A Young Person's Guide To Hitting The Road In Style

Here's the lowdown. I have just returned, remarkably still alive, from an incredible trip through Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia and Greece. A lone ranger of a best friend, complete with an entirely unprecedented mohican, decided to plan, fund and stick by this daring trip by my side.

James Rothney. The man who made the bold move to hit the road with me. 

In the weeks before our departure, we heard often that seventeen was too young to be undertaking such a trip. Perhaps we would be mugged, murdered, or, worst of all, unable to book accommodation.

Yet here we are, safely home.

A strong element preventing people from realizing their potential to see the world outside their front door is fear. Fear of the unknown, of leaving their steady financial bubble, of the types of people they will encounter in certain destinations.

Here is a guide for young people wanting to visit new places for themselves. A guide which could help you to become fearless.

This section is home to some vital tips I wish someone had talked us through prior to the big journey. Often crafted through unfortunate personal experience, these pointers will ensure you have a safe and satisfying adventure, without making the same mistakes as us!

• Don't trust train timetables and routes planned in advance online. The information you get about European rail transport on the internet is often misleading, especially in Central and Eastern Europe, where funding for railway maintenance is seemingly almost non-existent, and much less of a damn is given about your convenience.

Seriously, only trust the information you get at the train station itself. Or you'll end up like us:

•In need of a night out and lacking funding? Simply strapped for cash? Save yourself a considerable amount on feeding yourself by grabbing something a little lighter on your savings. James and I found that some winning budget options include:

Instant rice, noodles, and pasta   are easy to make, quick to cook and seemingly cheap everywhere.

Croatian bakeries are renowned for their delicious budget food. The man depicted was fined for giving away free bread..

Bakeries not only offer an interesting variety of delicious local foods, but also cost a considerable amount less than eating out at a restaurant. Individual pizza slices, huge and at around 50p a pop, were the way forward when trying to keep a close eye on funds in Croatia.

Hostel Kitchens actually contained enough communally available ingredients to rustle up a decent meal without having to spend a penny. Just scour the cupboards and hope it's yours to take!

•Staying safe is essential as a young tourist. Your risk taking reputation is seen by some as an easy target for taking advantage of. So, when hooking up with people you don't know already, make sure you have a public meeting place to avoid running into getting trouble. Ultimately, taking this precaution means that you won't feel under threat whilst mixing with others abroad.

A couple of these guys wanted to chill out with us in Serbia, so we arranged a public meeting place at Belgrade Arena. Check out the evening we had over there!

•Before entering any country for any length of time, know the conversion rate. This will help you budget, and ensure you avoid being ripped off, as we were by a Macedonian taxi driver who managed to make us withdraw £210 of Macedonian Denar for a journey he offered at £50.

Never trust these tricky individuals when you're travelling. Not that I'd let a personal vendetta influence the advice..

Here are some memorable moments from our underaged venture through Eastern Europe.

Night Train Supernova
My first ever night train was a mesmerizing and unusual experience. It was just two days after landing at Zagreb airport and beginning the fearsome feat of going out alone into Eastern Europe. Already hungry for more adventure, we found ourselves leaving the rugged charm of Zagreb behind for the allegedly more relaxed and easygoing beach setting of Split.

The journey time shouldn't have been anywhere near nine hours. However, with an average train speed speculated by a local shopkeeper to be around 35 km/h, we would have to work with what we had.

Opting to keep ourselves safe from bag snatchers, James and I chose to sleep in four hour shifts. I was quite content with drawing the sunrise slot. It meant I could stay awake and marvel at the dawn with my headphones firmly on a perfect playlist for the moment.

The sleepless nature of a nine hour night train journey allowed for glimpses of rare beauty through the Croatian mountains caught between Zagreb and Split.

Just as the sun crept it way over the mountains, "Champagne Supernova", an Oasis classic, chose just the right time to narrate a perfect little moment, established as the warm hue of the sun spilled its way over the mountaintops and out into the dull blue canvas of an early morning sky.

Balcony Bliss
See above for the sublime rustic surroundings to our hostel balcony in Split, Croatia.

An unexpected rule of thumb was established by James and I on our travels - if a hostel has a balcony, you're going to have a smashing time there. Our balcony in Sarajevo was jam-packed with beers, cockroaches, and a vast array of great characters such as this creative rapper , However, the balcony revellers in Hostel Ana, Split, are the most memorable.

