Wolfgang Busch

Taking classes in a foreign country has been a life-changing experience for students over the years, and technology continues to add to the flexibility of selections. For those pursuing an online degree, living and studying abroad can transform the learning experience into a cultural journey that students could never capture in the classroom. Consider one of these sometimes overlooked study abroad options to travel, explore and learn. 

West With The Night 

Earnest Hemingway praised Beryl Markham’s 1939 autobiographical classic, West With The Night, a rich account of her life growing up on her father’s coffee plantation outside of present day Nairobi, Kenya. The book is an inspirational account of a young woman growing up with adventures unthinkable in her native England. As a young adult, she became an aviatrix and flew as a bush pilot over an Africa that has largely disappeared. However, much of the wild, open stretches of east Africa have remained relatively unchanged since Markham’s time, and studying in Kenya can provide a student with a true sense of adventure and the opportunity to advance an education unlike most peers.

Speaking of Papa Hemmingway, taking courses while living in Pamplona, Spain, the scene of what many consider to be the controversial literary icon’s best work, has its own adventures to be had – or avoided! Located less than an hour drive from the Pyrenees Mountains, the geographic boundary between Spain and France, this historic city in northern Spain is most famous for the famed running of the bulls during the festival of San Fermin, the city’s patron saint. This annual event in July draws tens of thousands of Spaniards and tourists who “brave” running with the young bulls on their way to the bullfighting arena in the center of town. For the rest of the year, however, Pamplona offers a unique chance to study with access to world-class internet connections in a slow-paced location where the Basque and Spanish culture permeate the daily lives of the town’s residents. 

So how do you like your steaks? Seriously, the mysterious Transylvanian setting of Bram Stoker’s (an Irishman) classic horror tale is a real place, namely a region in Romania, one of the Balkan states. Considered an extension of the Alps, the Transylvanian Alps offer more beauty than scares. Having escaped most of the violence and turmoil associated with neighboring countries in the Balkan Peninsula, a student in an overseas e-learning program can spend time on the Black Sea resort beaches during the summer months or travel to mountain destinations in the Carpathian Mountains. With a history that far predates the discovery of the Americas, learning a Romance language in this out-of-the way region of the world may take some of the chills out of your favorite vampire novel, as you can study in a tranquil setting rarely found in more common learning destinations. 

I love to travel, but I am incapable of taking a trip without becoming completely insolvent. There’s something about the freedom that adventure brings that seduces the money right out of my wallet. I’m sure a lot of that also has to do with the fact that I’m not a big planner. The whole ceremony of planning wears me out, so I prefer taking care of the big stuff upfront (like selecting the destination) and just winging the rest as I go. Admittedly, my travel style is a bit on the feral side. So how do I manage to successfully travel at all AND have money for souvenirs? Mobile apps. They enable my travel style while helping me save money on gas, hotels, and restaurants.  

But travel has it's own price. And I am not talking only about money here. There will be sacrifices in terms of human relations. Not everybody understands the traveler. I know my parents don't. They believe we are here to leave something behind, something material, palpable. I don't share their opinions. I'm sorry if being myself means failing them. This can bring a bitter-sweet taste to any trip. But then there are people who sold everything they owned and embarked on a life of adventure. Indefinitely! No regrets there, and they are an inspiration for so many of us! In life, you can buy things or you can buy experiences. What makes you happier?

However, taking into consideration that you might have a limited budget and you might not want to sell all your earthly possessions to live location independent for the rest of your days, taking the right trip is infinitely important. Not only go for cheap holidays abroad but also choose a place that is good for your soul. Meet the locals, learn about their culture and about yourself, let go of your inhibitions and habits, start feeling alive, dust off your high school Spanish or French or German, stop texting, try new foods, and bring to life the crystallized parts of yourself that have gone dead from routine, fear, stress and worry.

In a society where depression is transforming into an epidemic, travel becomes imperative; because travelers not only discover themselves and the world anew, they often go the extra mile that gives them a special status; because they get to do something their friends back home never did, and that sets them apart in a good way.

We live in a donkey with a carrot world. Today's Western society gives us little means to fill those huge shoes it has prepared for us. But traveling is a creative solution, a great strategy to cope with this damn demanding society that asks from us to be winners without really giving us the opportunity to get in the race in the first place. Travel raises the self-esteem, boosts our creativity and confirms our worth, while helping us understand our place in the universe.

