On a gray and misty morning, my heart was broken and mended again on a long walk.

The air was thick and damp, heavy. The further I walked, the heavier I became.


This was Auschwitz.

A death camp where over 1.1 million people perished through no fault of their own.

From this “factory of death,” crumbling two hours outside of Krakow, Poland, three crematoriums, gas chambers, barracks, watch towers, and barbed wire fences remain.

The evil and hatred that once claimed this site is still palapable here. It’s alive even in death. The walls, the cobblestones, the towers, the gates, everything on the grounds is worn raw from the suffering of four years spent in hell.

Walking beneath the rusted entrance gate brandished with the words “Arbeit Macht Fret,” “Work Brings Freedom,” I can only imagine standing here 60 years earlier; staring at those scarring words overhead, hopeful I was being “resettled,” and holding on to a sliver of hope that I may one day be free.

Any able working person 13 years and older would have passed through here. The other 70 to 75 percent of people too old, young, or weak to work were killed upon arrival.

I am not the first 22-year-old girl to pass under these gates. I imagine tracing the steps of the girl walking here 60 years ago. Same steps, but different walks. My walk was a tour, hers was a march to death.

Only time made the difference.

We approached a gas chamber that doubled as a crematorium, and as we filed through in a single line, I flashed to the time when those who walked in to this cold and gray crumbling coffin would never come out. Yet I did.

Only time made the difference.

Kicking my feet through the dust, shuffling from barrack to watchtower in the gray drizzle, watching the dark fragments settle on the earth, I wondered if there were human remains still among the ruins.

Ashes from dead prisoners were used as fertilizer on the grounds.

I scanned the rooms within the retired prisoner cell blocks that held saved artifacts from the camp. Two tons of prisoners’ hair, only a fraction of the true amount collected by the Nazis, lie in dusty tangled heaps beyond the glass.

Hair was used to make cloth.

My nails scratch along the thick window panes which hold the confiscated suitcases, baby shoes, eyeglasses, brushes, and other personal belongings of prisoners.

These are real things. These were real people. This really happened…here.

Yet I come out the other side.

All because of time.

It is time that has caused us to realize what we’ve done to each other. Time that’s allowed us to preserve this part of history. And through time, we can only learn to not repeat our past.

The backpack; Our identitiy, our resúmé, our personality. All spelled out in an object. With it, we are a community, one people. We’re travelers who leave our homes, our country, our comfort to go, to do. To get lost, to make mistakes, to seek adventure, the unknown.
We are backpackers.

We are not afraid. We are open to experience, to the new to the different. We are learners, we are leaders, or seek to become them. We thrive from conversation about our differences our similarities our hopes our dreams; dreams for ourselves, for our countries, for the world. We are do-ers and dreamers.
We are backpackers.

We are restless in the quest to see more to learn more to be more than we are. Seldom do we know where we’re going, what to expect when we get there. But we do expect one thing; the unexpected. We expect to be uncomfortable and unfamiliar with where we are. But somehow that sense of unfamiliarity, that feeling of out of place…it’s right. It’s where we’re supposed to be.

We seek each other out. Seek out each other’s advice, comfort, encouragement, friendship. We want to help each other, to share stories and experiences, to grow from one another. There are moments when you are lower than you ever thought you could be; you’re physically and mentally finished and feel your exhaustion and frustration taking you over, swallowing you up. In these moments, you see a backpack, anywhere, and you clamor to connect. He or she becomes your source for revitilization, for emotional nourishment, for direction. Your lifeline.

Hostels become a refuge, your battery charger, the closest thing to family and familiarity. They’re filled with pockets of people doing the same thing you are. Many solo, many in small groups eager to meet each other, share remarkable travel tales and contacts in whatever places they’ve been, offer ideas of how to take your journey farther, deeper.

We may not look anything alike, speak a different language, come from opposite ends of world. But because of the backpack, you know each other already. You know you’re made of the same stuff.

It’s like picking up on a former conversation, little introduction required.

Home no longer becomes a place but people. On a train, at the bus station, at a hostel, or roaming the streets of a foreign city. The backpack is home. We’re home in each other, wherever we are.

As we had a 9 hour wait until our ferry to Santorini, Sierra and I decided to kill time and poke our heads into a few shops. Little did we know that not once, but perhaps 10 times were we going to re-live Julia Roberts crippling encounter as modern-day Cinderellas pre-prince Charming.

