The “Bus Trip”

One thing that everyone on earth should experience in his or her lifetime is the “Bus Trip”. While actually taking up residence in another country, or backpacking more or less aimlessly, across a region are superior adventures, and offer significantly more cultural exposure, the Bus Trip is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I do not mean taking a Greyhound somewhere with the sole purpose of reaching your destination. Those are dreadful; I actually vehemently hate buses as a form of general transportation.

In any case, the Bus Trip, to me, means several hours on the road, stopping to see sites, take tours, go find some back alley café, and then finally getting to a cheap hotel and going straight to the outdoor bar with a bunch of people you have known for only a couple of days, knowing full well that you are dead tired and have to wake up at 6am to get back on the bus. Think of how tired you are after reading that run-on sentence, multiply that by a bagillion and you’ll know what I am talking about when I say “dead tired”.

Now, I may be fond of these sorts of adventures simply from growing up taking family bus trips. These, however, are quite different from any family vacation you will have ever taken. Unlike your average, poorly-planned, free-flowing, family-style travel vacation, Bus Trips are usually hyper-organized and leave you with almost no free time. The fatigue you will feel after a Bus Trip will leave wishing for another vacation, one where you sleep on a beach for a week and recover. Needless to say, Bus Trips are for the youthful. The people you will meet and the incredible efficiency of your travels will make it well worth the weariness. I have met many of my closest friends and travelled around seven countries in such a way.

It’s best to think of Bus Trips as sampling menus at the “Grand Global Gastronomerie”. You aren’t ready to dive in and order an entrée quite yet. You’ve always thought that Florence, Italy was a place where you’d like to spend some time, but you aren’t sure if you will have a little diner’s remorse after that big bowl of Firenze, Italia comes and you realize it just didn’t meet your expectations. So instead you flip through to the Sampling Menu and find a Bus Trip through Italy and Greece. You’ll spend time in Florence, Rome, Pompeii, Sorrento, Capri, Brindisi, Delphi and Athens. This seems like a better idea. If it turns out you love Florence, you can go back, heck, you can buy a house there. But, if it turns out that you just arent’t that fond of the David and you hate the smell of leather, you might find that you love Capri (not that anyone could ever afford a house there).

It turns out that I have gone on several Bus Trips like this. The first of which was back in high school and was in fact, to Italy and Greece. But that is a story for another post.

 

 

How I caught the travel bug

I am sure all Peace Corps Volunteers’ (PCV) backgrounds and decisions to join the Peace Corps (PC) are unique. For those of you who might be interested about the particular events leading up to my final decision to join the PC, you’re in for an interesting story. (Heads up, you’re going to get it in installments.)

I think my decision is rooted somewhere between my early love for languages and my fondness for family vacations to far-flung corners of the United States. As a kid, I used to make up rudimentary languages; I loved writing things in Futhark, and was very disappointed when I was disallowed from taking a high school-level Spanish class in eighth grade. Once in high school however, I enrolled in a French class and fell in love with it (thank to my outstanding teacher). When it came time to pick elective courses as an upperclassman, I promptly picked up Spanish, German and Latin classes (all the other languages my school offered). I couldn’t get enough! Language has remained a driving force in my life to this day.

As a child, I also loved drawing maps of make-believe lands. If you haven’t guessed yet, I am one of those rare millennials (I think that’s what they’re calling us these days) who grew up without a television in the middle of the woods. Anyway, I was similarly passionate about traveling with my family. When I was in middle school, my dad bought an old 45’ Blue Bird, school bus from a former farmer. The details of this exchange are still a little murky in my head. Nevertheless, my twin brother and I spent a couple of months working with him tearing out the seats and installing a table, beds and the other RV accouterment. When we were happy with the inside we got cracking on the paint job. Grey with white stripes down the sides, reminiscent of Con Air (1997); appropriately so since it had to carry our rowdy party of seven.

The bus arrives.

Renovations.

Maiden voyage

New paint job

In any case, over the next few years, we would spend a couple weeks every summer taking “bus trips”. Niagara Falls, the east coast down to Florida, the northern U.S. out to Sundance, Utah. These were just a few memorable trips. These bus trips included innumerable flat tires, unending whining, KOA’s luxurious amenities, weird sicknesses, excessive poison ivy, swarms of bugs, and soupy patches of fog. Needless to say, I loved them! These experiences left me with an insatiable appetite for travel and a strange sense of belonging at even the sketchiest highway rest stops.

As I have gotten older I have seized every opportunity to travel, especially internationally. Since I graduated from high school, I have never lived anywhere longer than two years with exception of my current residence. And now, I can feel again, the travel bug itching under my skin; again, rattling in my brain, again, telling me its time to go, this time to Benin.