alexmthinkstoomuch-blog

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Adventures in Istanbul

Flying back home to the sweltering state of Florida during Christmas last year, I noticed a banner for Turkish Airlines in Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson airport. Offering a free layover in Istanbul, I filed this in my brain attic for later reference. My initial interest in Istanbul was inspired by one of my favourite game series, Assassin’s Creed. In one of the games, the Italian born assassin Ezio Auditore travels to 16th century Constantinople (now Istanbul). Virtually traveling through the city during the game fascinated me, letting me experience this foreign land vicariously. As such, I marked it as a future place to visit.

While I was comparing flights to the U.K. for my May 2017 trip, I remembered the Turkish Airlines offer, and weighed the pros and cons against other airlines. What it came down to was a half-day layover in Boston, or a day layover in Istanbul with included lodging, Although I would be adding another four hours to the already eight hour flight to London, crossing another time zone, and losing more sleep, I decided that I should never pass up the opportunity to visit another country. With that, I purchased the $800 round trip ticket, and starting researching Turkey’s largest city.

My flight arrived at about 4:30pm local time, but I didn’t make it to the hotel until sunset. Jumping in a quick shower, I then went to the lobby determined to see the Hagia Sophia. Talking to the concierge about a taxi, a newlywed Croatian couple overheard my inquiry, and offered to let me share their Uber to the same location. After a 20ish minute drive, we made it to the base of the Hagia Sophia, and grabbed a bite to eat in the nearby Turkish street market. Baklava and Turkish coffee were shared over cross-cultural conversation and visits by friendly stray cats.

Despite the light rain that peppered the skies periodically, walking around historic Istanbul was unlike anything I had seen before. Having only been to Western Christian influenced countries, being in an Islamic nation offered a unique flavour of architecture, cultural practices, and conversation. The minarets connected to mosques signaled a time for prayer five times throughout the day, the markets served a blend of Mediterranean and Middle-Eastern delicacies, and the general demeanor of the Turkish citizens was nothing but friendly.

Knowing only enough Turkish to say “yes” and “friend,” I was counting on the non-American idea of stressing the importance of learning a second language to navigate. Fortunately, English is is widely spoken, so verbal interaction wasn’t an issue. Having another layover in Istanbul a week and a half later, I had a second chance at the end of my trip to explore during the daytime.

My flight back to Istanbul arrived at 4:30am, so by the time I got out of Ataturk airport (which is incredibly difficult to navigate), the sun was just rising. My bus tour didn’t start for another couple hours, so I somehow managed to buy a subway ticket in a Turkish-only kiosk, and hopped on the train going somewhere towards the inner city. Without a destination, I hopped off when I saw an area that looked interesting, and walked around for an hour or so. Managing to hit a few international Pokèstops along the way (yes, I still play Pokèmon Go!), the local environment was an interesting dichotomy to the sight seeing area I had visited the previous week. Dilapidated buildings and unkempt grassy areas dominated the area, but nothing was really dirty. I got the impression that the visual upkeep of this Turkish borough wasn’t a priority; however, that didn’t stop the locals from proudly displaying the flag of Turkey across their balconies all over the city. Though I was apparently there during a national holiday, it never seemed to me that the locals had anything but pride for their culture.

Despite having been awake for nearly 24 hours during my second leg of Istanbul investigation, the visit was a great experience. For the majority of my sentient life, I’ve been exposed to a great deal of anti-Muslim propaganda, and this trip offered a firsthand look into just what the Muslim culture is about. Without getting too preachy, I never felt unsafe or uncomfortable during my couple days in Turkey, and I believe others would feel the same. It’s all too easy with today’s sensationalized media coverage to lump an entire group of people into a single stereotypical degree of fanaticism; even if you don’t travel abroad, it doesn’t take much effort to educate yourself somewhat about another person’s worldview. As I’ve found in my limited travels, there are usually more similarities than differences, and it’s exhilarating for me to find the connections that I share with someone across the world. I aim to visit Istanbul again in the future, and spend more time among the sights and people, and highly recommend the trip if you ever get the opportunity!

