5 Things Traveling Taught Me In One Year

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Milan Bez Mapy, travel bloger, ktorý od roku 2013 trhá Slovákov z kancelárskych stoličiek. Autor knihy Influencer a blogu Bez Mapy s takmer dvoma miliónmi prečítaniami ročne. Dvojnásobný víťaz Social Awards a v roku 2023 druhý najvplyvnejší influencer na Slovensku podľa Forbes.

Milan Bez Mapy

bloger & spisovateľ

Tomorrow, on the Monday 8th of December, it is going to be exactly one year, since the first article was published on this blog. Many of you have been asking me, why am I keep going and write new article every Sunday. But did you know, that when you do something for a certain period of the time, it becomes a habit? And that’s the answer – traveling became the habit for me.

I’m in Dublin, Ireland now. Last year at this time, when I published my first article Tere! My third month in Estonia I lived in Estonia, where I studied landscape architecture. This past 12 months were crazy in the meaning of traveling and traveled even more than I planned to, but this is how it works, things are completely different than you plan them. But I think that’s nice, otherwise, the life would have became boring, am I right?

Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi, March 2014

2014 IN FEW WORDS

At the beginning of the 2014, I was still in Estonia. I still remember, how I flew back there from Slovakia after the New Year’s eve for the last time. It was around 12th of January and I flew from Bratislava via Brussels to Riga, then bus to Tartu. The whole journey didn’t cost me more than 50 € and Ryanair turned into my favorite airline, so far. When I was leaving Estonia for Oslo, I felt nostalgic and I’m still thinking of that a lot. One day I’m gonna come back to see those places I lived on, again.

discovering beaches of Dubai, March 2014

In March I went with to United Arab Emirates with my friend, where we have visited Dubai and Abu Dhabi and I must say, I fell in love with Muslim culture. I stood up at the top of the world’s tallest buildingBurj Khalifa and visited probably the most awesome mosque I’ve ever seen – Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi. This was an awesome dot, the last piece to the puzzle of my positive thoughts of Arabic culture and I can imagine living there. I just love, how these people are strong and connected with their culture, religion and along with that everything, they’re not afraid to walk hand in hand with modern, Western world.

meanwhile on the lake in Connecticut, US

Two months later, I was sitting on plane from Amsterdam to New York city. I have visited NYC already, so I haven’t expected I would’ve came here again this year…three times. I worked in summer camp near Big Apple for 10 weeks, what was super cool. Maybe it sounds like cliché, but it really was the best summer, so far. I have met many great fellas and have discovered American culture more deeply. Summer Camp Work was more like the holiday in America and the best thing of it all was, that it was for free. Why the hell do Americans eat pasta with bread and put salt on water melon? After 10 weeks in Connecticut, I was traveling around West Coast of USA. Been to San Francisco, won money in Las Vegas and seen TV stars in Los Angeles.

THINGS TRAVELING HAS TAUGHT ME IN ONE YEAR

  1. MEDIA ARE EXAGGERATING – everything will be okay and those people are like you, who you meet on your travels. I learned to keep calm anywhere I go and do not stress about situations that may occur. World is a dangerous place, but I would get murdered at my home as same, as in New York city, so why stress, haha. And just to be clear, I didn’t experience  ANY unpleasant situation during past year. I remember when I was about to go to Romania and everyone told me not to go – it is dangerous country. At the end, it turned out to be my most favorite country in the Europe.
  2. I CAN RECOGNIZE ACCENTS – yeah, finally! If I have talked to you right now, I would have probably could say, from where you come from. While my stay in Estonia I met people from whole Europe, so I will easily recognize if you have German, French, Finish, Austrian or Polish accent. Especially those French accents are easy to recognize. While my stay in the USA I learned to recognize American and British English (finally) and it is true what English teachers say – the English sing, not talk. And I could probably recognize, if you are from Spain or Latin America by your English.
  3. I FEEL RESPECT FOR FLYING – air transport is unreliable, you don’t say. I spent almost 65 hours on planes, this year and had several delays, especially on evening flights and once I got compensation 10 EUR from Wizz Air as apology, when we departed 3 hours later. Not much, huh? On my flight from Los Angeles to Boston, which is 5 hours long flight, our engine stopped working and we had to come back to the gate and wait more than one hour, until they fix it. During the whole flight I was staring on that engine and I was waiting when it explode. Talking about this, in 2014 have happened few horrible air disasters, that left me speechless. RIP to all victims of those flights.
  4. I’M TOLERANT – when you travel, you meet people from whole world, from different cultures and religion. Within the 6 months, I have seen veiled Arab women in UAE, who are strict in what they believe and pray 5 times, each day. Few months later I saw almost naked people on LA’s metro, men on high heels and people smoking weed on San Francisco’s street. World is big place and I came to see it, not judge or change it.
  5. I WANT TO TRAVEL –  as I have been writing about all my travels and tips during past year, I’ve build nice website with daily amount of readers. And I am not going to stop traveling, neither writing. When I have posted my first article on blog, I was worried If will I have enough stories and tips to write about. Now I’m worried about the time – I don’t have to write about everything I want, there are more and more trips I go on and I want to write about them all. I’m in Ireland right now, still writing about my America trip and planning my Asia trip. The solution would be not 1 article per week, but maybe 2? I will see.

