturity: self-awareness (failures: disassociation, perfectionism), self-esteem (failures: shame, grandiosity), interdependence (failures: needy, needless), boundaries (failures: too few, too many), and moderation (failures: immaturity, super-maturity). When it comes to moderation, I have a long history of bouncing to extremes: working too hard, working too little, exercising too much, not exercising, drinking too much, abstinence, overeating, rigid dieting, endless socialization, being a hermit, staying too busy, not doing enough to find passion . . . you get the point. Out of the five categories of emotional maturity, moderation has been the hardest for me; even now, my friends playfully tell me I’m all or nothing.

I think there’s a flurry of things that contribute to my struggle with moderation. I learned how to disassociate when very young and move through life treating my body like a robot - like I didn’t need rest or relaxation. I had a firm belief that if I could find the hours in the day, even at the cost of sleep, I could make it happen; this commingled with my sense of self, as I had come to believe early on I had no inherent worth and that my only value was what I could create for others. But like with all things based on disassociation and shame, at some level my body would suffer - be in physical pain I was repressing, be fatigued and being ignored, be emotionally distraught but bottled up tightly - and that would inevitably burst out in some other form of excess - giving up and doing nothing, eating too much, working out until I was pumped so full of endorphins I could ignore it, or, as I got older, drinking myself into an oblivion.

I think there are two things from this history that have made this piece of growth work particularly thorny for me as an adult: (1) my habit energies now strongly pull me toward these cycles of excess whenever I don’t stay mindful, and (2) by time a pattern of excess emerges, I’ve usually disassociated to some extent, so I don’t think I’ve reached a full level of awareness of what excess does to my body. The result is that my efforts to moderate myself usually come from a place of discipline - not from a place of kindness. And I know to win this battle, I need to want to be moderate because I believe it’s what is kind to my body.

So, for August, I made the choice to lean into excess mindfully because I wanted to gain a better understanding of how it affects me. I knew I was entering the month in a mindful space, so I was in the headspace to really pay attention and see what happens in my body. I was also scheduled on an all-inclusive cruise, so there was no financial barrier to having whatever I craved. On the tail end of the cruise, I scheduled an aggressive itinerary through major cities with no rest - pushing myself to lean into my go, go, go compulsions.

So, I let myself lean into every craving of excess that arose, trying to pay attention to what happened in my body each time. I drank too much. I ate too much. I exercised too hard. I kept myself busy, always moving, always exploring. I did so many cities so fast that I found myself frantically trying to catch up on the blog. I was going, going, going.

At a lot of times, it felt great - fleetingly of course. I was deeply in the near-enemy of joy: over-excitement. I was flooding my body with the good feeling chemicals over and over again, enjoying the high.

But in the bigger picture, I felt like shit. When I sat with my body, I was honestly a bit shocked to see the carnage.

I found that my nervous system had untethered - and I had in many ways reverted to my cPTSD way of being. I was on edge, distracted, and hyper-vigilant. My entire nervous system had become disregulated by the chaos - and it took weeks of meditation to start bringing it back down.

I found that my routines were destabilized - and that I struggled to fall back into my daily meditation practice, my regular natural exercise regimen, or to just be mindfully present and enjoy where I am with joy. Quaking below me was a constant itch to get back the good chemicals - an addictive edge to my being.

I also found my body just feeling low - having gained some weight, been pushed to a breaking point, and at a level of fatigue that I needed to deal with before I hurt myself.

It was jarring to see how quickly and easily I can uproot my way of being by giving in - by chasing the high - or by being avoidant. I could see much more clearly that it’s just not worth it - that my body deserves more - and that excess takes me away from the way I want to live my life. Before this, I spent a lot of time wondering if I could fit some of these patterns of excess into my life - whether they were inherently incompatible or if I could carve space for them. Now I have my answer, from a place of wisdom and kindness - that giving into these cravings and compulsions freely or in full can not co-exist with the level of self-love I want to embody.

This, of course, doesn’t mean I’ve completely changed my way of being over night. I’m literally currently having a spoonful of a vegan Nutella - thinking I might be passing into excess - but I’m well short of where compulsion would lead me; I’m also thinking to myself this isn’t as satisfying as I remember. I know I still have a long path on my journey of moderation - but I feel now like I have a much more stable base of kind wisdom to decide when and how to honor my wants / cravings.

A Very different style of travel

This month was much less solo than month three as I had two friends join at different points for a combined two weeks. It was really nice to see old friends and to have the company - and it was also a bit disorienting to have my exploration routine jumbled. I found it more challenging to be mindful about everything that I was seeing, a little bit harder to sit in awe or splendor, because I was always splitting my attention between a friend and the place. It became clear I still have codependency work to do on boundary setting and reigning in my compulsion to caretake and monitor whomever I’m with. It reminded me that growth work can be a bit illusory - that it can exist in some contexts but not yet be resilient enough to hold in others or be applied in life generally - and that I always need to approach my notions of my own capabilities with a hefty dose of context and humility.

