I lived in Prague in my 20s and still live there.
Easy access to anywhere in Europe. Prague is quite central. If you are based in Prague, you can go just about anywhere. While I was here, I managed to accomplish a mega journey, a big item on my bucket list. I visited all 50 countries in Europe.
Emotional Intelligence or EQ is the new big. It indicates your “ability to identify, assess, and control the emotions of oneself, of others, and of groups.” (Source: Wikipedia). Your success depends on the people skills: your personality, ability to communicate, negotiate and lead.
You wish to get out and go somewhere, but you won’t because you don’t have anyone with whom to travel.
You can comfortably pull off whatever needed at home all by yourself, but for some reason, you hesitate when it comes to soloing out into the world.
The need to travel with someone else is something I still wrap my head to understand.
My friend and I went on a short vacation at her childhood home in Bulgaria . After wandering the earth for half a year, I wasn’t that interested in traveling anymore, jumping from one place to another. I suggested that we had a simple no-frill holiday. Instead of going places, we would focus on doing activities like exercising beside the obvious swimming.
Recently I’ve been reading a couple of articles telling me how to piss of Czechs and Australians. I bet there is a lot more on pissing off rest of the world. In an attempt to contribute more hatred to society, I will show you how to piss off Vietnamese.
I got a lot of “Do you eat dog?” or “You guys eat a lot of dogs.” Sometimes I said, “But not as much as you eat beef.” Then they would say “But beef is meat, dogs are pets.” To that, I retorted “You make them pets, not us.” If they are Czechs or Slovaks I would call them on their merciless practice of slapping dead rabbits, roasting these cute little bunnies and mixing them with their pride national dumpling meals. “And you dare calling us dog eater, bunny killer!”
Whenever I told people that I traveled alone I immediately got the following comments and questions.
1 E.T Phone Home
Aren’t you afraid of getting lost? Hmmm yes I do. In fact I always get lost. I am often lost in the same city I’ve been living for years. I’m miserably lost finding my way to a restaurant, a bar I had visited no less than ten times. I have no sense of direction, and I probably trust a tourist in helping me to take them to where they want to be in my territory. Getting lost is a fact of my life. What’s new?
And the materialist crown goes to…
My walkabout accidentally turned into a pilgrimage to 21st-century bazaars during the last three weeks in Asia. There was no way I could prepare myself for a full-blown shopping attack from the countries which strived to be the best of the best providers for all our “needs.”
Yesterday at the Czech beer festival, I had a pulling-your-leg kind of debate with three Slovaks about their country’s relationship with the Czech Republic. They told me Slovaks beat Czechs in the world ice hockey championship to reach the final and how Slovaks were proud especially that the losers were Czechs. To that, I joked, “Nah, it’s family. There is nothing nice beating your ‘big’ brother. Your common ‘enemy’ is Russia. If you had let the Czechs win, they might have beaten the Russians. You should have looked at the bigger picture.” “No, they are not the big brothers. We are of equal status. We have our country.” The Slovaks shot back at me. “No. Slovakia was never a country.
4/8/2011
Dear sender,
I am out of office till 14th August. In urgent cases you can reach me on +420 xxx xxx xxx. For all support requests please contact X. Best regards, Y.
Dear sender, Thank you for your e-mail.
I am currently out of the office till 08.08. I will have no access to my e-mail account during this time.
I fast. Finally. I’ve been doing it for seven day straight. This is my first Ramadan fasting. But I’m not a Muslim and don’t believe in it. So what does this mean?
At first, I decided to do this only because it was one of the things I wanted to do in life, an item on my bucket list, nothing more. I was introduced to Ramadan in 2005 when I lived in Sarajevo. I landed in the country on the day of the Eid ul-Fitr, the festival celebrating the end of Ramadan. This country, the people and Muslim events forever has left a strong impression.
My name is Cindy, also rhymes with travel junkie. A friend said I was probably a gipsy in my previous life. One of my many secret missions in life is to convert you to run off every once in awhile.