I'd give an arm to once again spend time chatting and drinking beers in the cooling shade of the canopy with the seemingly endless network of family that own the hostel. Not to mention some of the open minded and unanimously party-loving crowd of various visitors. People we spent hours just kicking back and enjoying the scenery with include:

Marco: Finnish maverick with definite weak spot for women, and who owned the world's first mobile phone to come with a camera while working for Ericsson. Ended up coming with us to Bosnia and Serbia!

Pedro: Self-professed Brazilian Badboy living in London. Constantly cracking jokes, a really hilarious and genuine guy who won't hesitate to make fun out of anything possible.

Matilde, Marie and Marue: Trio of bubbly French girls who always seemed to have bought every ingredient the supermarket had to offer for their  mealtime picnics.

Costa Rican Freddie: Hilarious guy who we spent several hours hanging out and having a deeply interesting political conversation with very late at night, before he proudly announced around 4am that there was a local girl texting him claming that she was waiting for a quickie. I've never seen a man leave more promptly in my life!

Last Man Standing

After spending an evening drinking our hostel's own supply of Rakija (a concentrated spirit), it felt right to settle down for a rare snooze. Yet the night had other plans for me, and after some crafty convincing from a Parisian girl called Marie, it was time to head out for yet another night. Sneaking our way onto one of the floating clubs based on the Belgrade danube, we were treated to a night of heavy (if obnoxiously loud) house music and a continuous flow of drinks.

Belgrade is home to some cracking nights out clubbing.

Although some of our group ventured back to the hostel, a fantastic four emerged victorious over the club closing time. We kept on dancing on the danube deck outside to the distant echo of more hardcore venues which allegedly kept going until 9am.

During our continuous partying on the Danube's banks, we noticed that this guy looked lost and confused. He kept offering to drive the girls home, before asking us if we had a car he could use! We agreed to some snaps with the poor bloke.

As the sun rose over the bridge that had guided us on our way to the clubs, we met other revellers still desperate to dance who continued to join our seemingly endless circle of movement well into the morning after the night before. Belgrade's skyline was the perfect backdrop to our own personal rebellion against closing times.

Appreciating the view. Nothing new there.

Making our way back to the hostel well into the following morning. A beautiful, crisp day for it too!

Here we have a list of everything obtained free of charge during our trip. If you are an adventurous type, you too can take advantage of the fact that the best things in life are free!

Sam Three hefty chunks of complimentary restaurant bread. Fed lovingly to an alarmingly large flock of hungry pigeons.

This particular feat made me feel like Robin Hood, so I made sure to continue the tradition of 'bread borrowing' every time restaurant staff had their back turned throughout the holiday.

James Sketchy use of someone else's shampoo left unattended in the showers of our Zagreb hostel.

Sam Impressively shaped large beer mug, actually a gift from a flustered bar worker who wanted to convince us to leave so that she could close the premises for a night.

James Asked to keep a Mythos beer branded ashtray to a Greek kebab shop owner, who was clearly amused by the request and gave James a brand new one free of charge.

Both Night in a hotel room! No, we didn't do a runner, but owners of a hotel in Thessaloniki were convinced we had already paid our room fee for the night. This never occurred.

Sam Meal in a Greek sandwich restaurant. Again, the manager insisted that James had already paid for my food and that I should start eating before it went cold. No money had exchanged hands.

Many thanks for reading! Make sure to stay tuned, I'll be making more posts for young people who want to craft their own adventures. 

Madness is Misunderstood - A Fresh Outlook on Mental Health

It's no secret that people with a mental illness are consistently ostracized, misunderstood and labelled as society's lepers by everyone from the misinformed public, to the media and entertainment industry.

Personally, this doesn't surprise me in the slightest. It is an unfortunate side-effect of a society desperate to appear organised and well-informed that anything it doesn't properly understand is seen as threatening and socially unacceptable.