deep under the Paris, in the most scary place on the world

WHAT’S NEXT?

Currently I’m discovering awesome Dublin, I’ve never been to Ireland before and after all that traveling around the world, I really have missed European culture and cities. Soon after the New Year’s eve, I’m gonna start packing again and will go to discover south-eastern part of Asia and later that year, I will visit 3 countries you have never heard of probably.

Travel blogging has brought new wind into my life, I gave few interviews and I have met other travel bloggers and many new interesting people. One of those is Dr. Kristina Mattes, the woman from Germany, who I can chat for hours with about traveling. She hasn’t been only to the moon yet 😉 The great and inseparable part of traveling is meeting new people with interesting stories. I’ve learned much about how Internet and Google works, spent hours sitting in front of computer to figure out how SEO (search engines optimization) works, what people are looking for, what they want to read, how to build audience on Facebook, where I have almost 500 followers and I finally understood how Twitter works. I’ve learned what to share, what not and you wouldn’t have believed, how sophisticated Google is intelligent. It’s pretty hard to stay at the ‚top‘ of the Internet, since there’s a uncountable amount of content and if you don’t let others to hear of you and of what you do, you would’ve drowned there.

Coffee time with Dr.Kristina Mattes.

This was an awesome year and I’m gonna keep up and strong. I want to start with vlogs – video blogs and want to write a book. And 2015 will be special and my life’s gonna completely change from the basics and I will travel even, even more.

Milan Bardun – because it is better to travel, than to arrive.

9 COMMENTS

  1. Hi Milan,
    That`s an awesome year!!!!
    Agree 100% with #1.
    We are travelling for the past 8 months and nothing bad happened to us. Actually we are really happy to see that the world is full of great and kind people!
    safe travels!

  2. Milan, I am currently in Latin America and in every country here, my mom sends me bad news/links as soon as I land. I totally feel you with number 1 most especially when you said „I would get murdered at my home.“ We have the exact same sentiments! Traveling makes you realise that you are wrong about other countries and you only know what when you are already out there. I stopped reading/watching news btw.

    • Exactly Trisha! I don’t watch news or read newspapers for a while and I truly don’t miss all that bad information caused only because of governments and politics.

  3. Great post, Milan. I’ve been travel writing for many years, and have been travel blogging for the past few years. It really is fun and worthwhile to share our thoughts, and hope that readers will in turn, share theirs with us as well. You’re so right. Anything can happen, anytime, anywhere. So we might as well experience the world and become better people in the process.

    • I got a lot of positive feedback. Inspiring people is what makes me happy and us – travel writers, we all inspire people out there and that’s what I love to do!

  4. What a great year it’s been!

    I have to agree completely with the first of your 5 points.

    Governments and the media do exaggerate so much. Most people around the world are as friendly and welcoming (often more so) than at home!

    • That’s so true! Sometimes I think a lot about where all that negative energy come from. I have friends all over the world, from US, Canada, Russia, Latin America, Australia and they all are very kind, helpful and fun people! Sometimes it’s good to turn the TV off, just for a while.

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