[alexmthinkstoomuch-blog]

Travelogue Pt. 1

Although I started this blog slightly over two years ago, I’m feeling compelled to update it more routinely, as traveling has quickly become one of my favourite passions. When I last left London on my first solo trip abroad, I was determined to come back for a longer period of time.  A few months ago, I accomplished that goal, to an even bigger scale than previously imagined.

Before getting into that however, I feel that’s it’s helpful to provide a quick backstory on the events transpired since my last post. The company I was working for recently closed down, which made my plans to go full-time freelance musician/audio engineer in January 2018 come a little more quickly than anticipated. As a result, September was the first month of me being completely self-employed.

After a couple of weeks of fully freelancing, it became very apparent that working alone in my apartment and recording studio was not enough of a social stimulant to keep me in the right frame of mind. Countless hours spent agonizing over activities that I used to get blissful enjoyment from is making me re-evaluate my long term career goals, and finding what other passions of mine I can find solace in whilst doing the music thing. Naturally, traveling was a logical choice.

With that primer, now onto the fun stuff! In May, I travelled to Europe for two weeks, going from Istanbul, London, Cardiff, Manchester, and back to London, then Istanbul again.

It. Was. Great.

Now more confident in my ability fly solo (pun slightly intended) internationally, I was able to spend more time fully appreciating the different sights, sounds, people, and cultures. New friendships were made, new landmarks were experienced, and new ways of thinking proliferated. So, as a way to both catalogue my travels and experiences in one place, and inspire others to travel and share their stories, I’ll be writing about my life experiences, which have only been shaped for the better through travel.

*It appears that my writing has taken on a British-English flavour, so I’m just going to roll with it!

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I’ve been reading a lot about the Italian Renaissance lately, and have been really captivated by the idea of the “renaissance man.” In a nutshell, the concept entails being a person with many talents or areas of knowledge. While this is something that I think everyone should strive to be (at least to some degree), I hadn't really seriously pursued this until recently. So, I’m keeping a list of topics to do some research on:

Religion: Religion has really intrigued me since studying anthropology in college. Is there a God? is any one religion completely correct? To what degree are religions compatible with each other? How did the major religions originate, and what do their beliefs stem from? My own beliefs are inconsistent in many ways from the religion I was brought up in, but it’s something I am determined to get a foothold on, if only to better understand others. That, and it doesn’t hurt to know the main principles behind yours and others’ beliefs before you start casting them off, which is a growing problem in today's society.

Time: How time is perceived, how and when the universe originated. An interest brought on by watching Doctor Who!

Roman Culture: Arguably one of the greatest civilizations in history, what factors contributed to its rise and fall?

Economics: Taxes, health care, over-population, etc. These are huge issues today, and it always amazes me how little people actually know about them.

Transhumanism: To what degree is the modification of the human condition acceptable/moral?

Singularity: Specifically the technological singularity, which is the idea that eventually technology will advance to the point where artificial intelligence becomes smarter than human beings, and what that means for the future.

Architecture: How and why buildings look the way they do across various cultures, and what influences their transformation.

I don’t expect to become an expert in any of these fields, but I should at least have enough information to create an informed opinion when interacting with people. Now I just need to find people to help shape these opinions...

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“Not All Those Who Wander Are Lost”

While my previous mention of “aimless wandering” may first read as bleak and depressing, it’s actually quite blissful. I’ve had it engrained in me that everything has to have an end goal, a degree of finality, a purpose. As such, my thoughts and actions have reflected this mindset in trying to attach meaning to everything, and setting unrealistic goals. What this leads to, is a life filled with unnecessary stress, unattainable perfection, and uncomfortable headaches. At the opposite end of this spectrum lies this aimless wandering, where an intentional lack of planning allows for acting in the moment, without any regard towards future scheduling conflicts.

Structure isn’t a bad thing. Knowing when you need to be at work, when your next meal will be, or when you will see your loved ones again provides a sense of comfort that I think most human beings crave. In a nutshell, structure is what helps the world function. However, when you get to a point where the hours of the day need to be mapped out in order for things to get done, this structure can be all too confining. For me, the best way I could think of to escape these confines was to travel.

