Welcome to the first episode of Baggage Allowance. This podcast is about my travels abroad, specifically focusing on events or experiences that led to personal growth. In this episode, I retell a reckless adventure I had in Switzerland as a teenager.
Hello one and all and welcome to the first episode of my podcast, Baggage Allowance. As this is the first episode, I want to begin by describing what this podcast is going to be about and how it came to be, before diving right into the first story. So, let’s begin.
What is Baggage Allowance? Baggage allowance is my first attempt at a podcast. The idea came from my friends who enjoy hearing stories of my travels and adventures. For those of you who don’t know me, here is some background. I am from the United States, but nearly half of my extended family lives abroad. Growing up, international travel was simply a fact of life. My first solo trip was to the UK when I was only 13 years old. Granted, my cousin and her family were there to receive me on the other end, but this experience helped build my confidence. My parents also taught me before I departed how to travel cheap by having me buy my own tickets. They also gave me clear instructions regarding everything from SIM cards, boarder control, and currency exchange. Soon I built enough experience and started traveling completely on my own.
As of this recording, I have been to around 25 countries. More than half of these are in Europe, and most of the remaining half are in Asia and the Middle East. I have been to many of these countries multiple times, often to reunite with friends I made years ago on a previous journey. I also lived abroad, full time, for over three years. This should give you the listener an idea of the breadth and depth of my experiences, but also my blind spots. I don’t have any stories from Africa, and probably won’t share any of my experiences from South America either. I have nothing against these places, but for now, I have not traveled there extensively.
And on that note, let’s begin the first story. It was my first grand solo adventure: a two month long backpacking trip in Europe. I was still a teenager at the time, and things worked a little differently back then. These days, banks have made it easier to use their cards internationally and many have eliminated foreign transaction fees. This was not the case back then, and I had to carry all the cash I needed for the entire trip on hand. For a two month long trip, that was a huge liability. Another challenge I faced was communication. Smartphones were invented, but the technology was still young. Roaming data plans were expensive, and outside of major cities signal strength was almost non-existent. I still relied on paper maps and open public WiFi (which itself was rare). Another difference was that AirBnB did not exist yet, but its predecessor couchsurfing is at the center of many of my stories. Just like AirBnB, I would ask locals if I could stay over with them at their house. Unlike AirBnB though, couchsurfing was free. Usually, I would give my hosts chocolate as a thank you, but this was not required. These people opened their homes simply because they like meeting travelers and hearing about our lives. Others were proud of their cities and hometowns and wanted to show it off to tourists. Because it was free, there was no telling what the host’s home could be like. I stayed at everything from a luxury villa with my own room and jacuzzi, a cabin in the woods with no electricity, and in the sleeping quarters of a military academy. I was lucky. I don’t have a single bad experience from all the places I couchsurfed.
There was however one small problem with couchsurfing. Because it was free and completely voluntary, it was difficult to plan ahead. I had to request a place to stay from 10 different people to get even a single reply. This reply would often come the night before or even the same day I needed the accommodation. In the beginning, I would book no cancellation fee hostels, so that if couchsurfing fails, I still had a place to stay. After the first month though, I stopped doing that. I sometimes had to make last minute requests, but I always found a place to stay, so I felt the extra precaution was unnecessary. My luck ran out though on the last week of my trip.
I was in Venice, Italy and no one replied to my couchsurfing requests. Worse still, all the cheap hotels and hostels were fully booked. As this was the last week of my trip, I was running low on cash on hand. With no other option, I spent the first night sleeping on a park bench near the center of the city. That was a mistake. At night, when all the tourists left Venice, the rats came out. The city was overrun with these thing. Rats the size of cats. I didn’t even close my eyes out of sheer fear of being bitten by one of those things. The second night, I took a ferry to one of the smaller islands and slept there. It was spooky. There were no people around, only wheat fields, and the sound of the ferries passing by. At least I wasn’t fighting rats.