Time after time, employees glared at Sierra and I in the eye with such unashamed vile distaste, towards the end of our shopping excursion we couldn’t help but laugh right out loud at this ridiculousness. That is, when we weren’t looking at each other utterly crushed, confused, hurt.

Even without our backpacks were we that disheveled? Do we look untrustworthy? Like tourists? Poor? Ugly?

It was truly amazing. I would say in roughly 97 percent of the stores Si and I entered, we received the same reaction. No smiles, no no wave, certainly no help, plus a following look of disgust, sometimes laughter and whispers as we perused the isles.

Even young local girls our age responding to a smile from Sierra or I would give us the once over, turn to their girlfriends and laugh.

At one point when Sierra happily and with a big smile held up an outfit explaining to an attendent she wished to purchase it, the woman aggressively and very angerily barked something at her we couldn’t understand before allowing her to pay for the item then roughly shooing us out the door.

Who knows if it was because of how we were dressed or just who we were, travelers, that we received such awful visual and verbal responses from employees, one thing was certain: our attitudes, manners and demeanor had nothing to do with it.

This was the hardest thing to grasp.

The harder they pushed us, the meaner they treated us, store by store Si and I were committed to pushing them back with all of the kindness and courtesy we could muster, including speaking Greek, including asking how they were doing.

This really was the first time I felt like nothing I did or how hard I tried to be kind made any iota of difference. It was really the first time I felt absolutely humiliated. And over and over and over and over without break.

And all because of my appearance.

To experience the feeling of being looked at like you’re dirt, you’re unwanted, and nothing you say or do matters, was eye-opening to how some may feel every day because of their skin color, sexual orientation, or whatever the case may be. To encounter people who already have fixed opinions about who you are is a tough wall to break down.

Although we clearly received no immediate results from our loving responses to the grinches in Piraues, who are we to know if in small measure our refusal to spit fire back at them, maybe their hearts were softened in some way.

Si and I found comfort in the fact that we knew who we were even if these people didn’t and clearly didn’t care to. In times like these we were forced to realize that the only way to deal with such undeserved hurt is to hold onto the truth that we don’t and never will have control over other people’s action, only our own.

And if you can be at peace with your behavior sometimes that’s the only peace you will find.
But that peace is enough.

We were not supposed to be there. Definitely not supposed to be there. But then again, when is it a thrill being where you’re supposed to be and avoiding areas forbidden?

We had decided to sleep there only just a few hours ago. Before, we were homeless. It’s a strange thing to walk busy bustling streets at night gazing at the glamorous passersby knowing that in a few hours they will be happily and snuggly in a warm bed and you actually have no idea where or when your night will end.

There we were, the four of us our daypacks in tow packed with our sleeping sacks and sweatshirts meandering the cobblestones in a giddy delirium as we realize no one knew our secret.To passersby we may seem the typical traveling troop, on the look out for a hoppin pub or night club or somewhere open late to eat.

Somehow we finagled our way through one of the city’s most prominent beach bars on the cliffs beneath the castle to the remote rocks on the opposite side where we cliff jumped earlier that day. Ah, oasis.

The night couldn’t promise much sleep…that much was expected. We awoke to a feast of mosquitos, a bath of sweat from the beating sun, and an inescapable sour stench of sea. We’re dirty, again. We were without sleep again, a shower, a toothbrush, food. We dodge the ‘politzia’ yet again as we attempt to sneak out through the cliff bar door. Luckily, the doorman was one level less than furious this morning.

Nonetheless, a better bed there never was. Watch this video:

I’m thinking of that scene where Jack partakes in a black tie dinner with Kate and fellow “old money” folk in first class. He explains how he is a wanderer, slumming his way from place to place, never knowing where he’ll end up. Under a bridge one night, first class on a ship the next.

That’s our story, too. And I love it. I thrive on the fact that my whole world can change in a day and I can be in a totally new, totally foreign, uncomfortable, comfortable, satisfying or unsatisfying place. No two days are alike. In fact, they’re worlds apart.

The several days leading up to tonight’s ride were brutal to say the least, but wonderful. En route to Piraeus from Romania could have been the roughest travel segment I’ve experienced yet.

I was sick from the coffin, or sleeping couchette, we crammed into with five other people for ten hours, I was throwing up in and outside of the train, on a bus to the airport, in the airport, Sierra’s daypack was stolen in Piraeus, we were nearly thrown off a train by Hungarian police at 4 a.m., Cody lost his favorite hat, we were hot and uncomfortable and dehydrated trekking around the city all day with our bags until we were herded like cattle on the cruise liner at midnight.