Need evidence? Here are a list of things that have been demonised, outcast, or made taboo at some point in history because the world hasn't understood them properly:

•Homosexuality
•Racial equality
•Gender equality
•Atheism
•Tattoos
•Countless Religeous Beliefs
•Disability
•Unemployment
•The Poor
•Homelessness
•Street Art
•Jazz

Mental Illness is just another of those things that is just too complex and controversial for the world to comprehend yet, although 20% of us will supposedly suffer from one during our lifetime. Whereas, after many thousands of years of intensive research, we can understand that bacteria, viruses and fungi are the verified cause of physical illness, mental illness is an almost entirely new concept that divides the science community not only on how it works and the causes behind its occurrence, but also on how it should be treated. Here are some of the ways that we have historically attempted to deal with the awkward and sensitive existence of mental health issues:





Panorama exposes the disgusting physical abuse of mentally and physically handicapped patients of UK "care home" Winterborne View

Mental health treatment today is a far cry from the dingy and dark corridors of  institutions like the Danvers State Mental Asylum (pictured above), which darkly thrived on electric shock therapy throughout the 1950s, but met it's ultimate demise in 1992 when the doors closed for the final time. However, changes in psychiatry saw the number of people given medication for a mental health issue increasing by five times in the same period. Is therapy and understanding for mental health issues really improving, or are pharmaceutical companies influencing diagnoses and taking money treating the issues of your everyday person with drugs no more effective than placebos in treating the 'chemical imbalance' in the brains of those facing mental challenges?

Altering the chemical balance of the brain, and with it the state of mind of the patient,  is rife throughout the USA, the UK, and, in particular, New Zealand, as a  method of helping mental health patients cope with their issues. Seretonin and Dopamine (happy chemicals) levels are changed in the hope that they permanently adjust. The problem for me is that this does not always happen, leaving ordinary people who may not have had a problem in the first place dependant on an expensive pill, often lovingly crammed with side effects, in order to get through the day.

Some food for thought: Perhaps the term 'mental illness' is inherantly flawed, leading the public towards a certain opinion on the people in society who have thought processes deviating from the norm. Tweets about "#mentalhealth"



Just as a footnote, I've started working with local mental health charity SAFE (Suicide Awareness For Everyone) as a committee member creating materials for, organising and carrying out events promoting awareness for mental health issues, and how they are both common and manageable. Advice and support is also offered. Here's a poster I have made as part of the whole shenanigan; of course if anyone can actually make the event, feel free!

Worldwide Wanderlust: How Global Exploration Became The Planet's Most Precious Pastime

Whilst taking full advantage of finally being able to book my interrail tickets, I began to ask myself a particularly deep and meaningful question.

It went something like this:

What drives people to travel?

It seems that the human race has developed an innate need to push our physical and, indeed, financial boundaries to the limit by exploring the huge variety in lifestyles out there. Perhaps this kind of terribly odd behaviour would have been reserved for solely the most determined of explorers in the past, but since the Twentieth Century, the game has changed. Ever expanding trade routes, affordable air travel, and eventually the dawn of content sharing Web 2.0 have allowed even curious, money-tight youngsters such as myself a viable opportunity to scour out the furthest corners of the world. Incredible, if you ask me.

Marshall McLuhan wrote "Understanding Media" in 1964, noting how new technologies were making content globally available within as little as a day. Also predicted a system like the internet thirty years in advance. Genius.

European route map of both EasyJet and Ryanair, showing that even travellers on the tightest of budgets have access to a ridiculous variety of destinations!

Conveniently enough, I believe that the motives for travelling can be placed into three simple yet deeply curious little categories. Here goes:

Escape
Unfortunately, a conventional Western life is not as boundless and freed by capitalism and democracy as we'd like to believe. We feel in touching distance with the perfect, equal and limitless life, yet are bound by societal expectations. Things like as getting married, settling down, having children, behaving in an acceptable fashion, abiding by set rules, passing exams, and obtaining the most prestigious or high paying job role.

The pace and pressure of everyday, conventional existence can leave us feeling in chains; like we are not reaching our full potential as people.

The thrill and limitless adventure of travelling the world seem almost destined to be the antidote to this problem. I rest assured as not the only person who feels an incredible sense of freedom and endless possibility when out in the world experiencing new places, people, food, culture, and, perhaps most importantly for us Brits, weather!
Such change in routine is always something welcome to the endless hardworking folk out there in the world in need of an escape.

If you're anything like me, the sensation of getting away from old routines and exploring the world will set you free as a person. Which is always a bonus.

Instinct

Affordable air travel and the unstoppable growth of tourism as an industry worldwide has seen the travel bug take hold of the world on a phenomenal scale, with more than 900 million international travel journeys being undertaken each year (Source: World Health Organisation)

Yet even in centuries gone by, where only the wealthiest of nobles could take sail and see the world, people were genuinely prepared put their lives on the line to see even the darkest corners of the world.

Robert Falcon Scott - The highly esteemed British explorer who died as part of a team attempting to be the first men to reach the South Pole. He scoured the untouched landscape of the Antarctic simply because he could, and gave his life in the process.

