Introduction: Backpacking Through Europe

On April 18th, 2012, I departed the United States to embark on a trip to mystical lands of afar. It was to be the traditional, soul-searching, rite-of-passage journey of backpacking through Europe. I was gone for twenty-three days, traveled alone and visited the following places:

• London (UK)
• Paris (France)
• Amsterdam (Netherlands)
• Munich (Germany)
• Florence (Italy)
• Siena (Italy)
• Cinque Terre (Italy)
• Padova (Italy)
• Venice (Italy)
• Milan (Italy)
• (Can you tell how much I love Italy?)

I returned on May 11th, 2012. It would be futile to attempt to sum up the experience in a single word or sentence or blog post. In an effort to share the adventure (and digitally document it for my own sake), I have planned to make one blog post for each day of the trip. I kept a journal with me and made daily entries to recap my activities, feelings and discoveries. The posts I will be writing on this blog will be combinations of transcriptions of my journal entries mixed with post-analysis reflections and relevant pictures. 

These blog entries will likely be interspersed with general posts containing my observations that may not be specific to a single place or experience. For example, I made several notes in a variety of places I visited about Europe and bottled water. I will not discuss this subject in just Day Three of London, for example, nor will I repeat it in Day Seven of Paris and Day Ten of Amsterdam as that would be redundant. Instead, I will try to give subjects like these that are applicable to more than one place I visited their own separate, independent posts.

The trip was well-planned; I did not have the luxuries of time or money to travel from place to place based on sudden whims. Most of my train ticket reservations were bought in advance and my accommodations booked weeks prior to correspond with a master itinerary I had arranged. I did have a Eurail Global Pass that granted some freedom, however, as I had nearly unlimited rail travel for almost all of the countries I visited. I used CouchSurfing for my visits to Tuscany and Padova. For London, I stayed with relatives that I hadn't seen since I was about five. For all other places, I stayed in hostels. Every night was a unique experience, regardless of who I stayed with or where I stayed.

So, with all the preliminary details out of the way, let's get this kicked off! Here, we start with the day I bought my Osprey Porter 46L backpack from REI:

(Above) Feeling pretty excited! If the right-angle that my eyebrow forms in this picture doesn't say it, I don't know what does.

(Above) Aliya's half-worried, half-sympathetic glance suggests that perhaps I am too excited. (Any other theories are welcome via comment). Aliya is my sister (left).

I thought these were good pictures to start with as they show half of my trip: backpacking Europe (that's 50%). From here on out, future posts will be entered according to date, day x of the trip, and location.

Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy learning about my travels!

How the Information Age Accentuates Partisanship

There was a time when breaking news was, well, breaking news. Come to think of it, there was a time when news was, well, news! Decades ago, media outlets generated stories at digestible paces and delivered content that was worthy of being reported. First there were newspapers. Next came radio. Even with early television, information was disseminated from all of these sources in a balanced fashion.

Fast-forward to today: wake up and smell the internet. We are now served 24 hour news networks with a generous side of bias. We are fed instantaneous status updates from family, friends, strangers, celebrities, politicians and others through micro- and non-microblogging services like Twitter and WordPress. Mass communication by people we ordinarily wouldn't see on television has been made possible by websites like YouTube. In short, we are bombarded by information. We are citizens of the Information Age.

Imagine what it must be like to be a politician. The avalanche of information that constantly surrounds you ultimately translates into a bunch of noise. What stands out from the noise? Only the most flashy and attention-grabbing stories and updates. Usually, this means that they are exaggerated. When making a political decision, you take into account current events (but only the ones that stand out from the noise - aka, the most flashy ones). However, the Information Age has turned current events into events that are only current for a short time. Here's the result: your political decisions are influenced by exaggerated news stories that only last for, at most, a few days.

A brief example to illustrate this vortex of ever-changing information is how long it has taken to select a Republican presidential nominee to run against Barack Obama. For several months, the front-runners of the Republican party alternated between Michelle Bachmann, Herman Cain, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Ron Paul, Rick Perry, and others. Never before have I observed such sharp and frequent swings in popularity between candidates. The first major primaries were all won by different candidates. It's only recently that Mitt Romney has a de facto spot with the nomination, and who knows how long that's going to last.

The oscillation in popularity between Republican candidates is reminiscent of stock market volatility. These are both driven by the same motivations: confidence. Investments in candidates are like investments in companies: they are akin to change based on new information. With the Republican candidates, there was either a new scandal, a new plan, a new idea, a new faux pas, or a new "Oops" reported daily, sometimes hourly. This new information resulted in shifting confidence from one candidate to another, and that explains why the political spotlight for Republican candidates had a different occupant from day to day. This is an inexorable byproduct of the Information Age.

With that example presented, return to what it must be like to be a politician. Keeping up with this hurricane of information coming from a thousand different sources would mean constantly adjusting your position on a multitude of issues. This is impractical, as you would barely have time to breathe. And remember, when defining your position, you have to think about your colleagues, your home district, your reelection, your lobbyists, and your checking account. With new, ever-changing information presented to you at frenetic paces, how do you go about keeping your political views straight?

