Travel Bugg: Start your travels here
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Differences between Europe and the U.S.
While backpacking Europe, I was often asked what differences I saw between the United States and Europe. Although it’s hard to pigeonhole the entire 50 states or the diverse 28 countries that make up the European Union, these are a few differences I noticed while travelling. 1. Grocery stores In Europe, grocery stores are much…
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Paris: City of Light, Love and Teargas
When people think of Paris, certain images flash through their minds: the splendor of the Eiffel Tower; the culture of the Louvre; the expensive shops of Louis Vuitton, Chanel and Dior sparkling along the Champs-Élysées. They fantasize about sampling crêpes and coffee while celebrating French ideals of freedom, justice and beauty in the City of…
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Iceland: the best layover ever
So whenever you book the cheapest flight available, you’re going to have to wait for a long time. Our layover in Iceland was sixteen hours, almost a full day in the airport at Keflavík. However, we flew with the surprisingly great Icelandair who offer stopovers in Iceland of up to seven days with no extra…
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Travel 101: Trusting Strangers
I was standing at a train station in Vienna, Austria wondering if I’d made a mistake, that my father was right and I had been talking to a 40-year-old plumber the entire time. Then I saw her. I recognized Stef at once. I could tell by the way she walked, by her style of dress,…
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American Roots: Annapolis and the African Slave Trade
While visiting my aunt, uncle and cousins in Maryland this past week, we took a day trip to Annapolis, a port town on the Chesapeake Bay that serves as the capital of Maryland. Although a basic Google search didn’t offer much precolonial history on the area, Maryland has had people living in it since the…
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Faith of the Romani in Slovakia
Faith in Slovakia is multifaceted with layers of historical influence and shifting tradition. Over 60 percent of the country describes themselves as Catholic. While living here, I’ve been to a Slovak and Romani congregation, one Romani Pentecostal church, a Slovak Baptist service, an in-home Romani Bible study, a Romani Epistolic church, and I’ve visited with…
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Travel and Privilege
Košice, Slovakia 5:28 a.m. Tuesday June 10, 2014 I could begin this post with clichés about the journey being better than the destination and about how wanderers must lose their way to achieve fulfillment, but I’ll spare you the scrolling. You’ve heard it. Instead, I’m going to talk about privilege. Now privilege is a buzz…
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Go Outside
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I’m being published!
Really pleased to announce I’ve won another writing contest with the travel magazine Transitions Abroad. This was for their 2015 Expatriate Writing Contest. The name of my essay was Travel for All: the Expatriate vs. Immigrant Debate. I got the idea after reading a Guardian article about the stigmatization of immigration compared to the privilege of…
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The mountains are calling…
“The mountains are calling, and I must go.” While visiting Shenandoah National Park, I saw a bumper sticker with the famous quote, “the mountains are calling, and I must go.” It comes from writer and mountaineer, John Muir, who first penned the words in a letter to his sister Sarah. While hiking portions of the…
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What am I doing in Slovakia?
What am I doing in Slovakia? Slovakia is a small Eastern European country, nestled southeast of the Czech Republic and south of Poland, above Hungary with a sliver of the Ukraine to the right and Austria to the left. The main language spoken here is Slovak. The Republic gained its independence in 1993 and was…
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Why I stopped buying clothing
One year and four months ago, I made the New Year’s resolution to stop buying clothes for a year. This decision came after several years of struggling with the idea of fair trade and ethically-sourced clothing. I’d heard the horror stories of child slaves in Bangladesh and Uzbekistan, but cognitive dissonance and cute sales at…
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