This month was also a very different style of travel. I spent two weeks on a Baltic Sea cruise, so I got to stay in the same room, unpack and put my clothes in a closet, be fed and entertained, and most of my port stops gave me only one day to explore a city (and often its country). I love cruising, and think it’s a fabulous and effective way to explore an area connected by water; it was a vacation within my journey. After the cruise, instead of slow traveling through many cities in the same area, I skipped through major cities throughout Europe - a fairly common style of travel for backpackers. This style of travel I found exhausting - too much too fast to take in, without the time to explore the intricacies of anywhere. I saw a lot of amazing things, but I don’t think I came to understand anyplace during those weeks.

Like normal, there were cities I fell in love with, both now probably tied for my second favorite place I’ve been in Europe.

• Riga, the capital of Latvia, is perhaps the most livable place I’ve been so far. It’s a major city, but not so big or busy as to get overwhelming. Its Old Town is one of the most charming in Europe - but it’s not swamped by tourists and retains a local economy. The city feels half park and it has the best European food market I’ve been to - just massive for the city’s size.

• Krakow deserves its status as one of the most beautiful cities in Europe. Like Riga, it’s a major city, but it’s never overwhelming. The streets are highly pedestrian and consistently charming, and, while there are a lot of tourists, it rarely feels like a tourist trap. The city may not have given me “I want to live here” vibes, but it did seem like the kind of place that could easily become a regular vacation haunt for me.

As I did my sprint through the capitals of Northern and Eastern Europe, I found things to fall in love with in every city I spent time in. I have longer (linked) recaps of each, but I’ll give my biggest takeaways below. I put asterisks next to the ones I will likely find reason to return to, exclamation marks next to the ones I got my fill of but found thoroughly charming and worth the trip, and left the cities that were a bit less remarkable to me without anything.

• Galway is an energetic beach escape in Ireland; as the city is best known for its regular festivals, I think it’s best experienced with a group of friends and a celebration in mind. It’d be perfect for a stag party.

• I’m probably unusual in this, but the highlight of Dublin for me was the group of docile deer you could pet and hang out with in Park Phoenix. Dublin also offers the only possible glimpse into Irish culture in a major metropolitan city - a place to eat, drink, and shop like a local. With all of Ireland, I think the country is best explored with a car, though, as my understanding is the most extraordinary parts of the country are well outside of the cities - and public transportation to them is lacking.

• Copenhagen! served up what I’d expected - charming colorful houses lined along canals. What I’ll remember, though, is that Copenhagen caught me off guard with what else it offered - like a semi-autonomous commune and one of the world’s oldest theme parks smack in city center.

• Rostock in Germany is a charming day trip, offering both a historic Hanseatic town with an idyllic main square, and a beach district that looks and feels a bit like any small US east coast beach town.

• If I’m being really honest, I found Gdnyia in Poland bleak and depressing. The city largely built up during communist rule - and it looks and feels like it. The city was a hard reminder that we can’t treat humans (well, any sentient life really) as an object to just meet their base needs - and that the joys of life begin to strip away without creativity or sparks for inspiration. But I did fall in love with its produce market - which had the reddest, most lushest-looking tomatoes I’ve ever seen.

• Like the other Baltic cities, I found Klaipeda in Lithuania unexpectedly charming and deeply livable. It has a small but beautiful old town and is packed with green spaces, parks, and quirky statues. Memorable for me is that Klaipeda is home to the oldest brewery in Western Lithuania. Or, as my travel companion and I liked to quip: “Klaipeda is home to the oldest brewery in Klaipeda.” To be fair, though, Svyturus Brewery was founded in 1784.

• The urban core of Helsinki* actually disappointed me a bit - feeling a bit soviet and not particularly charming. The city is surrounded by nature on all four sides, though, and its beaches lakes, and islands are truly breathtaking. What Helsinki offers uniquely well is the opportunity to walk out to nature all day, and then retreat back for dinner and drinks in a large city. That balance was really lovely.

• Tallinn is best known for its preserved medieval center - which is stunning but also a massive tourist trap. The area is devoid of locals or any local economy - leaving it feeling more movie set than town. Once you leave the Old Town, though, you start to experience the energetic bustle of Estonian life - and you can get the feel for why it’s one of the tech and entrepreneurship capitals of Europe.

• Visby! in the Gotland Island of Sweden gives a novel twist on the standard economy and build of a well-off beach town: it’s built seamlessly into one of the best preserved medieval towns in Europe. Not only that, one week in August each year (when we were there), it hosts a medieval festival. I’m not sure there’s anyplace else in the world to dress up in medieval garb, shop at a medieval market in a medieval town, and also go swimming at the beach.

