June 2018: Khinkali, Wild Dogs, and Captivity

This Month

Well. There had to be an end to the honeymoon phase (you know, the one where you get all dewey-eyed when you tell people you're long term traveling) and June was it. There are so many blogs out there these days telling you how much goddamn fun traveling is as a lifestyle. And while that is true, it's also fucking hard sometimes. So here's our month: the good, the bad, and the wild dogs. As we always say: we're traveling, not on holiday:) 

Fun fact: the first guy we said that to on the Cape Wrath Trail sneakily handed us $20 wrapped in between two king-size Snickers. As an Appalachian Trail veteran, he took the trail angel title seriously, and we could barely believe his generosity.

THE HAPPY BEGINNING

We left you last month on a flight to Georgia. Our biggest issue with Georgia is that it's difficult to Google because it often gets confused for the supremely less interesting American state that shares the same name. No offense - it's simply impossible to compete with this country. Really, Georgia was great. Of the highlights, our favorites were: an insanely tasty dumpling filled with soup called the khinkali, hitch hiking with friendly locals who gave us homemade wine, and some gorgeous mountains.

But let's move on from Georgia for a moment, because you'll hear much more about it in eloquent, informative posts (hopefully). And because we have some sins to confess. We screwed up.

WHEN YOU BUDGET TOO HARD

After two lovely weeks in the country, we decided to come back to Europe. And we immediately regretted it. We've really been letting Europe's shortcomings (i.e. hot temps, high prices, and lots of tourists) get to our heads. And instead of adapting, we decided to spend no money and camp on the dirty, crowded beach in Greece even though it's not allowed so we couldn't use our tent and were thus chased off in the middle of the night by a pack of angry, territorial dogs.

So that happened. And when we fled to Bulgaria, home of the most beautiful women in the world it's been said... Stefan got searched for narcotics in the subway. Damn that flower power wardrobe. Deep breaths. That's what we told ourselves. Go back to your happy place, stay awhile, and hang out. So we booked a flight to lake Como.

WORKAWAY ARE YOU WORTH IT?

We could afford this endeavor because we signed up for Workaway. If you haven't heard of it, it's a site where you trade some amount of labor for food and accommodation. And we ended up in a lovely place: a mansion overlooking the lake, with tasty Italian food at all hours of the day, unlimited booze, and some amazing people. But the whole thing made us question why we travel. Essentially, we ended up working 8+ hour days in a construction zone under the slightly twitching eyes of a woman who wanted to make a very big profit with very little monetary accountability and existed as a giant ball of apathetic and sometimes downright mean stress. 

We're going to be writing a bit in the near future about our thoughts on Workaway, which at the time of writing we've decided to give another chance in Finnish Lapland. 

MOVING FORWARD

So if June sounds like a shit show, it was. And anybody that books a flight abroad with no return ticket and tells you that their Instagram doesn't represent half the joy they feel in day to day life on the road is a fucking liar. It's hard out here. We get sad. And tired. We yell at eachother and make mistakes and waste the potential beauty in so many situations. But we also learn a hell of a lot. And we write. And we live.

Here's looking forward to next month.

♡ Stef and Tor

P.S. We're on a flight to Norway. Wish us luck in one of the most expensive countries in the world;)