The answer: partisanship. The Information Age has placed our politicians in a sea of chaos. They are tenuously walking planks on seemingly sinking ships. If they fall, they will be consumed by surrounding issues like racism, class warfare, economic and financial crises, international threats, social stability and political scandal.

Adhering to partisanship takes the onus off of politicians because they don't have to think as hard. They join their fellow partisans and hold on for dear life to the most extreme principles of their political dogmas. This gives them a sense of stability. Otherwise, if they were to sit down, critically examine their own views and do some independent research, they would be overwhelmed. There is too much information - too much noise - that distorts our issues. With all of the things politicians have to worry about, there isn't enough time to form their own well-researched opinions on political and social issues. Partisanship allows them to have the image of having well-researched opinions, because all of their colleagues have these same views, and so everybody has the same views. But it's really a farce.

End transmission.

Partisanship and the American Identity

I’ve had the very good fortune of seeing a variety of different places. Since I was young, my parents traveled around and were kind enough to bring me along. I’ve been to both coasts of Mexico, the Caribbean, and several European countries, many of them being around the western Mediterranean.

During many of my travels, I’ve run into fellow Americans who were by chance taking a trip to the same country. It’s really cool when this happens. When I’m in a foreign state salivating at all of the rich cultural differences around me, it can be a nice change of pace to meet up with a countryman from home. Even though we are strangers to each other, we have at least one common trait: our American identity.

Sometimes I talk with Americans I stumble upon in foreign countries for a while, sometimes I don’t. Regardless of how our relationship progresses (if at all), we almost always view each other as Americans rather than Republicans or Democrats or some other member of a political party. Why? Because in a foreign state, we cling to raw similarities. If I’m backpacking through Italy and happen to meet someone from California, just our common citizenship is enough to spark a human connection. The Californian might have completely different political views, values, goals, and dreams than I, a Washingtonian, may have, but it doesn’t matter. And we don’t even talk about that stuff anyway. We talk about the journey, places we’ve visited, experiences we’ve had, and maybe a little bit of our lives back in the USA. But not usually about politics. The bottom line here is that we regard each other as Americans, because in a foreign state just our common citizenship is enough to forge a bond.

Here’s the kicker. Currently, in the United States, we are in a foreign state. I don’t mean “state” like a country, I mean “state” like a political climate. Where’s the prosperity? The progress? The economic well-being? The social harmony? This isn’t the America I’m familiar with. Why? Because our country has been ravaged by partisanship, corrupted with extremist views, and ideologically split down the middle like Berlin in the Cold War.

If we – citizens and Congress – can recognize that our country’s state of affairs is foreign due to reckless partisanship, we can realize that our common identity of being American is the starting point to returning to harmony (or at the very least parity). Being American also means having an interest in America. My interest may be different than yours – perhaps you think helping other countries is in America’s interest, perhaps I think adopting a non-interventionist policy is in America’s interest – but if we recognize first that we’re running the same race, perhaps we can get out of this foreign state, kick out the demagogues and demand sensibility in politics. When we do, we can do our precious liberty justice by embracing similarities and respecting differences. To me, that’s what being American is all about. 

Phone, E-mail, Awkward Pauses and Humanity

Frequently, I'll browse websites for products and services. Occasionally, I'll have a question about the product or service. As often as possible, I will call rather than e-mail in hopes of getting my question answered. I prefer a phone call because I'm more likely to forge a real human connection, even if it's brief. I follow this same preference of communication with my friends, because most of the time my friendships are strengthened by stream-of-conscience phone conversations rather than perfunctory e-mails.

Here's the thing. In e-mail correspondence, people are generally brief, to-the-point, and professional. Cold. Part of this is laziness, part of this is e-mail etiquette. There is very little chance of discussing anything besides the purpose of the e-mail (to plan a date, to get confirmation of an event, to get a simple question answered, etc.).

But in phone correspondence, the possibility of a genuine human connection is much more viable. One of the principal pillars of phone etiquette is to avoid awkward pauses, silences and lulls. The conversation should always be flowing. When people follow this, more words are said to fill the air and avoid silence. When more words are said, there's more of a chance that commonalities can be discovered between the people having the conversation. When commonalities are found between people, there is a connection.

True, sometimes people are just as short and professional on the phone as they are in e-mail. And that's not bad, because it's another way to avoid awkward pauses: say what needs to be said and get off the phone. However, in e-mail correspondence, there is little possibility of the human connection at all. There is no need to say anything extra because there's no pressure to keep a live conversation going. You can take as long as you want to respond, and when you do, all you have to do is address the basic purpose of the e-mail.

In an e-mail, you're typing with a name through text. In a phone conversation, you're speaking with a person through voice/speech, and it's a live conversation. The former is almost devoid of real human interaction. The latter makes human interaction more possible.

IMPACT: With the advent of electronic communication, e-mail correspondences are ubiquitous. I think that "shoot me an e-mail" is more often said than "give me a call." This means that the aggregate number of human connections is arguably shrinking, which is not good for humanity. So next time someone gives you their business card, try dialing their phone number instead of querying their e-mail. You just might make a connection.