For most of my sentient life, I’ve been fortunate enough to travel. My parents consistently took my sister and I to cities outside of ours, and vacations were always something to look forward to. Travel offered an escape from normalcy; the foreign sights, sounds, and smells were all different from the ones that had already been memorized. After years of doing this, I became anxious and excited to explore all that the increasingly impressive cities had to offer. 

While in London, I met several others who had decided to travel on a global scale, many of whom were traveling solo. They had this same drive to explore, and weren’t concerned with such petty things as not having an agenda, or not knowing anyone around them. I don’t know many people who would just travel to another country on a whim, without having any real objectives other than pure enjoyment. It’s certainly a quality that I don’t see often in my day to day interactions. Then again, it doesn’t seem like this type of activity is often considered, let alone encouraged. 

Speaking in gross generalizations, it just doesn’t seem to me that the American population is at all concerned with taking time away from our youthful upbringing to be put towards foreign travel - and I don’t mean a cruise to Cancun to party with your buddies. Even “backpacking in Europe” seems to have somewhat of a stigma attached to it, implying that the traveler is running away from something, or trying to delay the inevitable nine-to-five job that we’re all supposed to look forward to. I’ll admit that I even partially bought into this stigma, which I now understand is complete rubbish. 

In my own (very limited) experience, I’ve found that other nationalities are far more accepting of this concept of wandering. Now it could just be that Europeans are so geographically close to one another that it’s not unlike an American going to another state - not really a big deal. Even then, there are still language barriers to be dealt with, and wildly different cultural practices (speaking here of the different European nations, not the southern US!). However, the majority of the people that I met while traveling on this past journey were Austrailian, and their flight to the U.K. made my eight hour flight look like a quick jog to the store. So it’s certainly not just a proximity based initiative. 

In my case, it took just over 4,200 miles of distance to separate myself from the patterns of habitual thinking. Sure, it was intensely intimidating realizing that I would be alone in a completely different part of the world, but it took that shock therapy of cross-continental displacement to begin to see things through a new looking glass. I had a broad list of things and places I wanted to see, but no real commitment to days or hours that these things needed to be completed by. While walking around the city, having no predefined route to traverse meant that at a moment’s notice, I could go in a completely different direction if something caught my eye. Had I been with others, this would have been slightly more problematic. 

These unplanned day trips also meant that when I met others, I didn’t have to worry about interrupting my own plans to spend time with them. This was perhaps the most gratifying part of my wandering, because I was finally able to be myself and act freely. Just playing it by ear meant that I couldn’t plan out my future actions, role-playing every possible scenario in my head in the hopes of getting things right if and when opportunities arose. There really is something to be said about living in the moment, as I don’t think I’ve ever acted so naturally.

While explorational traveling may not be a rite of passage for all, it’s a formative journey that tests what you’ve learned in an environment with ever-changing variables. As much as we may like to think it so, this is just something that mulling over a textbook simply cannot teach. Aimless wandering is the most freeing thing that I’ve done, despite not knowing my precise location. Because for the entire time I wandered, I knew right where I was.

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Adventures in London!

London is amazing! Although I only spent five days over there, it was more than enough time to solidify London as a city that I’ll visit many more times in the future. The positive, polite demeanor of the people, the ornate architecture, and the diverse cultural melting pot are just a few of the many contributing factors that make London my favorite city that I’ve visited. I think that the weather would take a little getting used to, but the occasional bursts of rain throughout the day isn’t too far off from a typical summer’s afternoon in Florida.

In typical tourist fashion, I hit most of the city’s largest attractions: Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, the Tower of London, Tower Bridge, the Shard, and Trafalgar Square to name a few. By the time I unpacked and got off of the London Underground downtown, it was already dark (sunset at 4:30pm), but I’ll never forget turning the corner and seeing Big Ben lit up from across the Thames. Big Ben has served as my computer and phone’s background image off and on for the past few years, and became synonymous with a dream to travel and explore what the world has to offer. After finishing a dinner of fish and chips, I ended my first night abroad by exploring the city on foot, visiting the local pub, and catching some shut eye back at the hostel.

