The Hardest Part About Traveling Alone…

Is putting sunscreen on your own back. Really—give it a try next time you have some downtime; it’s really difficult and actually quite terrifying. Difficult in the sense that I, like much of the world, am not particularly “bendy”; terrifying in the sense that as I’m doing it, I know that hours of sun exposure after a poor application will result in days of painful skin regeneration and necessitate me sleeping on my chest. Now, as I don’t particularly enjoy regrowing skin, and knowing that my chest is freakishly sensitive to being slept on (I guess the cat’s finally out of the bag), putting sunscreen on my own back has become the bane of my solo-travel experience.

Some of you may question why I don’t just ask other people to apply sunscreen to my back. While that’s a valid question, it’s actually not so please don’t ask it. Stupid questions are part of life, but let me answer this one before it escapes your mouth, or even the mouth of your little inner-thought person.

The reason why I don’t ask strangers (read: friends-I-haven’t-met-yet) to apply sunscreen to my back is because it is a really awkward thing to ask of someone who you don’t know. Furthermore, how do you even begin to pick out your sunscreen-application victims? What are the qualities in a person that make them look like they’ll not only be good at applying sunscreen, but also want to apply it to someone who they have never met before. I know many of you boys and girls out there won’t accept my opinion without a fight, so let’s move on and walk through all of the possible scenarios and outcomes.

Situation A: I ask a male stranger to apply sunscreen to my back.

Possible Outcome #1: he declines.

Awkward. I walk away, disgraced, and ask other strangers to help me while simultaneously my back burns in the sweltering Greek sun and my self-confidence falters. My back will burn, and—as I’m unable to sleep on my chest—I won’t be able to sleep until my skin grows back; I’ll get sick, and then I’ll die. Too extreme? Well you don’t agree with me, so I don’t care what you think anyway.

Possible Outcome #2: he accepts.

Perfect—my back will be lubed up with an unknown amount of sunscreen by a strange man. An undeterminable amount of awkward male-stranger backrubbing will ensue, and my back may, or may not, be adequately protected from the sun. (link: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhp3npLQpR9VR7vZmW2CnmDV3jCbIKyfQ7kAllhQnhpDEH-5cAr4sxgF-FUelEjch0nKd0APAYvU-TvYVDQcHqvO-N0m5xabcCqLBvRrM-icUh66hWgxQZV1KM-hE1zIDR8XW3VW5ZoTpj6/s1600/sunburn1.jpg). I thank him, give him a slap on the ass in appreciation (handshakes are outdated), and we part ways. Still weird.

I think I should take a moment and explain how applying sunscreen to someone is a more intimate experience than you might initially realize. While it may usually be innocent, and putting sunscreen on your child/friend/anyone-except-a-stranger certainly is, rubbing lotion into a person’s skin is still a much more intimate activity that you’d want to experience with a total stranger given normal circumstances. So, let’s take a moment and define what’s “intimate” through the use of examples:

Not intimate: handing a cashier your credit card at Subway (I know it may not seem realistic, but yes, some people do in fact go to Subway).

Intimate: massaging an oil into the skin of another human being.

Great. Now let’s move on.

Situation B: I ask an attractive female stranger to apply sunscreen to my back.

Possible Outcome #1: she declines

Very similar to Possible Outcome #1 from Situation A, but now my mind is questioning whether or not I’m pretty enough to be shirtless in the sun at all. Again, my self-confidence falters, but to the point where I’m far too ashamed to ask other attractive female strangers to lube up my back with suntan lotion. Instead, I find a dark hole to go into where I die alone and pale. Sad face.

Possible Outcome #2: she accepts

My 13 year-old self’s dream come true. My back is lovingly massaged with a perfect amount of sunscreen—enough to avoid ye olde skin cancer, but not too much as to prevent my skin from turning a dashingly handsome bronze. But now what? Walk away and miss an opportunity to talk to a pretty girl? Papa Wolf would be so disappointed. So the better option would be to just throw out my towel, lie down, and strike up a conversation? Knowing me, the icebreaker would be something along the lines of, “so thanks for rubbing me down, that was great.” Somehow I don’t think that will end well.

Situation C: I ask an unattractive female stranger to apply sunscreen to my back.

Possible Outcome #1: she declines

My skin burns while I find a nicer unattractive girl to rub lotion onto my back.

Possible Outcome #2: she accepts

Yada yada yada… Ugly babies.

So what’s a poor boy to do? Except to sing for a rock ‘n’ roll band, that is.

