Suzy Guese

It was the best of times, and yet the worst of times so far on my European trip. I faced the simple spring of hospitality from a hotel and the winter coldness of another. My intuition tends to cry out to me especially when I doubt an upcoming hotel choice. Yesterday morning, I woke up and began re-researching where again I had booked my next night in Croatia. The complicated driving directions had me worried, along with the fact that the accommodation website had completely different pictures than the booking agent I used. Again, my intuition was in alert mood and I suppressed it.

I arrived to freezing Rovinj, Croatia, what is said to be the most photographed city in the country. Its beauty was clear upon arrival. I made my way through the pedestrian-only zone for my allotted 30 minutes to have a car, just to drop off baggage. I found my accommodations, but they had not found me. Several buzzes at the door went unanswered, a traveler’s worst nightmare when you are ready to check in and relax. Aimless waiting outside in the biting cold produced a few stares from locals. Finally I dug through my purse to find the phone number of the owner, only to get no answer. I was beginning to think I would have to find other accommodations in a mostly boarded up city for the winter. This should be interesting.

Left out in the cold...

I went back down to the car to get warm and give my accommodations until 4PM to call. At 4PM on the button I received harsh phone call. The owner didn’t apologize and merely said she missed a call from this number. Who was it? (Obviously one of only two guests probably staying the night.)  I explained how I had rang the bell and had been waiting for 45 minutes. She told me she had been there and to come to the house. Put off from her rude response and lack of apology for not being present, I pressed for an apology.

Lugging my luggage back up the stairs, I met the ill-present owner and still no apology. So I said, “I was beginning to think I would have to find other accommodations since you didn’t answer.” Her response, “Oh! It wasn’t that bad. You didn’t wait that long in the cold. I was helping another guest with their satellite TV.” As I stood probably with a gaping mouth, shocked by her response, she quickly hurried me up the death defying stairs, no wider than a pre-teen.

By the time I was in the room, I think she could sense my dismay. She said, “Ma’am don’t be mad. I apologize”. I explained how off-putting it was to have someone in the hospitality industry not apologize to a guest for literally leaving them out in the cold. I had arranged my arrival time beforehand so she knew when to expect me. Suddenly she seemed to turn the tables, making me feel as though I was wrong in speaking up. She basically told me I could leave and she wouldn’t charge for the night. I said I would think about it, now visibly upset. As I sat in the room for a few minutes, the cold set in. Even with full hat, scarf, coat and gloves, the temperature matched those outside. I was faced with sleeping miserably physically and mentally in a place I did not feel welcome.

Quite the contrary to my first hotel in Rovinj, my welcoming hotel room in Munich

An hour later, I left for a hotel down the road, one I booked just minutes prior. Before I could even reach for the door handle, a woman was opening it for me with a giant smile on her face. I had clearly interrupted her dinner, but she didn’t bat an eye. She was ready for me, even though I had just given them a surprise 6PM booking. Checking in was efficient and I made my way to my heat radiating room.

While dated and lacking the bells and whistles of the first accommodation, I realized what truly matters in accommodations for me: clean sheets, good WiFi, heat, and most importantly hospitality. It was truly the day of two types of accommodations, one with all of the stainless steel appliances, grand art illuminated on the walls and owner who had never heard of apologizing to guests, and the other, simple, dated and yet covered in kindness from every staff member I met.

What I discovered from this unsettling exchange is that travelers should speak up when they are wrongly treated. Inspiring Travelers have also stressed the need for travelers to speak up if there is a problem. If we sit back and let hoteliers treat us poorly, shell out our money for rudeness, we are only contributing to the problem.

And so my night in Rovinj, I went to bed hungry. Unsettled, I just wanted to get some sleep at 8PM. It was the best of times and the worst of times. I woke up to a new day, a day I was proud of standing up for myself and travelers across the globe.

A new day in Rovinj, Croatia

Have you ever encountered such bad hospitality? Is it worth it to stand up for yourself or just avoid the confrontation when you travel?

Two years ago this month, I decided to buy my name, online that is. While I had a Blogger blog long before, buying my domain name and starting this travel site proved to be much more official, much more real. I was opening up myself and my travels to whoever was willing to listen.

Luckily, enough of you decided to listen to this redhead. My motto from a young age was,  “I’m not the oldest, but I’m the loudest.” I guess I have taken a bit of that motto and used it here. I might not be the biggest of travel blogs, the most popular or unpopular, but I share travel. In the end, after two years of doing so, I wouldn’t want it any other way.