• I didn’t really have high hopes for Stockholm! - and I found out I was greatly underestimating it. Not only does it have one of the most charming old towns in Europe, but the entire city has built off the architectural greats of the rest of the continent - but in a more livable, well-maintained urban plan. The result is that everything - even the convenience stores - feel nicer in Stockholm.

• Berlin* is the kind of city you can’t experience all in one trip. It’s common to hear people say they didn’t like the city on their first trip, but fell in love with it on their second or third as they explored more and found spaces that fit them. For me, I spent my first trip there learning about its tortured history - particularly the Holocaust and the Berlin Wall. It was a somber, moving few days that stuck with me; a tough experience that I’m glad I took on.

• Prague is one of the most visited cities in Europe even though it’s not one of the biggest; this is because it has one of the most famous old towns. While it is true that the Old Town is breathtaking, the balance of tourists has left it devoid of any local economy or local charm - all chimney cake and weed shops. What I’ll remember most about Prague is that foraging is legal, and you can find fruit and nut trees throughout the city if you’re keeping your eyes open.

• For me, Vienna! serves the Parisian dream without the grime and chaos of Paris. When you’re there, it becomes clear why it was a hub for intellectuals and musicians for so long. It’s grand architecture and ornate cafes just invite you to sit down and wax poetic or ponder life’s thornier questions.

• Budapest is a bit of an incoherent experience; the union of three cities with sections preserved from most architectural styles, the city feels like it was just smooshed together over the years without a clear, central, urban plan. Regardless, it does boast some truly incredible architecture and viewpoints - and some stunning thermal pools if you want to just relax in a hot bath for your holiday.

As I’ve been moving through these major cities, one thing that’s struck me is that a lot of these old towns and historic centers were built within the last 500 years. We often talk about the US not having history because we’re so young (and essentially wiped out the aboriginal history instead of building off of it), but this month has reminded me that for city architecture, the US is often just as historic as Europe. We can enjoy similarly aged old towns in Boston, Philadelphia, or Williamsburg. Of course, we don’t have the ancient architectural sites like Roman ruins, or the deeply-rooted historical culture - and diving into that is a lot of the charm of Europe. But when it comes to sightseeing cute historical districts alone, I think I’ve been underestimating the US.

Now that I’m entering the Balkans (a cheaper section of Europe) and am leaving peak travel season, I’m excited to finally be traveling the way I originally intended - planning as I go. I’m currently in Zagreb, Croatia as I write this, and I just booked bus tickets to Zadar. I’m vaguely thinking this month I’ll move south along the Croatian coast, cut back north and stay in a few cities in Bosnia, then pass through Montenegro on my way to Albania. But - that could change - so you won’t know my final itinerary until next month, when I do.

If you think anyone else would enjoy these summaries, have them sign up for the mailing list here. I’m not going to include pictures in this summary. If you want to see pictures, click through to any of the city summaries, and follow our Instagram.

LIFE ON the ROAD continues to be A LEARNING PROCESS

My style of travel and way of being continue to grow and evolve on the road. Just when I think I’ve gotten something down - a routine that works - I end up growing out of it. I’m learning to embrace that instability - letting go of my need for control or clear routine. There’s a lot of freedom in just being present for the experience. Here are some thoughts and lessons I’ve been having throughout month three:

• I’ve found myself in awe recently about how rich and deep all moments of life can be if you’re open and paying attention. If I’m mindful and present, I find myself noticing children delighting, adults in mourning, pieces of sunlight breaking through clouds, the smell of fresh baking pastries . . . I think it’s always been easy for me to fall into the thought that life is drab - like a clinging notion that if an experience isn’t a 10 out of 10 on an intensity scale, it doesn’t really count. But recently, I’ve really found that the small moments everywhere provide me deep meaning - and that any moment in life can be rich.

• I’ve also been paying attention to the way sadness and delight gain momentum - that when I’m in a bad mood, I pay attention to the bad things, and attract them - and when I’m in an open, peaceful space, I notice the brightness of the day and invite more good experiences. It’s left me with a heightened awareness that life is often really about perception.

• Many times throughout the month, I’ve found myself rapidly going through the motions - moving from sight to sight without paying attention or being present for the experiences. It’s made me more aware of how easy it is to laser-focus on a to-do list, and in the process to close off to falling in love with life as it unfolds. I can see clearly that my compulsion for staying busy and productive is going to be a long-term growth edge for me, and that it would be helpful for me to intersperse my days with more short pauses to interrupt these kinds of trances.

• Along that line, it turns out that my active minute count is a good measure for how often I’ve been rushing through the motions. On my days where I’m open, present, and letting life unfold, I tend to walk very slowly - and my active minute count on my Apple Watch is really low. But when I’m rushing through my to-do list and not staying present, I walk fast and my active minute count it high. This gives me another tool to try to catch myself in mindless doing.

