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The more time you spend with someone, the more you get to know them.

This is obvious.

What may be less obvious is that the more time you spend with someone, the more you realise you didn’t know them as well as you thought you did.

My first impression of George was a guy who was victim of his own psyche, that through a few unfortunate experiences had thought himself into a kind of psycho-physiological suffering.

Venturing far from home is a challenge for him. He never leaves the house without a briefcase and sidebag full of drugs and devices to ward of panic attacks, heart troubles and allergic reactions. [click to continue…]

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The first time I ever left home on my own was in 1998 when I went to study at the University of Sydney. I had gone with a head and heart full of expectations, which upon arrival in Australia resulted in a mental and emotional shock so strong I almost turned around and went straight back home.

I remember standing in the phone box calling my parents, trembling with anxiety and with tears in my eyes.

“Mom, something went wrong. They don’t even have a place for me to live. I don’t know what I’m going to do!”

I didn’t turn back though.

Instead I met some other travellers and feeding off their strength was able to get it sorted. Over the following months I had some of the most unexpected and yet most cherished experiences of my life.

Despite this lesson, I still forget not to have expectations. (Or maybe its just impossible to avoid?)

And just like in 98, they are hardly ever met.

Somewhat insanely, not long after arrival in a new place, I never fail to ask myself “Why did I come here?” [click to continue…]

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It’s almost midnight on Friday evening and I’m sat in the corner of a loud cafe/bar on the main square in Linz, Austria. The Danube River is flowing under a bridge at the end of the square and rain is still coming straight down since about midday today. Let me catch you up on the last 36 or so hours.

The RyanAir flight went by like a blue and yellow carnival ride as I was heavily engrossed in an iBook about social networks.

Austian immigration smiled and stamped without a word and I walked hands in pockets straight by the conveyor belt carrying bags of stuff and between the sliding doors to the smiling face of my three meter tall couchsurfing host George.

“Do you want to go to my place first…or I guess you don’t have to drop anything off, so…” he was saying as we pulled out of the airport lot and onto a very German, smooth-paved motorway.

George took me straight to the lakes so I could see how each one was a different color, from neon turquoise to deep, deep blue. We went to a “beach”, which was really a green grassed park straight to the water’s edge dotted with lots of white skinned speedo and bikini’d bodies.

“We don’t really know these ‘sand beaches’ in Austria”, George explained.

On the way back to Linz, we stopped at ‘LandZeit’, a food and service stop on the side of the highway that people travel from far to because the food served there is first class and cooked on site from scratch. Even the waffle cones we ate the three scoops of ice creme out of were mixed baked and rolled there.

“If my body could do it, I would live off ice creme,” George told me.

“Wow,” he continued. “I’ve never seen anyone finish faster than me. Usually I’m always done first.”

“Yeah, well I’m an American. We’re good at that,” I responded. “You should see me eat popcorn. I use two hands.”

We stopped at a shop to get George’s favourite bread, a special recipe which would come to symbolise his charming peculiarities.

“Here’s your couch.” George said pointing to a futon with fresh linens piled on it. [click to continue…]

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