So, please don't just stay there waiting for the depression to catch up with you. Go conquer something, do something you can be proud of, get a sense of purpose and live a trail behind you. Others will come to build the highway, don't worry about that.

There is only one warning: travel may be addictive for you. One trip may not be enough. You risk to get back home one day just to realize that your comfort zone has slightly shifted. And you may want to have a lifetime of explorations. Bon voyage!

What are the reasons you travel for?

Have you read Tourists vs. Travelers. Inspiration For The 21st Century Traveler (Part 1) yet?

Not so long ago, evolutionary psychologists reached the conclusion that our distant ancestors avoided outsiders as they might have carried diseases. And we have to admit they were smart to do so. I mean, just remember the history lessons about the first contact between the Europeans and the indigenous people of the Americas. In a way, this evolutionary fear of foreigners is still with us today, though in the meantime, the reasons we invoke are not so much health related but have more to do with our economy and security.

But to be accurate, we, the moderns, always take safety precautions before going to less developed countries. We vaccinate to protect ourselves from them, but who protects them from us? Their is no vaccine to protect them against the tourists or travelers as a matter of fact. And I know from personal experience this is not fair. I caught the nastiest virus in the middle of the Spanish summer from an English tourist. I never felt as miserable. It was steaming hot outside and I suffered for two weeks in bed covered up till my neck. And that was just a flu virus I, the local, got from somebody just two Western countries away.

In spite of all the fears and threats travel presents for people, we still travel. Though we are generally rooted, we find pleasure in escaping from time to time. Why? Because travel is a learning experience, we get to see for ourselves, form our own impressions. Travel makes us porous to new customs, beauties, ideas, and dreams. Travel not only invites us to see the world anew, it gives us an unaccustomed look at who is doing the seeing.

None of the benefits of travel compares to the oblique glance it allows us of our selves. By placing us outside ourselves, travel provides us with the distance required to see what it is we are habitually doing and the anonymity to risk new ways of being in the world. There seems to be nothing like immersing in another culture for staving off the mind's tendency to calcification. We travel to grow up, wake up, and stay on our toes.

Travel breaks stereotypes and allows us to see freshly. I can't think of a better vaccine against dogmatism. Travel is like truth serum. As we struggle to reconcile what we're experiencing with what we take for granted, we strip away what's arbitrary in cultural practice and approach what is universal.

When we travel, we are perpetually off-balance and on guard. And sometimes it is precisely this fear what makes travel so enlivening and revelatory. Other times it is the pleasure of seeing familiar things with new eyes. And eventually it is the miracle of seeing the world in different shades of light. Do we get to yearn for the mindlessness of familiar routines? Of course we do! But that just makes old pleasures much sweeter when we return home.

Travel can be the ultimate zen activity. You are in the now - reacting to new stimuli - and not anchored in the past or future. You can be yourself. You can breathe in and out in a free way, unconstricted and restricted by habit. Because you are living outside your habits, away from routine.

Continue reading The Reasons We Travel For. Inspiration For The 21st Century Traveler (Part 3)

Photos via Flickr Creative Commons

The sandy beach is where the tourist goes

"The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see." - G. K. Chesterton

There is a huge difference between tourists and travelers as stereotypes. The tourist is a person who chooses a sunny destination, because all he wants is to relax, disconnect and switch off his senses, feel as comfortable as home and eat his favorite food even on the other side of the world. The tourist expects everybody to speak his language (because he's on a vacation to relax, not to wreck out his brains communicating with the locals, you know?) and goes back home a week later with nothing else but a new tan and some cheap and meaningless souvenirs for the family and friends, if possible picked up at the airport, because during his vacation he was busy toasting on the beach.

The traveler on the other hand, doesn't mind the weather, and is not shy when it comes to going off the beaten path. The traveler has all the senses alert, looks forward to meet new people, have new experiences, make new memories, try new recipes, stays as much on the road as possible and when finally gets back home, he is even more tired than he was when he left. And this is what makes the traveler happy. Now the question is, what do you want to be, a tourist or a traveler?