But on this journey I also found my fairytale castle, felt the rain on my face running in the Alps, got lost in a world all my own in the most magical green gardens I’d ever seen, spun in a human whirlpool, tasted gelato as it’s meant to be tasted…

….

Sorry, slight pause. Sierra and I just snuck downstairs into the “nice cabins’’” bathrooms to execute a ‘face wipes shower’ in the sinks…our first in three days. Awesome.

And why is this wonderful? Because it’s chaos. It’s foreign and uncomfortable and comfortable and strange and exciting and tiring and trying all at the same time. When I’m pulled at so much every day, confronted with new trials and roadblocks and lucky breaks and let downs and tiny miracles all at once I sometimes feel like I’ll just explode; every emotion I own, some I didn’t even know I possess, is brought to the surface at the same time. I don’t think I can feel any more alive than when I do this.

Just several weeks ago, we were in a five-star apartment driving a baller Escalade around one of the nicest cities in Europe. In Eichenbichel I slept on a cloud at an Austrian bed and breakfast, I bunked in a ten person room in a hostel/club in Prague, and here I am now on the water under the stars.

Do we know where we’re staying in Santorini? Not really. Maybe a hostel, if there’s room, the beach is always an option, camp grounds could be close by, some places rent out apartment rooms…

But wherever we end up is where we’re supposed to be. (I just formed and digested this opinion, it’s kind of liberating). The people you meet, travelers you come across, locals you encounter, train buddies you bunk with, they all are part of your journey that shape your unique experience in a place and when and how you arrive at your next destination. Doors open wherever you are. Wherever they lead, roll with it, hang on, and just love it.

“I feel about travel the way a happy new mother feels about her impossible, colicky, restless newborn baby–i just don’t care what it puts me through. Because I adore it. Because it’s mine. Because it looks exactly like me. It can barf all over me if it wants to– I just don’t care.”
“Eat, Pray, Love” Elizabeth Gilbert

Amen sister.

Roberta and Cody

A brittle bag of bones rocks back and forth in her crib, alone. No toys, no color, no company to draw a smile. “Don’t touch,” a nurse informs our LOC leader. Don’t touch.

Love

A stark room with white walls, white floors, white cribs, white pajamas, and silence. You are now in a Romanian children’s hospital. We visited one, I thought, to bring the babies and children there surprise special entertainment for the day. I didn’t know we would be their only entertainment.

In Times of Trial…

Hospitals like this one in Ludus have become a haven for abandoned babies and young children. Parents habitually drop them off here, leaving them under hospital care for weeks, months, even years depending on when they feel like coming back to get them. Often, parents will drop off a child here for a while, then take him or her back, then leave them again.

The hospital, itself, devoid of color, compassion, and life provides the roughly 20 to 30 children with the bare essentials to survive minus one. Touch.

As we entered the room of ‘babies’ ranging several months to over two years to feed them, even more unnerving than the unnatural deafening silence of the babies, who should be crying and flailing, was the nurse who demonstrating feeding time; Shoving a bottle into an open mouth, then moving down the line to the next. Their little aged eyes, which have already begun to cross due to lack of being held, try to focus but aren’t used to the stimulation.

These children are not held. That’s why, we’ve been told by few volunteers who make weekly visits, the children have stopped crying. These babies, who on average look about two years younger than they actually are, learned it doesn’t do any good. Even as we cradled and tickled each child one by one, for the most part, they lacked any emotion in their small, fragile faces.

A grim truth, however, is that more often than not, the children who reside here in Ludus have a far better life than if they remained with their parents.

…There is hope

Even as my heart broke every minute I remained, I was filled with hope. In the next hour we spent playing with the older children, three years to eight or so, the pallid, wan faces came to life. Roberta, Simona, and those whose names are unknown delighted even in the smallest fraction of attention. The two-year-old bag of bones whom we were advised not to touch, came alive with the simplest hand stroke and gentle hug. Hearing laughter within these chilling walls, seeing smiles and being squeezed so hard by little fingers it’s hard to breathe, reminded me that even in the most hopeless and downtrodden situations love can conquer all.

“He shall cover you with His feathers, and under His wings you shall take refuge.” Psalm 91:4.