It seems almost weekly I get emails asking how to start what I started here. These emails usually take me the longest to reply to, not because I am all-important but due to the fact that they are the most flattering of emails to receive. I want to give them the proper time. I haven’t been to the moon and back. I don’t know SEO, as I probably should. I have good traffic days and horrible traffic days. I have articles that bomb and articles that boom. The fact that someone wants my advice about anything is gratifying.

The only advice I can give to those starting something similar to what I have here is to make it about travel and experience. I really don’t care how someone goes about traveling. I care if they try to go. I care about the emotions of travel. Anyone can pen those to paper or to the computer screen.

The problem with most things in life, especially travel, is that there is generally a hesitation to do so. We worry we don’t have enough money to make it work. The airfare keeps going up and up. And despite traveling for my job, I still reach those moments when I am forced to bite the bullet, to travel or to not travel.

When I haven’t traveled in awhile, I tend to get cranky. A depression comes over me that my routine is truly becoming routine. As I rang in New Year’s Eve with the flu, I decided it was time to stop making excuses about not traveling. I decided it was time to do something drastic, runny nose and all. And so I did what any respectable traveler ultimately does. They lose all practicality and book a ticket out of town. They push aside the many reasons not to go and find just one reason to click purchase.

I leave January 28^th for Munich, Germany. While I will only be gone two weeks, I plan on heading east to explore (hopefully) Slovenia, Croatia, Hungary and possibly Romania and the Czech Republic. While I know that sounds like quite the itinerary for two weeks, I will work out the planning in the next few weeks. I haven’t sorted everything out and in the end, I think that is what travel and blogging should be.

I don’t know all there is to know about either area, but I am doing both the way that works for me. Travel is personal after all. We find connections in experiences so different from one to the next. They merely fit together from one style to another because we go. So Happy Blog Birthday to me! Thank you all for reading, promoting and commenting on this site. Here’s to more travels, experiences and stories from this redheaded temperament.

Have you been to central/eastern Europe? Do you have any suggestions for me on what to see and do?

My personality has always been to obsess over something for a time. Once I obtain said obsession, whether it be some new shirt or home item, I move on to the next. I forget the last obsession and hone in a new one.  Like with items in my life, I tend to do the same with travel. I think I want to travel non-stop. I try it for a while by spending three months gallivanting around Europe. I find after three months, I am too tired and cranky to keep this up, having no real constant home. I read about another traveler, wandering from place to place solo. I go try it out in Ireland for a month and realize while solo travel is uplifting and creates a deep sense of self, I miss those travel moments with someone I know. Like with my latest material obsessions, I guess I tend to want certain travel styles, but in the end, I know my style. I’m the homebody traveler.

There might be snow, but it's home.

I enjoy nothing more than slipping into my own bed at night, waking up to know my Internet should work. The coffee will be hot. I am perfectly content on spending the day at home. I am a homebody in every degree. As a toddler I would be dumped off at my grandparents for I hated to shop with my mom. I would rather stay home.

To make this confession might turn off some travelers of the world. I should love the adventure of going from place to place. And while I do, there will always be a pull in me to return home for break, to lounge on the couch and soak up all of its comforts. Of course, I wouldn’t be writing here if I didn’t love to leave home every once in a while. I love so many things about travel, but not solely to make it all that my life is.

I read many other travel sites, articles and blogs, telling me of different travel styles: solo, couples, long term and nomadic. I hear each and every style’s benefits. I am constantly hit over the head with that obsession. Do I want this style or that one?

I'm leaving on a jetplane...

Be True To Your Travel Style

After 24 years, I have finally accepted my travel style, the homebody traveler. While I enjoy heading to a new place for a few weeks or even a month or two, I have to come back down to earth, come back home. I have to soak up a constant life before I head back out on to the road. I have to appreciate what I have and when I have it in order to find many aspects to travel endearing.

I travel pretty much every month of the year, but I also have an apartment I call home. I enjoy traveling throughout these two extremes, a home life and a travel life. Without the two, I would not be honest with my travel style. If there is one thing I have learned from trying other travelers’ styles it is that I fail miserably when I reject my travel style. Just because it isn’t the long-term style or the solo style doesn’t make it foreign. Every travel style should be different and no two are alike.

You Never Know Until You Try

Truth be told, I never would know that the homebody travel style is for me until I gave other travel styles a go. Getting up in Ireland, traveling to new places everyday or every other day, I grew exhausted. I knew this nomadic travel style wasn’t for me.

Sometimes we can be bombarded with other traveler’s styles of moving around the globe. In the end, you really don’t know what might be for you until you try it. I used to think I could never travel alone, and then I did. While I don’t think it is exactly my style, at least I gave it a go. While being a nomad isn’t my style either, at least I tried it.