Now, I learned the wrong lesson from the two nights I spent in Venice. Instead of realizing I should start booking backup hostels again in case couchsurfing fails, I instead decided that “urban camping” (hard quotes there) wasn’t that bad. And so I continued my journey, and took a train to Lugano, Switzerland. When I arrived in Lugano and realized no one replied to my couchsurfing requests, I said to myself, no big deal I will just sleep at the train station. I waited for the last night trains to depart and found a bench to sleep on. Some security guards took note of me, but paid no further attention. Soon they left for the night as well. I took off my shoes and I closed my eyes to fall asleep. However, something was wrong. I kept waking up every so often to some disturbance. I got up and looked around, but nothing was there. Still, I had this feeling that I was being watched. I lied down to sleep again, but this time I peeked through my eyelashes to see what was happening. Some time passed, and then I saw him. He walked out from one the gates that led to the tracks, looked at me, turned around and left. Some time would pass, and he would return. This repeated a few times and each time he would walk closer to me. Creeped out, I sat up to face him. He was a middle aged man, short, and pretty fat. I was somewhat relieved, he was not a very threatening figure.
“What do you want?” I asked.
“What are you doing here?” He replied with a thick Italian accent.
“I am sleeping, can’t you tell.”
“Are you waiting for a morning train?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Do you have hotel?”
“No.” This was a flat out stupid thing for me to admit.
“Come over to my house then. You can have a beer, and take the train in the morning.”
“No, thanks. I am fine where I am.”
“Okay. Good night, then.”
He turned around and left. Maybe he was actually trying to help me. I lied down, but just like before, I kept my eyes open just a little bit, to see if he would return. Sure enough he did. This time, he came straight towards me and sat down on the bench next to me. My heart was racing at this point, but I kept my eyes half closed and pretended to be asleep. For a while, nothing happened, but then I felt the man’s hand on my knee. He began caressing my leg, working his way up my thighs. Nope, that’s not happening. I jumped up, grabbed my shoes and backpack and ran out of the station barefoot. It was too dark to start hiking, but I was too scared to just stay in one place. I aimlessly wandered town; I was not going to sleep that night.
As soon as the local bank opened in the morning, I went in to exchange all the Euros I had left for Swiss Francs and headed back to the train station. Switzerland was the last country I was visiting on this trip. My flight home left from Bern in three days. My plan was to take a train from Lugano to Bern, stopping at towns along the way where I could get couchsurfing. Unfortunately, when planning this trip, I severely underestimated the cost of Swiss train tickets. I don’t remember exactly what my mistake was, only that I had a harsh wake-up call at the train station in Lugano upon realizing it. Instead of hiking for fun in the alps, I was going to have to literally walk to the airport. I did not have enough money for a train ticket directly to Bern. The closest I could get to was a town near Lake Lucerne. From there, I was going to have to walk the rest of the way to Bern, about 100 km / 60 miles away. It was a tight schedule.
I boarded the train, and almost immediately fell asleep. I woke up at the terminal station and transferred trains. The views around me were beautiful, and I stayed awake for the second half of this train journey. When I arrived at Lake Lucerne it was already past lunch time, and I had almost no money left. I went into a grocery store and started reading the calorie information on various products. The goal was to get the food that gave the greatest calorie to cost ratio. I used every last franc I had to buy an ice cream stick, some cheese, and a loaf of bread. I ate the ice cream right away for lunch and dinner, and started walking along the shore of the lake towards the city of Lucerne. Progress was slow. The lake had a fractal shoreline and was surrounded by many hills. I finally reached the city in the evening. Now, so many things happened in the past 24 hours, that it didn’t cross my mind that I should look for a place to couchsurf. With no hope of finding a place to stay now, and given my recent experience at the train station in Lugano, I decided to keep on hiking. Just before dark, I found a bench along the hiking trail and slept there, far away from the city and any people. That was the most peaceful night’s sleep I had in a while.