The following morning began with a walking tour of downtown London, starting off in Green Park, passing Buckingham Palace and Downing Street, and ending near Westminster Abbey. Our tour guide Eddie recommended a nearby pub for lunch, where a group of us headed for some authentic English food. Our table of travelers hailed from many different countries, which made for the kind of multi-cultural conversation everyone should participate in as often as possible. Exchanging stories of where we had been and where we had hoped to go, four of us found that our itineraries consisted of the same attractions, and so we left with full stomachs towards Abbey Road and Baker Street. 

Now I’m not a big Beatles fan by any means, but it was great to see the place that influenced so much of the music that I listen to, and where one of my favorite performances was held. 221B Baker Street was another personal highlight of mine, being the home of fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, whose stories and way of thinking have had a large influence on me. Our gang of four parted ways from here, as I left to take in Big Ben for the second evening in a row. After a brief dinner downtown, I headed up towards Camden Town for the nightly pub crawl, where I again met up with several travelers from all over the world. The remaining hours of the night flew by, with good company and great conversation, and was a night that I’ll always remember. Meeting people that have the same idea of exploring the world without a strict schedule, and freely following wherever your heart takes you is a quality that I almost never come across, and it was immensely refreshing to see others with this mindset. 

For whatever reason, the Tube doesn’t operate at 3am. So after a 40 minute walk back to the hostel, I fell asleep almost immediately. Much of Wednesday was spent recuperating from the late night before, but the evening brought another great night of aimless wandering. With no one to please but myself, I trekked through the streets of London, heading in whichever direction seemed most pleasing at the time. 

Thursday was likely the busiest day of my trip by tourist standards, as it was to be my last full day in London. Beginning with a guided bus tour, I was able to see much more of London than if I had continued to travel solely on foot. Stopping at the Shard, I took two elevators to the 72nd floor to fully take in the view of the entire city. Since the weather was nice enough to hold back its rain clouds, the view allowed for a fully panoramic cityscape to be permanently stored in my brain attic (points to you if you get the reference there!). Next, I was off to the Tower of London: my first European castle, and hopefully only the start to an architectural interest I’ve held since first being read the stories of King Arthur. After seeing the crown jewels and a fully stocked knight’s armory, I set off again on the bus to head towards west London. 

I really didn’t see a whole lot of west London, as I believe it’s mostly residential, but I had to make a pilgrimage to the area’s local blue police call box, or Tardis as one properly versed in British pop culture might call it! Although I didn’t make it over to Cardiff to see the Doctor Who Museum, seeing this hidden-in-plain-sight tourist monument was a nice connection to a show that greatly accelerated my keen interest in British culture and care-free travel.

In the final hours before my flight back to the States, I walked around King’s Cross Station some more, and took in the last views of my first trip to another continent. While taking the Tube to London Heathrow Airport, I had already started making plans for my next visit, and made a mental note to do this kind of thing more often. 

Although it sounds like a daunting task, travel to a new place is an experience unlike any other. Especially in the case of solo travel, you gain valuable insight into the world around you, and learn more about yourself as a person. When you’re in another country, it doesn’t matter what career you have back home, how big your house is, or what kind of possessions you own. What does matter is your ability to interact and coexist with others, your resilience to challenges that may arise, and how you can learn from your experiences. As it turns out, my intentional disregard of planning things day by day was just what I needed to start breaking away from my warped mentality of needing to have everything planned. 

All in all, it was an amazing trip. I highly recommend paying a visit to London, and the trip is a lot easier than others may make it seem. So the next time you find yourself in a rut, in need of a vacation, or coming down with an insatiable sense of curiosity, consider travel abroad. Give it some thought, because for my next visit, I’m taking people with me!

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Thoughts From 35,000 Feet in the Air

While air transit is a source of intense apprehension for most, I’ve found that I quite enjoy flying. I discovered that the anticipation of a trip, no matter how big or small, is always worse than the flight itself, and this anxious anticipation usually dissipates upon arrival to the airport. Especially in the case of solo travel with only myself to worry about, there is a comfort in knowing that life is on hold until the plane has landed, and I feel obligated to take my phone off of airplane mode.

