Jugendherberge! Part 1

Back in 2008 while I was gallivanting across Europe,  I had an idea for a movie script.  It was to be called Jugendherberge! and follow in the tradition of goofball comedies like Beerfest or...okay, actually, I had Beerfest in mind, and also that episode of The Simpsons where the titular family opens up its home as a hostel.

 

 This kid's got bosoms

Anyway, the movie was supposed to be about a guy who inherits a Euro-style hostel in the middle of nowhere, but the hostel has fallen on hard times and needs a lot of repairs, so thanks to the high spirits of the plucky and pretty girl at the hardware store and some clever montage sequences, the place is soon overrun by eager foreigners ready to see all of the land of the free and the home of the whopper while the greedy land developer falls into a mud puddle and everyone laughs at him - the two leads kiss, freeze frame, roll credits.

Then I got home and kind of forgot to ever write it, but the important thing is that I meant to, and maybe someday I'll get around to it.

I also had a dream last night that I was in World War II, machine-gunning my way across a twisted nightmare version of Bavaria and, for some reason, staying in a hostel after my patrols.  My friend Dave kept stealing my complimentary T-shirts, and I was repeatedly denied breakfast because I can't convert Imperial to Metric in my head.

 "Multiply by 9/5, then add 32."

I've decided that in the spirit of my Suburban Survival series, I should do what amounts to a traveling instructable for the destitute.  This series will focus on food, accommodation, travel, and sightseeing, not necessarily in that order, and possibly with some interruption.

There have already been a lot of great instruction books on traveling cheaply, and a few people have traveled in much more entertaining and rough-and-tumble manners than myself, but what I aim to do is to give anyone thinking about traveling, and really sitting on the fence about it, one big push to get their ass in gear.  I'll keep all the didactic shit to about one hard just-the-facts page, and then try to flavor the business with my own experience.

So that being said, let me get to the first question any fence-sitter may have:  Why?

To be honest, you could look at this picture and stop reading

Travel is going to expand the hell out of your mind.  You think you know something now?  Sure, why not - you are very probably "fact rich," but is there the possibility that you're "experience poor?"  It's all well and good to know something, but without experience it is difficult, even impossible, to know what it means (such as meaning can ever be known - sorry, had to do a dirty little Po-Mo disclaimer there).

Without travel, you risk becoming an Ugly American.  This merits an explanation:  most foreigners do not think of Americans as big fat bloated ignorant hurp-a-durps.  This is what some Americans would like to believe that foreigners think of us (exempting those who hate our freedom or "are taking over," depending on who you ask and what they think is the biggest hugest threat to Freedom and Democracy that day). 

However, it's not true.  While many Europeans can spot Americans on sight (don't ask me how - they just can), they're usually curious and have lots of nice things to say.  They don't see many Americans, and so they're more often than not extremely welcoming, and happy to help you blend in and experience their culture, not to mention buy you a beer once in a while.  Except for Brussels, which is a toilet.

Furthermore, if there is still any doubt on this matter, we won the culture war a long time ago.  Everyone wears blue jeans, drinks coca-cola, and eats at McDonalds.  Convenience stores and newsstands sell American cigarettes (it's really our last great export) and so help me some precious few of them even sell the contemptible piss-water that is American beer. 

Except for the taste, the smell, and the hangover, it's really not that bad

But it's not cut and dried.  There are enough people in the world that think of America as a corpulent sludge of SUV-driving fatties who only stop cramming Big Macs in their mouths long enough to sputter something ignorant out, and whose idea of culture extends no further than Lost and hot new dance tracks by pop sensation Ke$ha.  

So aside from the wide range of experience you open yourself up to when you go traveling, you are also doing America a favor by showing people from other cultures that you are interested, curious, and polite.  This of course means that you should be interested and curious, and usually not acting like a complete ass, but if you're willing to fork over the cash to travel, that should kind of go without saying.  You are helping other people to understand more about us, while at the same time doing yourself a massive favor by learning something about them, and this in itself is very much a thing worth doing. 

As a final note, let me say that this travel series won't be exclusively about crossing national borders.  As I learned the long, slow, hard way, you can have a pretty exotic vacation just by going a little farther in any direction than you ever have before.  I started traveling pretty late in life, and I hope that I can spare someone else the same mistake.  A big part of my reluctance to leave the comforts of my own living room came from doubts concerning expense, but a girl I was seeing gave me the right kick in the pants by giving me pretty much exactly that same advice. So even if you can't afford to fly across the Atlantic today, just go a little bit farther than you did yesterday, and tomorrow you'll go around the world. 

Now then - come back on Wednesday when I tell you how to get "there" (wherever it is) and how to get around! 

lol dongs