43 Days

Hello Good Peeps!

Alright, so as you can tell by the title of this post, it is only 43 days until I take off for one month to make my way through Europe!

Here's a little background about how this whole trip came about:

During college (full-time credits) I worked full-time hours. I took only 2 vacations each year, the first at Easter when my entire family gets together for about 4 or 5 days and the second vacation has usually been out to Hill City South Dakota to stay with my aunt and uncle. Don't get me wrong, I love these vacations and wouldn't trade them for anything, but I've always had a bit of an itch when it's come to travel.

It was my Junior year in college and I realized I had never taken a "Spring Break." (The infamous week where college students all flock to Florida and spend the entire time drinking, sleeping on the beach, and mostly not worrying about a single thing). The nerd that I am, I always worked. But this is where the whole thing started: I realized I wanted to go somewhere, and not flippin' Florida. I wanted to see something REALLY REALLY COOL and make all the money worth it. That was when I decided my next Spring Break would be spent in London, England. Ok, well there are a bunch of boring details from then 'til now, but long story short, I decided a week would not be nearly enough time and I wouldn't even get to see even the tip of the historical touristy iceberg that is Europe.

So, skipping Spring Break the following year (although I did head out to L.A. with a girlfriend of mine for a week), I had started planning this huge 1 month trip on the other side of the world. Which means this has been in the works for about 2 years.

Other than knowing I was going to need a bunch of money for this trip (which I started saving immediately) I really had no idea what I was doing or how I was going to survive a month abroad with no connections and no companion to work things out with. However, my wonderful friend Brian Schroeder has given me a TON of great advice on how to survive for a good length of time (he made a similar trip a couple years ago and was gone for about 3 months). So between picking Brian's brain, independent research, and advice from others who have traveled, I have become a leading expert in traveling abroad (apart from not having traveled yet).

Alright, well this post is getting plenty long but there will be many more to come. I'm going to do my best to keep a countdown until the day I leave. In addition to that, I'm going to be putting up some pictures and posts and talk a bit about all of my fun preparations.

Good-bye for now!