Changing Travel Styles Is Not A Sin

You have announced to the world you are a nomad or that round the world adventure for a year comes to an end. What now? I often find these moments in transition interesting to experience and observe in others. I am guilty of worrying about changing what I have laid out. In the end, travel styles change with age, position and circumstance. Don’t be afraid to admit it’s not what you want anymore.

There is my confession. I’m a homebody who also loves to travel from time to time. I have been a nomad enough to know I’m not a nomad. I can be a solo traveler and I cannot be. I can travel long term and I can’t. I know my travel style now and I will embrace it from my cozy couch at home to the lumpy couch half way around the world.

How do you define your travel style? Have you tried traveling with other styles and found they didn’t work for you?

I booked a night in between Dublin and Kilkenny in a nothing town, along a nothing road. The only hotel I could find in between here and there pictured itself far better than it was. I arrived to find nothing as it appeared on their website. In fact, the photographs online were for a different property. Looking back now, the website is mysteriously under construction.

 In 2011, I stayed in countless places across the globe, some the definition of perfection and others the definitions of grimy and gross. That hotel in Ireland, in between nothing and next to nothing, reminded me hotels should uphold a certain standard for guests. While I could go over my favorite hotel experiences, I would rather highlight some of the worst in hopes accommodations around the globe get the hint in 2012.

The Bed and Breakfast with Questionable WiFi

Nothing gets underneath my skin more than a property advertising free WiFi throughout the hotel only to fail at providing this service. When you travel and work at the same time, you need a reliable connection, especially if you are paying nightly for it. I told the owner the WiFi was not working. His response, “It’s working just fine.” He ran back to the office, no doubt to reset the modem for the Internet mysteriously came back. Hotels, hostels and bed and breakfasts of the world, please invest in a reliable connection. More travelers will book with you if you do. And hotels, hostels and bed and breakfasts of the world, please don’t advertise WiFi all over the property when it only works in the lobby.

The Hotel That Treats You Like An Inconvenience

Somewhere along the road, hospitality left the accommodations industry. Suddenly, some properties realized the guest was an inconvenience. Throughout several nights this year, I checked into hotels I felt didn’t want me there. I was a nuisance. If I needed something or had a request, I was met with anger and disapproval. Hotels, hostels and bed and breakfasts of the world, treat your guest like you are glad they are there. Sometimes that can make all the difference between a good experience and a bad one. And for those considering going into the hospitality industry, make certain you can be hospitable.

Surprises Charges

I do my research. When I book my accommodations, I know what services are included in the room rate and which are not. However when I am checking in and suddenly I have to pay for Internet or surprise parking fees spring up, I am left with a bad taste in my mouth. Don’t hide what you charge for and what you don’t. Make it clear on your website. When I arrived to a standard chain hotel in Savannah, I learned I would pay a significant charge to park my car and that the advertised free WiFi was only in the lobby. Be upfront with your guests in the booking process.

The Inn With Questionable Housekeeping

When I was robbed in Ireland, when someone thought my wallet was their own, I immediately knew it occurred at my guesthouse. While I have experienced some of the best housekeeping this year, especially in Mexico where they would fold my towels into animals, I also experienced some of the worst this year. When you are in a room and a man from housekeeping knocks only once and then proceeds to start coming into the room with an excuse of “I’m just checking things, sorry,” you have probably lost my business and trust forever. Housekeeping shouldn’t seem shady, whether by trying to enter when there is no reason or locking the door while cleaning a room.

The Unclean Room

You have probably encountered an unclean room or two. That hotel in the middle of nothing in Ireland was one of those rooms. Stains covered the walls and carpet and yes, the sheets. If you can’t get down simple laundry practices, you have lost my vote. Hotels, hostels and guesthouses don’t have to be palaces, but they should at least be clean.

What other ways do you think accommodations could improve in 2012? Did you encounter any places in 2011 with these problems or other issues?

My bag took a tumble down the escalator as I made my way to airport security. Before being intercepted by a man, I watched in horror that I could possible take down someone before his or her flight. I could just read the headlines, “Girl loses control of suitcase, injures 1”.

The scene at the airport, especially around this time of the year, is usually one of complete and utter chaos. You have your novice fliers, those who are just headed to grandma’s house, their one trip of the year. Then you have your families, clustered together with a mom just hoping all will go smoothly with the three year old. And of course there are the expert travelers, those who have done this before, usually in a mad dash, and in this case, losing their suitcases on escalators they are in such a hurry.

