It turns out that I’m something of a tombstone tourist.  I find the blend of history, art, and landscape architecture at cemeteries irresistible.  My imagination runs wild as I read the inscriptions on the graves and think about the lives the people buried there once led.  It’s a reminder that nothing in life is forever, and underscored the importance of living in the moment.  Different cultures treat the burial of &#91read more]

I wasn’t expecting much from Zagreb.  From my experience, capital cities are usually busy, dirty, and smell like pee.  And as far as I knew, the places to see in Croatia are coastal areas, not inland cities.  Had it not been on the way between our apartment in Loosdorf, and our HelpX destination in Bulgaria, we wouldn’t have gone out of our way to visit Zagreb. It took me less &#91read more]

I don’t know much about my family history, but I do know that I come from primarily German stock (on my dad’s side) and British stock (on my mother’s side). Today, it was that German heritage that I was most interested in. A few years ago, thanks to my younger sister, I became aware of a small town in Germany, complete with its own castle that goes by the same &#91read more]

After Hamburg, we (Jutta, Pedro, Ashley, and I) headed on to the Deichbrand Rock Festival on the North Sea between Denmark, and the Netherlands. All that day and the day before, there had been a lot of rain. And it showed. As we approached the festival grounds, the traffic slowed to a halt. The mud parking lots were doing everything they could to swallow up each and every vehicle that &#91read more]

Note: Before we get started, why does the title say kind of like a local??? Easy… we’re vegetarians and I’m fairly confident in declaring that most of the locals in Austria are not. But I digress… There’s nothing better than making new friends abroad and then visiting them in their home country.  Except maybe visiting them at their parents’ house where their mom fills you full of all sorts of &#91read more]

We took a week long road trip from our apartment in Loosdorf, Austria with two friends, Jutta and Pedro (whom we previously met while diving in Honduras) from the bottom of Germany right through to the top and then back again. Our first stop was the port city of Hamburg, way up on the northern shore of Germany. Half the fun was getting there We drove all the way from &#91read more]

What do you do with yourself when you’re living in a small industrial/farming town of 4000 people in Lower Austria?  You borrow a bike (preferably for free from your landlord), cycle the famous Donauradweg trail along the Danube (in the UNESCO World Heritage Wachau region), and explore all the nearby castles and abbeys. Cycling the Danube While you would be hard pressed to find more than a few tourists in &#91read more]