• All through Europe, I see Ukraine flags everywhere - and I’ve found it an inspiring reminder that Europeans are committed to supporting Ukraine, even at financial and comfort risk to themselves. It’s left me reflecting on American culture - and how our endless fealty to individuality leaves us as a society with little sense of duty. Americans are generally unwilling to take on even minor inconveniences for the good of others or the world; it seeps through our politics and our lack of direct activism. We worship at the throne of “more, more, more” and bristle at the idea that we should have to take on an inconvenience, delay, or reduction in any form of consumption. It makes me sad, but also it’s been running through the back of my mind as a societal issue that I could potentially work to shift in my mental health work when I return.

• I’ve been struck recently at how well behaved children and dogs are throughout Europe, and how few experiences I’ve had with hot-headed or inconsiderate people. It’s helped strengthen a sense of faith in the good nature of humans for me - that when people live in a society that has and uses adequate resources to support their citizens, people rise to their inner goodness.

• As I went through museums about the Holocaust and World War 2, I was consistently struck by the precedents of the atrocities - and the similarities to political movements we’re seeing throughout the world, particularly in the Republican Party in the US. It reminded me that great evil doesn’t happen quickly, but builds slowly off of incremental cruelness that is slowly accepted and normalized. It also left me more certain than ever that the modern Republican Party represents a grave risk, and that a slide to genocide is entirely possible if they gain enough power.

• The adoption and production of zero-prof wine, beer, and spirits has consistently impressed me here. Europe tends to be years ahead of the US on growing trends, so I find it a promising glimpse into a future where excessive alcohol use isn’t as celebrated and normalized as it is today.

• I’ve found it interesting recently that when I’m asked “where are you from?” It often means “where did you grow up?” and not “where do you live?” I think this is partly that the hostel crowd tends to be younger - but it’s also rooted in Europeans more often not moving far from where they grew up. Because countries here are denser and smaller, most people I’ve met didn’t move far from their childhood home. It’s very different than in the US where it’s normal (and necessary financially if you’re from the country) to uproot yourself and move away from you family and birth culture. I think it’s an aspect of living in America that is actually quite sad and isolating, but not one we talk of often.

I continue to be immensely grateful to have this opportunity, and to have had the courage to take the leap and do this. I am consistently feeling more self-assured and self-aware, and more at peace with my place in the world. If anything, I feel even less certain about what’s next for me after this journey than when I left - even though I had hoped I would gain clarity on my next steps. But I’m also embracing that uncertainty - and surrendering control that I can’t control and hack my future - and that to a large extend I need to just let it unfold.

MY BUDGET IS HOLDING UP

If you’re wondering how much this is costing me - so far, for four months in Europe, I’ve spent $9,279. I wrote about my budget here and this spend is tracking fairly close to what I budgeted - though I’m about 1% ($130) over budget. I expect I’ll be back on budget by the end of my fifth month now that I’m in the Balkans and it’s so much cheaper.

My fixed cost budget pool ($10 for things like big flights, SIM cards, insurance, and supplies) is finally under $10 a day because my initial flight to Europe has had enough days to amortize. I have to buy new sneakers and shorts this month, so I expect this pool will stay hovering around the $10 a day for the month.

What’s surprised my about my budget recently is that, increasingly, it doesn’t feel like any form of austerity. It’s partly that I’m in cheaper countries again, but it’s also that I’ve gotten better at not spending my money on low value things. More and more, I feel like I have an abundance of whatever I want or need.

MY PACKING LIST IS ALSO HOLDING UP . . . ISH

At the beginning of this trip, I published my packing list and wrote about why I included everything; in my month one summary, I gave a pretty detailed breakdown about what I missed, what seems like it was unnecessary, and what has been surprisingly helpful. I continue to track what I use every day so I know what has been used most and what hasn’t been used at all. The trends I noticed after month one haven’t changed at all - and the items I was thinking of mailing home, I’m still thinking of mailing home. I think it’s too early to deem if anything was a true mistake to bring because I haven’t been to enough parts of the world or enough climates yet to let some things get use. I probably will do a mail back around month 9.

Increasingly, though, I don’t feel overpacked - even if some items haven’t been used. I’ve gotten so good at getting everything in my bag quickly that I hardly notice that there’s a bit too much, and the items I hardly use do feel like nice occasional luxuries. I will add that I think I made a mistake in not packing my Theragun (percussion massager) - which I use every day back home to give myself a massage. That would have been really nice to have to deal with soreness from always being on the go.

KNOW ANYONE ELSE WHO WOULD LIKE THIS?

I’m going to try to write up one of these summaries every month - though I’ll definitely keep working on my format as I go (so please give me feedback if there’re things you want to hear more or less about). If you think anyone else would enjoy these summaries, have them sign up for the mailing list with the submission box below.