(cough)

Anyway, I’ve been lubing myself up for the better part of two weeks now, but it’s still not easy. Doing the shoulders and lower back is a cinch, but that whole middle region of no-man’s land is in constant danger of burning. The best I can do is dab lotion on the very tips of my fingers, reach as far back as possible, and pray. Some desperate finger-clawing-for-that-last-inch-of-skin always ensues before all the white can be rubbed in, but hey—it’s worked out fine so far. Time, effort, patience, and the occasional mirror is all it takes.

Best of all: no more awkward moments or ugly babies for me.

Life is good.

JHW

Language-Barrier Haircuts

Sun’s out guns out—because at 33°C, it’s finally warm enough to put away the sweatshirt and opt for a tank top, flipflops, and all the finer things in life. That’s right, after heading south through nearly all of the Balkans and pseudo-Balkans (here’s looking at you, Slovenia), I managed to find some sun. Croatia, Serbia—you were both just too damned cold and rainy. And while I managed to get weird in Belgrade for a while, and even got an opportunity to practice reading some Cyrillic (plus or minus a few letters of the Russian alphabet), I got tired of it being 13°C with a consistent mist of gloom. On a side note, I’m sure the weather contributed to this, but a disproportionately high percentage of the population dressed like they were going to a Nirvana concert; between the infrastructure and the people, Belgrade felt eerily similar to the early 90’s.

Oh—also, to you Fahrenheiters out: there don’t worry about trying to do the calculation, just interpret 13°C as “Boston in April right before all the girls suddenly get prettier and start to wear sundresses.” Glad we cleared that up.

Right. So as you might have guessed, or—more likely—weren’t even thinking about, it was tank weather (read: “best weather”) in Morocco as well, but not quite as socially acceptable to dress as such. And despite my enthusiasm for living in the grey area of social acceptability, being underdressed in a predominately Muslim country seemed too tactless—even for someone like me. I hope you’re not too surprised, because I feel like some of you probably are.

But putting this where-are-you-going-with-this-train back on track, part of warm weather means that it’s too hot for the “fro”, and that it has to “go” (this is my hair-stance during winter months as well, actually, so really I just needed a haircut). However, I’m a long ways away from my go-to barber (shout out to friend/roommate/Italian Nick Fasano), and almost as far away from one that speaks English. This, boys and girls, is a situation that can get a little dangerous.

Now, I’m all for rolling the dice every now and then, but there are a few things in life that you probably shouldn’t leave up to chance. With services especially, it pays to do your homework and make sure you have the right person for the job. To name a few areas: automotive repair, lawsuits, and circumcision—you can’t just hire the first person you find off the street. That said, some things grow back, and experience tells me that there is a category of services where you can test your luck without too much risk. Sometimes you win, and sometimes you crap out, but what a rush! Though it’s a very specific type of haircut, I believe that language-barrier-haircuts fall into this category. I could even go so far as to argue that this would be a great title for the category as a whole, but I won’t bore you with my insightful and intelligently articulated arguments on the subject.

So anyway, today I received my first—and last—Macedonian haircut. I say “last” because I doubt I’ll ever be in Macedonia needing a haircut again, and not necessarily because it was a bad cut. Quite the opposite, being the first haircut I’ve received from someone besides a roommate in roughly two years (Nick, if you’re reading this, I’m so sorry you had to find out this way), I was pleasantly surprised. The result was impressive, given that I had no way of explaining to my barber what I wanted other than pointing at my head with a scissoring motion. Then again, he basically gave me the same haircut that he had himself, and he cut me twice while he gave me a shave. But hell, you get what you pay for, and for someone as cheap as me the price was right.

So you’re probably wondering what I’m getting at here, and—per usual—what my point is. Sadly, it’s really just more of a life update: the weather is warm, I can wear tank tops again, and I left behind hundreds of little pieces of me for Macedonia to remember me by. Also: I’m going to Greece tomorrow, so if anyone knows Greek, now would be a great time to teach me. Word.

Happy trails,

JHW

Everything You've Ever Heard About Slovenia is True

I don’t have any negative feelings about this country. I didn’t know what to expect though, so quite frankly, it was a surprise. And not a terrifying surprise like, “Surprise! I’m pregnant!”, but the way better surprise like, “No, I just packed on a few pounds”.

Weird analogy? Mildly inappropriate? Not something that anyone has ever actually told me or you? Probably. But regardless, let’s get back to the topic at hand here: Slovenia.