Then we arrive in Romania into the care of Livada Orphan Care (LOC) and we can breathe. No more worrying about our next move. For once we have a schedule already assembled for us. As we deboarded our second train from Budapest (total transit time 10 hours) in the afternoon of the 11th, Sierra, Cody, and I transitioned from a self-centered, inward focused existence where our thoughts were harnessed solely on our own needs, to an outward focused one. For the next four days we would be serving with LOC, visiting a local orphanage and abandoned baby hospital, and building relationships with three groups of orphans under LOC’s care.

But as much as we would use this precious time in Romania to serve others, we, too, were served wholeheartedly by the selfless volunteers and staff at LOC. We cannot delve into our priceless experiences with the children here without first recognizing the Assistant Director of LOC, Kelly Hornsby, without whom nothing would have been possible.

From arranging our top notch accommodations in Taugres Maures, to picking us up and driving us everywhere we needed to be, be it to the orphanage, LOC houses, to lunch, or over to her home for movie and pizza nights with the kids, Kelly has been a true one-woman wonder and our life source in this foreign place. On top of arranging our days hour by hour with amazing activities and opportunities to be with the kids, she was an Encyclopedia of information for us, answering our countless questions and inquiries about this new world so different from our own.

Thank you LOC, from the very bottom of our hearts.

Jokubas, Domas, Julijus and Mindaugas, together, ‘In*Beat’, have grown up following the American music scene, studying varying dance styles and rythms from T.V. and Youtube. Their unique blend of modern, techno, swing, and break dance moves put to a range of tunes from oldies to present puts them in a league of their own. With their funky dress, charisma, and heart-melting charm, the boys hope to please more than just themselves.

“The main thing is to make the people enjoy the show, to smile, to make people laugh,” Julijus said.

For five years now, the college freshman have taken to the streets, lounges, bars, and anywhere that will allow them to perform. While the typical 100 Euros these self-taught dancers pocket for performing 10 times a day may be pertinent to eating, sleeping, and getting around Europe for a month before heading back to Lithuania, the comfort the cash provides is nothing compared to the satisfaction of completing a job well done.

For each of these artists, dance is what they do; They don’t care where they are, they don’t care who watches. Even as they spin, shuffle, and sweat in the center of one of the world’s more upscale and desirable cities, Prague, the show is really all that matters.

“It’s a form of self-expression”, Domas said. “It’s about experience with the music.”

Rough n Tough

When you’re keen on saving money as we are, we’ve collected some helpful hints and ways we’ve tried to keep our pockets full (or as full as they can be) so far…

Pack it Up
Upon arrival in Munich, we popped into a local grocery store to stock up for the next few days…bread, smoked salmon (I know we’re in meat country but there’s vegetarians aboard, remember?), snackable veggies, fruit, etc. to tote with us throughout our city excursions

Pick a Picnic
Not only does grocery shopping save you dough, but it also score you some that’s fresh baked and secures you a front row seat to the dining location of your choice…pack a picnic for the beer gardens, a nearby lake, a park, Neuschwanstein castle, kick off your shoes, lay in the grass and enjoy…I tell you, nothing compares to your own outdoor eateries

Walk it Out
Walk walk walk as much as you can to wherever you can…two reasons
One: Saves you money on taxi, trains, subway, horsedrawn carriage fares (yes you can take a horsedrawn carriage to Neuschwanstein castle from the mountain base)
Two: Who couldn’t use the exercise? Just be sure to wear your tennis shoes or rainbow sandals. Maybe Chocos if you’re Sierra or from the mountains…

Dinner- We’re Just Not That Into You
Sometimes dinner’s just on the top of your priority list. Hate to break it to you, but backpack living isn’t about eating like kings. Now now I’m not advocating going hungry here, but if you arrive late in a city or are staying at a Bed and Breakfast where the spread is usually t-e-riffic and very sustainable, it really does help to skip that extra un-needed late night serving.

Share Share Share
Obviously splitting meals is an easy way to save, but if you’ve got a travel buddy, swapping clothes and mixing up the ensembles is the best way I’ve found to keep you from impulse purchasing new clothes along the way. Even though the cost might be reasonable, your 65 liter backpack has got other opinions

I’ve Got Friends
Again, a reminder to pool from your network and try to snag a free couch, room, or even whole apartment if you’re as lucky was we were in Munich, to save on accomodations. Couch surfing is another option to explore…

Hostel Hunting
In some hostels one may find a communal kitchen with mini fridges, cupboards, and the like equipped with signs, “label your food or someone will eat it.” Great opportunity there…just this morning scored a bananna, apple, grapes and fresh coffee. Put that in your travel pocket…literally