Hop(e)ping through accomodations

Since I started traveling, time passes differently. It’s not divided, anymore, into weeks, but more into “how many days do I stay here?”, “when will I have the bus to my next destination?” and “how is the weather and when is the best time to visit places?”.

The last days were not Thursdays and Fridays, but days either with sun or with rain (during which I have time to rest, drink hot tea and stay under the blanket while listening to the concert of wind and rain 🙂). 

And it got me thinking: why don’t I share with you how it feels to hop from one accommodation to another. As you can imagine, I’m traveling on a budget and this means finding cheap and qualitative places – hostels or Airbnb.

Finding them is easy, I’m sure you know the drill: you either have a recommendation or you look online for good photos and reviews, you choose a place and you hope that the reality matches the pictures 🙂. Personally I like to pick places that are not too central because either the town is small and the center is a few streets away or you always have a bus that can take you downtown.

But what I love the most is arriving at the place. No matter if it’s a hostel or an Airbnb, it’s always a surprise. You never know the atmosphere, who you will meet there and how the days will pass. For example:

• you could be arriving to a place where people, for various reasons, don’t feel like socializing (thankfully I haven’t had too many of these experiences)  
• you could be arriving to a place where you exchange niceties (and travel experiences) with the host and with the guests
• OR … you could be arriving to a place where everything and everyone connects perfectly and you have the best stay

And yes, of course, when the 3rd option happens I am as happy as a kid that gets a Kinder with surprise 🙂. Because that happiness comes from meeting different people, from different cultures and with different ways of thinking and seeing that we all get along just fine.

During this (short) period of travelling I met a lot of beautiful people. Some were fellow travellers, some were digital nomads, some were locals. But when we sat down at the dinner table we all spoke the same language: the “curiosity” one with an accent of “kindness”. 

Imagine an evening with Asado (argentinian grill), with maybe 15 or 20 participants (half europeans and half argentinians) staying at the same table and getting along and joking like they were friends for years (although the europeans didn’t speak spanish too well and the argentinians didn’t speak english too well 🙃).

I’m leaving you with this image because it’s a rare one these days. We live in a divided society where there is no room for a middle way … and it’s not normal. The more I look around the more I realize the power education has on one’s capacity to work finding a middle way.  But about education … in another episode 🙃