I woke up the next morning to the sound of bells. It was a cold night, and while asleep, I ended up pulling my backpack on my face. At first I assumed I was hearing the bell tower in the city, but then I started to feel someone nudging me. I pulled my head out from under my backpack and was greeted by the huge nose of a cow. The cow pulled away and I fell off the bench in shock. When I finally snapped back to my senses, I grabbed my backpack and jacket and briskly walked away. Something you should know about hiking trails in Switzerland. They often go through farmer’s fields and grazing lands. The cows are not fenced in. Usually, only a white ribbon 6 inches (15 cm) off the ground separate sections of pasture. There is effectively nothing between you and a herd of 2 ton creatures. And to make things even more interesting, hiking trails often cut right through the middle of these pastures. You have to step over these ribbons, walk through a herd of cows, before exiting the pasture on the other side. The previous day, I crossed through so many of these ribbons that I somehow lost track of whether I was inside or outside an active pasture. I had quite the scare when I woke up, but I was fine, and the cows were quite amused watching me scurry off.
I went down to the lake to refill my water bottle and also ate some of my cheese and bread for breakfast. The rest of the day was a forced march towards Bern. It started out great, but my momentum was killed when the weather changed and it started pouring rain. I would nibble on my cheese and wait in the forest for breaks in the weather, and then run to the next patch of forest. I tried to cover as much distance as possible, but for the most part, this wasn’t working. I saw a town close by and headed down there. There was no way I was sleeping outside in this weather. By the time I reached town, I was all out of food. More urgently though, I was too far away from Bern to ever realistically make my flight. I decided my best shot would be to try and hitchhike to Bern tomorrow morning. For now I needed a place to sleep. I made my way to local church. I entered the pew and found it completely dark. Perfect, I was going to sleep there tonight.
I sat down in the pew and dosed off, but woke up to the sound of thunder and lightning outside. Churches, especially Catholic churches, were designed to make people entering them feel small in comparison to God. This effect is sort of lost these days because churches have been retrofitted with electric lights. However, the only light in this pew were two emergency exit signs. It was enough to only make out shadows and outlines of everything around me. Flashes of lightning coming through the stain-glass windows created even more shadows on the floor and walls. The scariest part was what I thought was the statue of the Virgin Mary at the front of the pew. With every flash of lightning, the statue seemed to move closer to me. I became fixated on that statue and as my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I was able to make out more and more figures behind her, which created the illusion that they were multiplying. I got scared, and decided that I should walk towards the statues and see them up close. I thought this would ease my fear, so I got up and walked towards the statues, only to discover, to my amusement, that they were instead an arrangement of flowers. I laughed at my paranoia and turned around to head back to my seat. That is when I saw the real statues carved or placed on the top of the arches and pillars of the building. When a flash of lightning reflected off their faces, they all appeared to be staring at me. Nope, I had enough. I would rather take my chances in the rain than in here, and I ran out the front door.
It was then that I got caught by the church deacon. He asked me what I was doing in there. I told him that I was taking shelter from the rain, but then I got scared by my own shadow. He laughed and invited me to stay at his home. I took a shower and slept on a bed for the first time in days. The next morning, I had breakfast with the deacon where we discussed the politics of the Catholic church. I will revisit this conversation next episode. I also ended up telling him how I had to get to Bern by tonight, to catch my flight home the next morning, and how I was planning to hitchhike there. Upon hearing this, he told me that I should get started right away and gave me a 50 franc note. That was more money than what I started off with. 50 francs was more that enough to take a train to Bern and find a place to stay the night when I got there. However, after making it this far the way I did, the thought of taking a train didn’t even cross my mind. Instead, I headed straight to the grocery store. I bought some more ice cream, bread and cheese, and in addition purchased a packet of mung beans. Unlike most beans, mung beans can be eaten raw after soaking it in water. So I cut a couple small holes in the bag, filled the bag with water, and tied it shut. Later I will drain this water, and let the beans sprout in the bag. Why I suddenly had a craving for sprouted mung beans I still don’t understand, but it worked and ate all of it after arriving in Bern, which by the way I ended up hitchhiking to, instead of taking the train like I could have.
