“I grew up in Bulgaria. My dad traveled a lot for work and I would sometimes join him on his travels. Every new country we visited I would fall in love with and afterwards I never wanted to return back home. I always knew I would leave Bulgaria the minute I would be able to stand on my own feet. When I was 19 I packed my bags and left. In the past 3 years I lived in Milan and Amsterdam and I traveled to different continents. I noticed that whenever I would tell people I was from Bulgaria they had these negative associations with the country mainly based of what they heard through media. Of course it is not perfect but it made me think and focus on the beauty of the country. In a way I needed to be away from to gain the perspective that I needed to fall in love with the country I was born in. Even if its not perfect, it is still my home.”

“In the 70’s I hitchhiked from Amsterdam to India. I was advised to travel with a knife but I never did. I figured if I would I’d be the one getting stabbed.”

“I always wanted to travel the world but I never really had the courage. I’m from Australia but I have a British passport so when Brexit happened it pushed me to plan this trip. I saved up 7000 euro’s so I think I will manage for a while. The idea of this journey is to grow and to get rid of my anxiety I have to talk to strangers. A few weeks before I left I started to get really nervous and the day before my flight I was shitting myself. I barely slept on my flight over here but once I arrived at the Amsterdam airport most of my fear was gone. I have been here for nearly a week and I’m still getting used to the idea that I won’t be going home for a while. I’m not used to being surrounded by this many people and I’m trying not to get run over by bikes. Still I’m enjoying every minute of this experience. Since my arrival I only had a few moments of anxiety. Sometimes the thought of being here all by myself scares me but the other day when I got back to my hostel I had a great conversation with another guest and I realized that we are never really alone.”

“When I travel, I always hitchhike. Now I’m about to hitchhike to Rotterdam.”
“What have you learned from hitchhiking?”
“That there are so much more friendly people in this world than you would expect.”

“When I told my dad I wanted to travel the world but that I was too afraid to do it all by myself, he said: ’‘If you are always going to wait for other people to join you, there is a big chance you will never get to do the things you dream of.”