I've Been Walkin' For Three Days And Two Lonely Nights
August 22, 2009 5:49 PM   Subscribe

The Longest Way Home is the site, blog, and photography galleries of a fellow who's spent the last four years walking all over the globe in search of a home.
posted by mattdidthat (16 comments total)

This post was deleted for the following reason: Poster's Request -- frimble



 
This is amazing. Thanks.
posted by bigtex at 6:11 PM on August 22, 2009


Awesome idea! I bet he has seen more in that 4 years than most of us see in their entire life.
posted by SamsFoster at 6:11 PM on August 22, 2009


my home cannot be found on the mountain or the valley
it's neither near nor far
i have no home upon this earth
i was born beneath a wandering star
born beneath a wandering star...
posted by flapjax at midnite at 6:40 PM on August 22, 2009


A while back, MeFites had some good thoughts on "home" in response to my question about it. I hope he finds someplace to call home, but after those adventures I bet he won't be satisfied sitting still for too long.
posted by headnsouth at 6:44 PM on August 22, 2009


It' a nice idea, but I feel like if you are looking for home, eating cheapest/street food and staying in the cheapest hostel possible is definitely not the way to do it. Probably if I were do the same thing I would couchsurf to meet locals or do a very short term apartment rental (Budapest in particular is great for this).

I did stay in a few really cheap hostels and met people doing a similar thing and it seemed like they were just hurrying to check off countries from their "list to see," meeting their budgets by eating crap food (I wonder what their cholesterol was after their jaunt), and not really experiencing much in terms of actual living. It sadly sounds like much of the stuff he did was standard tourist stuff.

Probably the best way to decide whether European living is for you is the Erasmus grad programs. In some of them you spend a year each in several different countries. If you are reasonably social you'll meet some Europeans who will invite you to their countries during holidays and that in particular is something unparalleled. I visited several families during my year doing a grad program, one of my favorites was in rural Upper Austria where I ate delicious homecooked food, played the local ice curling sport that unique to that particular region, went to regional artisan fairs, ate at restaurants that locals cherish, and in general see a way of life that a tourist would never even think to look for.

Too bad European immigration laws are such a #$*@($^* pain...
posted by melissam at 6:49 PM on August 22, 2009


Blimey, he fetched up in Lhasa during the riots last year.
posted by Abiezer at 7:07 PM on August 22, 2009


but I feel like if you are looking for home, eating cheapest/street food and staying in the cheapest hostel possible is definitely not the way to do it.

Just moving constantly from place to place, while no doubt a blast, is definitely not a way to find a home. A fun place to hang, sure! Travelling is great and friendly locals are always awesome. But a home isn't something you stumble into randomly, you know? You have to make them yourself, and it takes a lot of work and a long time.
posted by mhoye at 7:23 PM on August 22, 2009


I did extended travel once (about 18 months) and the one aspect that was most surprising was that you get really weary of the lack of permanence. You know how an uncle may have given you a computer and you learned Basic programming or Flash or whatever and you spend the rest of your life programming computers? Or a friend of the family that ran a restaurant? Or the guy who you were assigned to create a movie script with in Film Studies 102 was really connected?

Extended traveling is like that, but it's every freaking day. I once had a long conversation with someone from Southern France who was of Basque heritage which I wouldn't have had if I had not, say, gotten pollution sick in Beijing because the timing would have been so different or missed a taxi or got a drink at the next table over.

In essence, a large percentage of my current life is based on a decision I made at a London office for buying Trans Siberian train tickets where they asked me if I wanted this week or the week ahead. With roots, these kinds of things happen less often.

I eventually got an apartment in HK, and, OMG, whatever the David Letterman was talking about and no matter what 7-11 I bought my beer at, I knew what I was doing in 12 hours.

Bliss.
posted by sleslie at 8:12 PM on August 22, 2009 [1 favorite]


On the plus side, though, you gain the ability to dismiss worries, fear, and petty contrivances of the mind that equate to self doubt. A divorce? Bankruptcy? Unemployment? Lost your car keys? Did you get to the store 10 minutes late and you've wasted a cross town trip?

Whatever. Been there, done that in those 18 months. Nothing will ever be as bad as walking into Moscow sans luggage and all the damn R's are backwards and you have to buy your clothes at the market ran by people from Uzbekistan because "where the heck do you buy clothes in this city". On 60 hours of no sleep. Bring on the mundanities of existence, as they're aptly described as petty in the grand scheme of things.
posted by sleslie at 8:22 PM on August 22, 2009


I'm at a stage in life where I could perfectly reasonably travel, see the world and expand my horizons. I have nothing tying me down. Often, I'll look at the career path I'm considering/moving towards, and think "what the hell am I doing?". Why do I want all of this work, this grind? I don't need a new car, or a nice flat, or whatever gizmo. I could perfectly easily bum around, picking up odd jobs here and there, maybe stay a place for a few months if it caught my fancy. I can have easy access to free healthcare if worst comes to worse.

And then I realise that we trade current happiness for future security. If I made the choice now to never have kids, for example, I could easily do what I said. But I know that if I do ever settle down, I'll want my kids to have a nice, secure upbringing, decent backgrounds, all that rot. And to do that you need X kind of job with Y kind of income etc. So I'm getting on the treadmill, which is a tiny bit depressing.

I'm sure I'll be an ideal candidate for a mid-life crisis in a bit...
posted by djgh at 9:34 PM on August 22, 2009


Is this the same guy who created this video? It's an amazing video - sort of Noah Kalina goes to China and grows a huge beard (only much more interesting than that description might make it sound).
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 11:44 PM on August 22, 2009


Home is where the heart is.
On the bus.
posted by Meatbomb at 11:51 PM on August 22, 2009 [1 favorite]




Some people travel and later miss the arrivals. Coming into a foreign city, everything is new again--the language, the currency, the smells, the architecture, everything. All of your senses are tweaked. How will you find a place to stay? What will you first eat? What will the first person you talk to be like? Will they be helpful? Mean? And how do those initial impressions form your opinion of the place?

But for me, I miss the departures. I miss walking into a station with my strategically filled bag of worldly possessions, ready to go anywhere--I just have to choose a direction. I miss going over the departure board and picking a destination. I miss the first ten minutes of a train ride to anywhere, after you've settled in and stowed your things, put your headphones on or leaned your head up against the window, and are just falling into quasi-nostalgic hindsight over the place you're leaving, watching it fade from view and from memory.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 2:04 AM on August 23, 2009


It's an awesome journey, as others have said, but I doubt the rationale. I had problems rooted in family too, and went through a very similar phase of thinking they'd be solved by finding the right place, somewhere where I could start afresh. If you've internalised the conviction that you're an outsider, you'll carry that with you everywhere you go.
posted by raygirvan at 9:40 AM on August 23, 2009 [2 favorites]


Oh, I think it's wonderful. And I think you can find home in an instant. And lose that feeling just as quickly. The first time I saw Austin, I knew I was home. Not long after the Dell-ionaires took over, I knew it was gone. I've felt that way about various places around the globe, but I'm by nature a gypsy.

Only getting married and having children has kept my in one place for very long, and that's only because it's not fair to force them to pick up roots and transplant because Mommy is bored. Also, I'm getting old...and vagabond doesn't hold the same romance as it did in my twenties.

But young, single, and no responsibilities? What could be more fun that globetrotting searching for resonance with a place, a people, a time? Sheer bliss.
posted by dejah420 at 7:28 PM on August 23, 2009


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