The inquisitive nature of the human race has meant that we fight to find somewhere tranquil, isolated, and untouched by other people and the Western influence that they bring, an influence which many of us are trying to escape. Finding such an 'untouched' place is an art, since the more people escape to somewhere, the more 'ruined' it can become. Take Bali for example:

Scenes at this once idyllic Indonesian paradise. Curiosity of Australian  holidaymakers  has transformed the area into a seedy tourist sprawl.
This picture accompanied the harrowing headline "3 Killed In Bali Nightclub Bombs"

Our natural desire to use our great ability and potential as human beings to see the world has its benefits and its drawbacks. I believe that any travellers should take great care to absorb the culture and traditions of anywhere they are visiting; take it in their stride, as per se. Either that, or face the unstoppable spread of a corporation and greed driven landscape worldwide, which, deep down, nobody wants.

Possibility

Let's face it, when booking a nice little excursion abroad, we all think of everything we could get up to whilst we are out there, be that swimming, relaxing, scuba diving, drinking, clubbing, building campfires, safaris, sightseeing, suntanning. Hard not to get excited about, isn't it?

Knowing that we will have so many varied, fun activities at our disposal to creates part of the incredible atmosphere of anticipation surrounding holidays. Travel companies take full advantage of this. Take Thompson, for example:

The dream-like, iconic 'endless swimming pool' effect pioneered by Thompson Holidays advertisements give us this sense of adventure and possibility that makes us itch to go travelling.

The idea that we can create our ideal routine through piecing together a travel plan gives us a powerful sense of control, something which many of us are guilty of enjoying a little too much. 

I hope you enjoyed the read. Any feedback would be much appreciated, thanks!

Sam Kersey, Student Culture Junkie

http://www.facebook.com/Skurzey
http://www.twitter.com/samkersee

The Great Escape

It may seem farfetched, ridiculous even.
But I have a masterplan which I am completely prepared to make a reality.

So here I am, in the current, present bubble that is reality. Sitting here, comfortable in bed, yet somehow still bitterly cold from the increasingly ridiculous entity that is British weather.


A more grounded part of me loves my life here in England. I've grown up in a familiar and supportive family that happily provide me everything a person could ask for to live comfortably. I also have some fantastic characters for friends, and thoroughly enjoy embarking on the inconceivable kind of misadventures with them that you do when you're an A Level student sparring with a formidable workload.

This book captures everything that I aspire to be.

Yet somehow, my life has steadily become more and more focused on the beautiful and buzzing universe that exists outside the UK. Less interested in participating in the expected lifelong grind to get a high paying job, spend my whole life working at something I'm not entirely sure I enjoy. All in an industrialized, upper class, and restricted nation. Here, opportunities for adventure and cultural enlightenment are present, but already seeming minimal. Seventeen years here, chipping and grinding away at the school system as a product of society seem quite enough. Call me foolish and misguided, but I'm ready to move on.

I first caught the travel bug at a very early age, when my parents decided to return to Asia (after having lived and travelled there for five years) with my brother and I to visit Vietnam. I was 11 years old and remember vividly every moment of that trip, because it was such a sensory adventure, and so different to anything I had ever experienced before. Soaking in the bustling sense of vibrancy in Saigon made life itself seem so much more engaging and purposeful.

Not to boast, but I was a fortunate child. In later years, family holidays spanned Thailand, India, Morocco, Italy, Spain, Greece, Romania and the USA. I felt like the world was at my feet the whole time we were away.

More recently, I had the oppurtunity last summer to fulfill a driving ambition of doing charity work abroad by being part of a five-man school expedition to Tanzania in order to teach at a school and work at a disabled crafts workshop called Neema Crafts. Travelling so far without my family into such an unknown world was a phenomenal experience, and one during which my masterplan was created. I loved the experience of working with people in a fresh new setting so much that I decided that this was definately what I wanted to do as a job.

I will never forget the rabble of Saigon motorbikes that whole families occasionally piled onto, obeying no  discernible laws of the road. Accidents galore. Being among it is as terrifying as it is a thrill ride.

Team Tanzania at Mikumi National Park. Honestly such an incredible day!

I plan to complete my A Levels, take a journalism course at university and usher my way into work experience at a forward thinking media company, after which I hope to become a travel journalist.

As I said.

It may seem farfetched, ridiculous even.
But I have a masterplan which I am completely prepared to make a reality.