While the holidays can be a stressful time in the airport, I have managed to get through these chaotic spaces unscathed. I guess I can’t say the same for the people I have tried to take down with my suitcase.  While I might not be George Clooney in Up in the Air, I do know how to breezy through an airport in the quickest of fashions. It usually involves avoiding several types of personalities. However, there are those people, those who make this impossible at times. These are the people I can’t stand in airports.

The Middle of The Road Saunterers

I encountered one of these just a few days ago. A mother of two and with her husband gets into the security line and decides this is the time to sightsee. She keeps stopping to look all around, as though she has never been in an airport. A whole line waits behind her with different stress levels. Some are worried about making tight connections while others like me enjoy the peace and clam that comes post security.

The middle of the road saunterers usually pick the middle of a walkway, escalator or line to just relax and enjoy the scenery. They are out for a Sunday drive in the airport apparently. These are people you must avoid at all costs and spot a mile up the road. If you are battling a tight connection, they could be your downfall. Middle of the road saunterers, please step to the side and saunter. You are not the only one trying to get somewhere.

Even this goat knows to step to the side on Mount Evans

Bluetooth Chatterboxes

The Bluetooth chatterboxes usually get to the gate and stand with their carry-on suitcase and laptop, chatting about some meeting that needs to take place or how Bill should have sent in the files. Why do you need a Bluetooth when you aren’t driving? If you are stationary, would it really be too much trouble to hold a phone to your ear so I know you aren’t just talking to yourself?

The Bluetooth Chatterboxes sometimes talk into their Bluetooth while in airport security. This is equally troublesome for yet again I think you are talking to me or to yourself. I once witnessed a woman chatting endlessly on her Bluetooth as she entered an airport bathroom stall. Can’t the conversation wait so that flushing toilets aren’t the background music? Airports are not always appreciated, often glazed over with Bluetooth conversations. Get off your Bluetooth. The meeting can wait and Bill will send the files. Watch the world of emotions going on around you.

Gate Hoverers

Gate hoverers only belong in one place, somewhere far, far below the earth. When the airport attendant gets on the speaker to announce the order for boarding, that isn’t your sign to get up and hover. When the airport attendant gets on a second time to tell you to please sit down until your boarding number is called, that is still not the time to get up and hover.

Gate hoverers truly only make the process worse. I know you are overly concerned about overhead space or perhaps you just can’t stand to have someone in front of you, but take a seat. You are delaying the departure of this plane and probably someone trying to weave through your grouping to get to their own gate.

A sunset hovering over the gate hoverers at DIA

The Power Tripping Security Agent

I walked up to airport security a few months ago. The security agent asked me if I had flown before. I said, “Yes, don’t worry. I don’t have a full-sized bottle of shampoo in my bag that I will be shocked when you take it away.” He responded, “I’m guessing that has happened to you before.” No, sir. The power tripping security agent usually lacks a sense of humor and will insult your intelligence in the process. They make some comment, knowing full well you have to grin and bear it.

I always look for the security line without these agents, but sometimes they are unavoidable. They can make you cry. They can make you angry. They are best avoided to ensure a pleasant airport experience.

Go ahead, open up my bag officer. I pack light!

Who can’t you stand at the airport?

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I stood with two travel companions in a German supermarket. The food selection was decidedly German. I wish we had a whole section for pretzels in the U.S. When it came time to get in line, I placed my basket on the moving conveyor belt as a very German looking woman sized me up and down. As she started scanning each item, she threw them down the line. I just stood there, motionless, unable to assess the cultural differences of this situation. A giant line was forming and I was still frozen in a German supermarket. One of my friends quickly started to bag the items, laughing at me for just standing there. And as I stood like a clueless traveler, I realized supermarkets are some of the best places to see cultural differences.

In the United States, supermarkets seem to get bigger and bigger. Unless you are using the self-scanner, there is usually someone to bag your groceries. I am not some supermarket princess who needs a person to bag my groceries, but you realize what this act says about America. People are buying cartloads of food, usually excessive in size. Meanwhile abroad, they generally don’t have a refrigerator big enough to accommodate a small portion of the American supermarket.

When I lived in Italy, I discovered the cultural norms of the Italian supermarket. There is always an entire aisle dedicated to pasta. I never knew so many different shapes of pasta existed until I visited the Italian supermarket. Then, there is the line situation in Italy. If you form a line to wait for the cashier, someone will cut in front of you. This fact never ceased to annoy me. Little old ladies were usually the culprits. I would have just a few items and someone with a jumbo cart would decide their groceries took precedent over mine.