For the economy of this series of articles, I will concentrate only on the traveler type. There's nothing wrong with being a tourist from time to time, it's just that getting more value for my money appeals to me more. This doesn't mean I didn't climb the Eiffel Tower just because it's "touristy". I have no problem with touristy places. In fact I love them because they are usually culture packed. What I have a problem with is going places without learning anything from the experience, without being moved by what you see, and going back home with the feeling that your culture is far "superior" and "civilized" than the one you've just visited. To be honest, what's the purpose of spending your earnings going to remote places just to sleep on the beach when you could do it so much cheaper and comfortable in your own bed? To be clear, toasting on the beach is perfectly fine, just not when you completely forget to check out the main square.

I had the honor more than once to engage in enriching heart-to-heart talks with grannies and grandpas. They reached into their mental scrapbooks and turned to the pages of their lives that brought them happy memories. To my surprise, they didn't talk about money, nor career advancements, but all of them spoke about the places they've been to and experienced firsthand. When they went flipping through their best moments, the ones that stuck out were the trips they took. And I was brought to believe that what stays with us in the end are the people we've met and the places we've explored; that's what stands out, not the domestic chores we do on autopilot, nor the daily struggles.

“Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away” - Unknown author

On the other hand, I don't believe travelers and tourists really exist in a pure form. Sometimes we are more tourists than travelers, other times we are more travelers than tourists. It all depends on our very subjective needs. Travel and tourism are just the end points of a spectrum and as usual when talking about spectrums, the ending points are rarely met in reality, as they most of the time are pure theoretical notions.

What appeals to you more? Being a traveler or a tourists?

Continue reading The Ups & Downs Of Travel. Inspiration For The 21st Century Traveler (Part 2) and The Reasons We Travel For. Inspiration For The 21st Century Traveler (Part 3)

As new cheap flight routes are tailored, interesting and affordable destinations are unlocked on Europe's map, destinations not available to the budget conscious traveler a few years back. Though the names of Bucharest, Bratislava or Warsaw might not tell you much in terms of vacation spots yet, nevertheless, they are places with a rich cultural heritage that can make for a perfect budget break. And at Escape Travel at http://www.escapetravel.com.au/, you ca find some great deals that will keep your holiday budget friendly while also inspire you to travel to these remote corners of the world.

The Romanian based company Blue Air, offers cheap flights to Romania's capital,  Bucharest, once called "Little Paris". With it's wide, tree-lined boulevards, palaces, churches and glorious Belle Époque buildings, Bucharest is a booming city that mixes the old with the new in very interesting and creative ways. Finding a 300 year old church, a modern steel-and-glass building and a communist style building all next to each other is commonplace in Bucharest.

Between the highlights of the city are however the Parliament Palace, the world's second largest building (after the US Pentagon). The former communist dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu, started building it back in 1984, using prisoners as a labor force, but when the Romanian Revolution took place in 1989, the building was unfinished, as it remains today. The Romanian Parliament Palace raises 12 stories above ground level, but it is said to go way further underground.

The Village Museum is a very original open air museum that has around 300 traditional buildings (including churches, workshops, mills etc.), plus furniture, pottery and clothing gathered from villages in every region of the country in an effort to showcase the traditional way of life of the Romanians. Other places of interest are the Museum of the Romanian Peasant, the Cotroceni Palace Museum, Old Court Church, Herastrau Park, Romanian Athenaeum concert hall, Cantacuzino Palace, the Arc de Triomphe, etc. And while you are at it, why not go on a trip through the countryside and visit some fabulous Romanian castles?

RyanAir offers cheap flights to Bratislava. The Old Town has a very pleasant medieval atmosphere, with traffic-free, narrow, winding streets, a hill-top castle, and many historic churches and buildings to visit. The communist-era buildings have a different architectural character, the best example being the Petrzalka housing estate, the biggest Communist-era concrete block housing complex in Central Europe.

The Bratislava Castle is a massive rectangular building with four corner towers on top of a quite isolated rocky hill in the middle of Bratislava. The castle is surrounded by many legends and provides an excellent view of Bratislava, of Austria and even Hungary.

Apollo Bridge over Bratislava

St. Martin's Cathedral is the largest and one of the oldest churches in Bratislava. The New Bridge over the Danube River, has a flying saucer-shaped restaurant called "UFO" with an observation deck on the roof. Other places of interest are the Museum of Clocks, the Soviet War Memorial, the City Gallery at the Pállfy Palace, etc.