Basically, everything you’ve ever heard about Slovenia is true. I won’t go into details. If you haven’t heard anything about Slovenia, that’s fine too; just read on and watch your wildest dreams come to life.

Oh Slovenia. Sweet, sweet Slovenia. What's in a name? That which we call Slovenia, a tiny, almost-landlocked country, by any other name would smell as sweet.

…But would it, really? Never.

I’ve created a list of the top 8 reasons why I like Slovenia. Consider this to essentially be a Buzzfeed article, or a 2^nd Grader’s class report; I consider them to be almost synonymous. However, while they say a picture tells a thousand words, I unfortunately am still struggling to sift through hundreds (and counting) of RAW photos on a netbook meant to do little more than word processing. So for the time being, I’ve decided to shoot for a thousand words instead and let that imagination of yours do the work. As of right now, I’m at a little over 300. Let’s get crackin’.

What, you haven’t taken a ride on the imagination train since elementary school? Time to fire up your engines, boys and girls, because it’s about to get Slovene.

1) Bathrooms are free

To clarify, I’m referring to the fee that is charged for using many of the “public” restrooms in Europe/Asia/anywhere except the US. Apparently Slovenia doesn’t believe in charging you to pee, because I did not encounter any fees, anywhere. You’re probably saying to yourselves, “But Jason, why is this your number one reason for liking Slovenia so much?” And to that, I have a strong rebuttal: because getting charged 1.50 Euros every time I had to use the toilet in Venice was a real pain in the ass.

…Clearly I’m not above poop jokes. Sorry, I’m not sorry.

2) Slovenians love the letter ‘J’

Much like the rest of my blog, this also probably doesn’t make much sense out of context—just follow along. I’m not quite sure how or why this came to be, but somehow when ye olde Slovenians decided to adopt the Latin alphabet to write their language, they said to one another “Dude, this letter ‘J’ is really the shit.” And so it became that every fifth word would contain a (silent) ‘J’. Maybe it’s just me, but I believe it’s been completely underutilized in the English language; as my newest cousin, Jeff, recently pointed out to me (shout out to Cousin Megan for marrying him), the game Scrabble only contains one ‘J’ piece. Just one, people. One. Maybe I have too much affection for the letter, but without it, I just wouldn’t be the same person.

3) Burek

Choo chooooo. Next stop: imagination-ville. Suppose you had a very buttery and flakey croissant, which was filled with meat and/or cheese, and shaped somewhat like a cinnamon roll. You would have burek, and you would forever be happy. Sadly, you don’t have it, because you are not in the greater Balkan region. I, however, have been surviving largely on this piece of heaven for most of my meals.

4) Rollerblading is making a comeback

Although it’s just as likely that it never left. Quite frankly I don’t think it makes a difference if it just came, or has been here for decades—rollerblading is here to stay. It may be more taxing, more inconvenient, and more dependant on high-grade road surfaces than biking, but god is it cool. Leave it up to the Slovenians to pick up the one piece of 1994 we should never have left behind.

5) Potable tap water

It’s the little things, people. I don’t want to get Giardia from my tab water, and Slovenia isn’t about to give it to me. For that, I am glad.

6) The radio only plays music from my prime

And by that I mean the 1980’s—the best 12 days of my life. As I don’t have a walkman or a car here though (I’m not sure where else people can conceivably listen to the radio), I’ve only heard it during bus trips. That said, it’s been a delicious mix of 1980’s throwbacks and the occasional club hit dubbed in Slovene; I always knew Pitbull was Slavic at heart.

7) It rains a lot

It’s really, really green. Literally. The tourism folks are pretty proud of the fact that 60% of the country is covered in forest. Now, the rain might be a little frustrating to the layperson, but it feels rather Oregon-esque to me—60 degrees and raining in June. Perfect.

8) I don’t feel like I’m always about to get ripped off

While I do miss haggling, I don’t miss anyone telling me that they are giving me the “friend price”. Moreover, maybe it’s because I’m just as pale as everyone else here, but cab drivers are much less forthcoming than they were in Morocco. Weird.

Also: English is widely spoken, and it’s a beautiful, easily accessible country. It looks like I’m a few words short of that 1000 word mark though, so I’ll end this with a fitting quote that most Americans know:

“Go West, young man, go West and grow up with the country…And then keep going West 10,000 miles, take a left at Budapest, and stay right at the fork on highway A1.”

-Horace Greeley

Happy trails,

JHW