I arrived in Bern in the afternoon, and set off immediately to find open WiFi and a hostel to stay at. Unfortunately, I was all out of luck, not even the McDonald’s had WiFi. I ended up wasting a lot of money on public transport crisscrossing town trying to find WiFi or a place to sleep. In hindsight, I should have done this while I was still with the deacon in the morning. I even went to the airport, hoping to stay there overnight. Unfortunately for me, the airport closes after midnight, so that was not going to work. I headed back to Bern railway station, where I stayed the rest of the day and night, half asleep. People stared at me a lot this final day. I lost so much weight these past few days that I looked ill or anorexic. My family would later comment that the were able to feel my spine and ribs when they hugged me upon my return. One man even offered me a place to stay at his house, just like the man in Lugano. Unlike Lugano though, this man did not set off any alarm bells, though given my recent experience, I was not taking any chances.
What I don’t understand in hindsight though was why I did not use the money that I was saving up for a hostel (which I had given up on) to buy more food. Instead, I ate my mung beans, cheese, and bread throughout this final day. Once when I was tearing off some bread at a bus stop, I ended up dropping the loaf on the asphalt. I picked up the loaf, peeled off the crust that was blackened by the ground, and ate the rest anyways. And what did I do with the money? Well, that night, a beggar barefoot, thin as a bone, smelled like he hadn’t showered in days, asked if I would buy him some food. And that is what I ended up using my hostel money for.
If a sociology student asked me at university: you had been starving for three days and you finally got money for food, would you a) feed yourself or b) give it to someone else who is hungry, I would have picked the first option without hesitation. Yet, here I was doing the exact opposite. In fact, this whole experience is full of personal contradictions. Despite living a few days on under 10 francs, I wasn’t able to figure out how to use 50 francs in an effective way for just one day. Despite being able to hear a single man at a train station, I somehow slept through the arrival of an entire herd of cows. And while I was obviously going to refuse the Lugano man’s offer to stay at his house, it did not scare me away from staying at a deacons house two days later, but then it did caution me against staying at another man’s house in Bern, even though I had no reason to suspect his motivations.
Whether it was good instinct, luck, or a guardian angle, everything fell in place just right. On this final night, I stayed at the train station, mostly awake until morning. I then took the first bus to the airport. I slept at my gate and the whole flight home.
I want to end this story with some closing remarks. If you travel long enough, you will eventually have an experience where you are out of money. Your bank card stops working, you loose your wallet, encounter pickpocketors, or face some other sort of bad luck. If by chance you are near an embassy, they can help you, but often you are at the mercy of generous locals like I was. Recently I started to come across some travelers who fund their travels, by design, by begging locals for money. These people are known as begpackers. Locals hate them, and I don’t like them either. Had the locals I encountered assumed that I was one of these begpackers and didn’t help me, I would have been in an even worse position than I was. If you need help, please ask for it, but don’t intentionally become a begpacker. And on a personal note, I readily admit that all of this could have been avoided had I not become so reliant on couchsurfing. I was still a teenager, and while I continued to encounter scary situations from time to time in my travels, this was the last time I was ever so reckless. I still use couchsurfing, but found AirBnB to be more reliable. Many places on AirBnB are people trying to make a business on short term rentals, but there are also people who list rooms on AirBnB, because they want to meet travelers and not just to make money on the side. I carefully read the description and reviews to find these places, so I can continue to meet interesting people as I travel.
That’s all for this episode. Next time, I will describe in more detail the conversation I had with the deacon regarding the Catholic church and share stories of my travels to the religious sites of Ancient Rome, India, and Japan.
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