Hungary's WizzAir serves cheap flights to the Polish capital, Warsaw. Its historic Old Town was rebuilt brick by brick after the war according to old prints, photographs, and paintings while its  communist buildings are slowly being replaced with modern sky scrapers.

Warsaw is a city full of life that is gladly embracing the New World cuisine, café culture and clubs that never close. The capital city features some lovely churches and monasteries, interesting monuments and museums, and hosts theater, book, jazz, and classical music festivals during the summer months.

Warsaw tends to shock its first time visitors, and it might take you a while to make sense of all you see, from the peasant women selling flowers in the Old Town, to the wedding cake-like Palace of Culture and Science, Stalin gave as a gift to the city or the Wilanow Palace, the beautiful royal palace that survived partitions and both World Wars and has preserved its authentic historical qualities.

I've flown RyanAir and WizzAir quite a few times now and I can't complain about the overall experience. Though their service might not be perfect, I personally prefer spending the extra budget at my destination, sightseeing or sampling the local cuisine instead of spending double the money on a two hours flight. However, BlueAir provided my best cheap flight experience so far, the staff was super extra polite and they even gave us free water. I don't know if this is the norm for them, but they really caught me by surprise and I was really thirsty.

Despite joining the EU back in 2007, Romania is still a budget destination, especially now with all the cheap flights that connect its cities with the rest of Europe. Finding affordable airline tickets to and from Romania is now easy, so there’s no excuse to miss out on all the places to visit in Romania.

Romania is a territory of great natural beauty and diversity with a rich cultural heritage. From medieval fortresses and centuries old monasteries to amazing castles and one world famous legend - Count Dracula's - the country has a lot to offer to its visitors. However, it is currently drawing only modest crowds, which means little or no cues at all in front of the tourist attraction.

Romania has an alluring collection of castles of haunting beauty. The elegant Peles Castle, Corvinesti Castle and Bran Castle, legendary home to Bram Stoker’s Count Dracula are my personal favorites.

Before the late 1800s, the Romanian castles erected used to be strong and austere fortresses built mainly for defense purposes. However, that changed in the last centuries when imposing and luxurious structures started to take form.

The magnificent Peles Castles, with its fairytale like turrets and pointed towers, rises above acres of green meadows sprinkled with haystacks. 

The representative style used is German Renaissance, but one can easily discover elements belonging to the Italian Renaissance, Gothic, German Baroque and French Rococo style. 

Peles Castle is surrounded by seven terraces decorated with statues, stone-made-wells, ornamental vases and Carara marble. The architects used an abundance of wooden decoration, both for the exterior and for the interior of the castle, which confers a very special quality to the building.

Several other buildings, annexed to the castle, were built simultaneously: The Guard's Chambers, The Economat Building, The Foisor Hunting House, The Royal Stables, and the Electrical Power Plant.

When the communists took the power Ceausescu did not like the castle very much and visited rarely. This seems to be due to some wicked specialists who, counting on the Ceausescu couple's paranoid health phobias, declared the building to be infested with a dangerous fungus, which in 1980s was true to a certain extent but was only affecting the timber.

Located in Sinaia at 44 km from Brasov, in Transylvania, Peles Castle is one of the most beautiful castles in all Europe. 

The interiors are massively covered in sculpted wood.

Every single inch of the castle is beautifully and richly decorated and the furniture, the stained glass windows depicting German fairy tales, the massive doors, the carpets and the paintings create an out of this world atmosphere.

Bran Castle looms over Transylvania with its ghostly silhouette and blood-red towers and turrets. Built on solid rock, the 13th century castle is supposed to have been the residence of Bram Stoker’s Count Dracula.

The castle is a large and imposing building with tall towers and myriad windows and balconies adorned with stone carvings, dominating the landscape from the top of a rock above the River Zlasti.

The access to the castle is ensured by a wooden bridge supported by stone pillars across the river, which takes you to the gate tower.

The Corvinesti Castle doesn't have much furniture left nowadays. Its rooms host art galleries of local artists and many, many gift shops where hand-crafted objects can be purchased.