The Idea — How It All Began
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The idea of change was born in the fall 2013. During the time when I lived in Plzeň, the beer capital city of Czech Republic. Plzeň became my home for nearly 5 years after I moved from my hometown Karlovy Vary — beautiful spa city on the west of CZ, but difficult to find a job and almost no cultural activities.
In 2013 we started with my friends attending and creating Couchsurfing meetings in Plzeň. It can be really motivating experience when you have a passion for traveling or meeting other cultures. Even if you just want to get better in language skills — go for such a meetings! There is quite wide range of them as for example Couchsurfing, Meetup, InterNations, Erasmus, Language Exchange. Thanks to these meetings I improved my English and it also supported my passion for traveling and pushed me even more to realize my plan.
The idea was supposed to be just a longer trip, to see something else, meet people, learn new cultures, experience. It took me few months to save money, to sell things which I didn’t need anymore, and buy some equipment for the trip — backpack, new camera, hiking shoes, sleeping bag, and other stuff.
The more I was getting to the final point, enthusiasm grew as well and I started to talk about my great plans with my friends and family. At this point was really funny reaction from their side that it’s just a rant, empty talking in the air and that I’m the last one who would do this (quite close to reality :)..but it was even more encouraging!
On the beginning of 2014 I quit my job, apartment, packed and left for the journey.
The first big questions I had to deal with was:
How to travel as economically as possible?
Which destinations?
How to meet locals?
How get the best adventure?
The answer was — Couchsurfing and Hitchhiking!
Originally published at www.splinar.cz on September 22, 2015.
