to nowhere in particular

packed up in the morning and moved to an abandoned construction site of an unfinished luxury resort i had spotted a day earlier on my way to the grocery store. set up the hammock there, called home and finally got around to downloading an e-book. the hound of baskerville it is. didn't do much except locate a mobile repair shop in greece that i could visit to get my phone battery replaced.

two or three times, some tourist stumbled across my camp, apart from that nothing except a lot of beachside reading happened the next 2 days. finished the book less than 24h after i had started reading it, was pretty good. made about 600g of unsalted pasta with tuna which i lived off of for two days.

finally had my long awaited surf lesson on monday. day started with my water bottle aquitting services and emptying one litre of water into my bum bag containing all money, electronics and documents i have with me. luckily, everything apart from my usb adapter survived the ordeal. had a full powerbank, so i decided to worry about it later.

the lesson started - in italian fashion - a couple minutes late. me and a younger italian woman were the only ones there, so it was basically a private lesson. after half an hour of theory and dry training, we put on our wetsuits and got to work. the sky was very cloudy and there was a bit of rain, but the waves were all the better. i think i picked it up pretty quickly, which is no surprise considering marco told us that the conditions that day were basically perfect. after two hours of surfing, we went back to the school. rested for the remainder of the day and had my weekly call with lilly.

i thought i would get to surf again the next day, but the weather decided differently. first things first, i was awoken by the sounds of a truck pulling up to the construction site and deloading an excavator along with a bunch of workers. after years of desertation, the construction of this place had seemlingly reramped on a random tuesday morning. a couple minutes later, i was spotted the first time by one of the guys while i was already packing up. he gestured me to do just that and leave the place as i had found it. an hour later i was homeless yet again.

got some cornflakes in despite all and went to meet marco at the surf club at ten as we had agreed. the sea was completely unstirred and marco never showed up either way. took my waiting time as an opportunity to make some plans for the next days and weeks. noticed that all the ferry routes from italy to croatia i had considered don't even run in november, which means i will have to take the land way all the way up to serbia and down from there. same thing with the ferry to naples, the closest alternative i was able to book is one to palermo. actually played with the idea of taking a ferry from there to tunisia, but i wouldn't have any time for that if i wanted to be in naples for my birthday. also, my credit card isn't working at the moment, so probably not the wisest idea.

so, the plan in short: ferry to palermo, bus to catania, trekking tour up mt etna, bus to naples, birthday, trekkig tour up mt vesuvius, then up to venice by train with stops in major cities where someone could host me on couchsurfing.

confronted by all these opportunities and with all of my stuff packed up anyway, i was all of the sudden v e r y eager to get out on the road again. the only thing that was keeping me was the money i owed to the surf school. after 6 hours of waiting, finally marcos brother came by and offered to relay the money to him. i got on my way, hitchhiked two cars to oristano and even managed to catch the last train to cagliari.Read more

(surprisingly long one)

the (probably) longest journey of this entire trip awaits. i have to leave the hostel in rome, get to the bus station, take the night bus to milan, find a shuttle to the airport and hop on a flight to london and then to boston.

i've never flown alone before, so i basically spent the entire day waiting and going over my plans. in the morning, i had looked up restrictions on bringing camping stoves on a flight. apparently, it's super difficult and requires a lot of cleaning, paperwork and luck.

i had four options:
- bring the stove with me and hope it's cleaned thoroughly enough, risking losing it or having oversized luggage
- put the stuff into a train station locker or hostel storage room
- hide it somewhere near the airport or trainstation in milan, once again risking losing it
- find someone living milan to store it

i spent a couple of hours calling hostels, asking if they could store my stove for a week, but they, either refused or demanden copious amounts of money, as did all the otther locker facilities in milan.

i then went on couchsurfing, asking around for anyone who would do me the favour. no response. i mentally prepared for having to hide my stuff. luckily, my parents then reminded me that some time ago, our family had accomodated an italian exchange student from milan for a year. so i hit her up, and she immediately arranged for her boyfriend to keep my equipment.

i had several difficulties finding and getting to the night bus, but i barely managed in time. the ride wasn't exactly comfortable, but as good as it gets for less than 8€. i also met robert lee, a software engineer from china who had lived in the us and in germany for a year, respectively. he promptly invited me to come to china soon and offered to help me get a visitor visa. i secured his phone number and we stayed in touch, you never know ;)

in the morning, i made breakfast (half a litre of the most disgusting monster energy flavour i have ever tasted). after 9 hours, we finally arrived in milan in the pouring rain. i had been sent a video by the aforementioned italian showing parts of milan completely flooded, i just had to hope it wouldn't affect me too much.

in milan, i finally found the long awaited central decathlon, where i bought some warm socks and gloves for the zero degree new hampshire weather, as well as some new headphones (that don't sound like tin), because the cheap ones i had bought in naples were already broken.

at now around 10, i headed to the apartment of the guy that was going to keep my stuff for me. his parents were there too, everybody was super friendly and i had to refuse many many invitations for food and drink. i actually left not only my stove, but also my sleeping bag, tent, and other stuff i wouldn't be needing.

after getting two kebabs as provisions, i managed to find a shuttle to the airport. it was still raining buckets and at some points i was pretty sure we would either sink or slide off the road, but after an hour i arrived at the terminal with two and a half hours to go.

boarding the plane was the easiest part and with my newly acquired netflix account time flew, just like my plane two hours later. after a short layover in heathrow, i was already on the 777 to boston. american airlines isn't the ryanair i'm more used to, and my middle class ass was shocked to find that i actually got free food and drinks.

on this flight, i had the perhaps most interesting convo of this entire trip. and it wasn't with some 20 year old, but with the 78 year old american next to me. he was still super sharp for his age had a master in mathematics and used to be a computer engineer right from day one.

after 7 hours, we touched down in boston. border security had me by the balls for the next hour, obviously very suspicious of me and my visit to a guy i had only known for a month. i hadn't slept this entire time and my voice almost gave out a couple of times because i hadn't had enough to drink, but eventually, they let me go.

and so there i was, on the other side of the planet, finally having set foot on non-european soil for the first and hopefully not last time of my life.Read more