I found out about Couchsurfing a few months before I started my travels and was dying to try it out. Kind of. I loved the concept and was excited to meet locals from the places I would be visiting, but I was also a little nervous. I mean, I would be sharing a confined space [...]

I had a feeling this might happen; I’ve fallen in love with Warszawa (vahr-shah-vah, sounds so much nicer, doesn’t it?). Warsaw is the capital of Poland, yet for some reason it seems to get much less attention than fairytale-esque Krakow in the south. It may not be as beautiful as Krakow, but hidden on top [...]

Munich. Prague. Vienna. Bratislava. Copenhagen. Traveling around in Europe I was well aware that this is where some of the best Christmas markets in the world take place each year. I thought I might have time to make a quick trip to see one of them while I was in Poland, but it turned out [...]

Good news, Lviv is alive and well! I was worried I might not see the city for what it was because the first time I tried visiting everything was closed down and the streets empty. Luckily the Swine Flu panic that had crippled the place for the first half of November all but disappeared while [...]

Kiev has really impressed me. A couple of months ago when I first started looking into visiting, I forecasted quite accurately a city full of traditional Kievan Rus churches topped with domes more golden than Mr. T’s Starter Kit. While there is so much more to the city than just an abundance of gold domes, [...]

My trip to Ukraine started off a bit crazy. Swine Flu Mania was sweeping the country and I was forced to learn the hard way how Ukrainian politicians garnered support for their campaigns—by scaring the hell out of people. L’viv was on virtual lockdown when I first arrived thanks to a rash of deaths in [...]

Three hours before I was supposed to fly out of Sweden to begin my journey into Ukraine, I received this message from a girl whose couch I had requested to surf in L’viv: I hope u delayed your trip to ukraine for few weeks…It’s an epidemy of swine flu…Not kidding that flu kills people.. So [...]

I got a message today from a friend of mine who has been following my Twitter updates for the past week or so. It read: “Your travel rate is straight up off the hook! What is going on?” Actually, a lot has been going on and my travel rate has not only been off the [...]

One of the perks of being a gypsy or a nomad is that you can go where the wind takes you. With that said, upon disembarking the boat in Stockholm from Riga, my friend Mike and I decided that the best thing to do was see if there were any cruises leaving for Helsinki that [...]

While Stockholm has been great, my feet have been getting itchy just sitting here, so I decided I needed to take a quick city break. Viking and Tallink are two ferry companies I have heard about that offer quick and cheap cruises to a few different cities around the Baltic Sea. With a bit of [...]