It’s almost as if earthly life is temporarily suspended while cruising above the clouds. While I can imagine a tense businessperson dreading the broken contact between them and their work, I’ve come to view airplanes as more of an airborne meditative vessel. Knowing that at least an hour or so will pass before I have to acknowledge my life on the ground provides the type of comfort that only introverts can fully appreciate.

While the single-serving people sitting beside me go about their business, the lull and hum of the engines and airstream outside provide just enough of an aural backdrop to accompany, but not interrupt, a period of mental clarity. Sure, the magnitude of this contemplative state ranges from flight to flight depending on what’s going on with my life at the time, but I can rely on at least a few moments of serenity regardless.

This particular flight from London to Atlanta has been no different, as the nine hour hang time has provided for a quick nap, an in flight movie, and time to process my trip to England. Being immersed in an entirely different culture for a week has given me a lot to think about, as travel will do. Combine that with my (mostly successful) attempt to avoid thinking about my life back home, and I feel like I’m finally starting to figure things out.

It’s not that I despise where I live, or where I come from, but I’ve known for a long time that there is more outside of the geographical comfort zone too many others build and entrap themselves in. I’m not yet ready to live in another country by myself, but that doesn’t mean that I’m going to disregard the different thought patterns and attitudes I’ve encountered and absorbed.

Touching down on the runway back home now, I’m determined to become more of a worldly person moving forward. The kind of person that only travel and a little bit of deep thought while 35,000 feet in the air can help you become.

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Transatlantic Travels: Day One

First day in London today! First day across the Atlantic on a larger scale. Although the sleep I had planned to get on the plane never happened, border crossing was a breeze, and the London Underground is easy to navigate- but I guess it helps when you're staying near the largest train station in London. After an extended power nap in my hostel bed (surprisingly comfortable, by the way), I took the Tube down to the Thames river, and took in the skyline that I've dreamed of seeing for so long. I couldn't help but don a childish grin as one of my many life goals was finally accomplished. Trudging through the rain, I strolled up to Trafalgar Square and Piccadilly Circus, making a mental note to come back and take some better pictures in the next day or two. I don't know where my travels will take me over the next few days, but I'm feeling like London has so much to offer. I don't know that I want to take time away from that by hopping on a train elsewhere. Everyone over here is surprisingly nice. I say surprisingly, because I've grown accustomed to the behaviors and actions of the stereotypical American, which I'm slowly realizing isn't how the rest of the world operates. But that's for a later discussion. I'm ending the night at O'Neill's pub next door, where the bartender's beer suggestion was spot on. Although it's a Monday, the atmosphere is vibrant and talkative, which provides a nice bookend to today's adventures. Oh, and lastly, a washcloth is called a "flannel" over here. Now wouldn't that be a good jeopardy question?

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The Start of Something

As I sit here in the Atlanta international airport, I am terrified. Anxiously awaiting the final moments until boarding call, I am about to embark on a five day trip to the United Kingdom. Alone. Sure, that makes it sound worse than it really is, but still, I can’t help being apprehensive about what the next few days will bring.

So yes, I am terrified. But underneath that unnerving, pervasive fright comes a kind of excitement that I haven’t quite felt before. The kind of feeling that this is just what a person in my position needs.

You see, I don’t have a bad life in the least. I have an endlessly supporting family, and a few close friends that I can always rely on. I’ve been fortunate enough to land a job right after finishing not one, but two college degrees. That, and I now live in a city where things actually happen. Despite all of that, my 26 year old self feels… unfulfilled.

A recent series of unfortunate events transpired, and made me take a long, hard look at where I’m at in life. Although these events were nothing catastrophically tragic, they were enough to knock down the weak pillars that my personal, professional, and private lives had teetered on for far too long.

Faced with the decision to either mope around and accept things the way they are, or fight for the life I dream of, I’m choosing the latter. It’s time to rebuild. To reinvent. To rise from the ashes, or any other proverbial motivational saying that people in high places seem to regurgitate towards people in low places.

So tonight starts a new beginning. One where I can say that I’m trying everything in my power to change my life for the best. The next few months will be tough, and everything may not work out in the best way, but damn it, I’m trying.

What better way to discover yourself than to fly 4000+ miles, to a city you’ve dreamed of, without any real plans, right?

Engage airplane mode.