I also discovered that in an Italian supermarket, it is extremely bad form to not let these little old ladies cut you in line. Italy is all about edging closer to the next person. It is everyone for themselves and if you’re not pushy enough, you will be left behind, usually at the end of the line.

The cultural insights of an Italian supermarket continued each week, like when I learned you should never give the cashier a 50 Euro bill to break at the beginning of the day. They will just give you this blank stare, as if you just gave them Monopoly money. Then there is the whole element of produce. They don’t have codes to key in for produce at the cashier’s desk. You must print out the stickers yourself when you pick out your fruits and vegetables. Make this mistake and a whole line of Italians will impatiently grunt at you for your foreign error.

On my trip through the south, I popped in a supermarket in Pawley’s Island, South Carolina. Cultural differences in supermarkets are even apparent in one’s own country. When you travel with a beer expert, you can bet you make lots of stops in local supermarkets to assess the local beer situation. A man with the thickest of southern accents decided we wanted his advice in selecting a beer. When asking for something local, he said Blue Moon was a good option. Knowing full well Blue Moon is out of my home state of Colorado, this would be the first and not the last time someone in the south told me Blue Moon was a local beer. Supermarkets in the south, especially in small towns are more of opportunities for social engagements.

You see all types in the supermarket. The hurried. The angry. The overly friendly. The sad. The unbelievable. While traveling, we can get caught up in trying to see the sights or dining out in the best restaurants. Rather, I think we also should get a taste of our destination’s supermarkets. The values of a place are helplessly apparent with every turn of the aisle. And yet, we are really not so different based on where we shop for food. There is always that gentle old man with his basket, smiling as you pass in front of the jams he is surveying. Like an airport, train station or bus depot, lives are converging in supermarkets and so are cultures.

Do you like to visit supermarkets when you travel? What major cultural differences have you found?

It is the eve of the last month of the year. December is a month I seldom travel. It is a month designated for family time. Each weekend seems to spur an event or occasion. It is also the final chapter of the year, a time for reflection.

And on the eve of the last month of 2011, I couldn’t help but think back on my travels for the year, as many of us do throughout this time of ending and beginning. What I have concluded about my travels this year is that I learned something about travel I didn’t realize before. The realization comes after travel, when you are home reflecting on experiences. Travel should make you wonder how you did this, how you got through that. It is almost mystical in a sense, a hazy memory in the past. Questioning its reality only makes it that much more special.

Last Minute Travel

When an opportunity presents itself, especially in regards to travel, I have learned you have to seize it. Invited on a press trip to Mexico, really by chance and not so much by choice, I found myself jetting off to Ixtapa without knowing what I was doing here. As the snow fell in Colorado, I dug out all of my summer clothes and headed south of the border. I watched coconut candy the color of a highlighter set being made in a modest village. I wandered through markets in Zihuatanejo and observed the close proximity of freshly cut meat to children’s toys. I arrived at the miraculous in Petatlán, a statue to Jesus adorned in lime green.

Before this year, I had never taken such a chance on travel in such short notice. I know many would not turn down this opportunity unless they had a commitment they couldn’t get out of or an obligation to meet. Luckily for me, my office can move with me. Mexico opened my eyes to the brightest of colors and the remarkable sheen to traveling last minute. You don’t have time to think about what you are doing, if it’s right or wrong. In essence, travel worry time is eliminated. You go into the experience wide eyed and leave that way. There is no time to prepare for what you will see and that might be travel’s best gift. A lack of preparation gives you the rawest view of your destination, the most unaltered and unbiased perspective.

Solo Travel

After braving it in Mexico for several days, without knowing a soul, I think I was even more prepared to head to Ireland all by my lonesome. As I have mentioned before, I was a bit of a solo travel fraud. I had made the occasional trip by myself, but I had never set out to do something completely alone, without visitors or friends joining me along the way. In March, I left for Ireland to drive on the wrong side of the road and discover what it means to travel solo. I talked to strangers and sheep, on more occasions than I anticipated. I discovered Irish humility with every turn of the bend. I was robbed for the first time abroad.

I can’t say solo travel is for everyone and I can’t say it is completely for me. However until you take one trip alone, no matter how big or small, you can’t completely know yourself. At least that’s what I learned. A few week’s ago I said to a friend, “I can’t believe I did that, drive around Ireland for a month all alone.” It is the unbelievability of travel I don’t think I had seen before. Solo travel is a great way to bring this about in yourself. You are forced to recognize yourself with a new-found confidence. It becomes unbelievable once you return home and all the more powerful you came, you saw and you conquered, solo.

Travel In One’s Own Country

This year, I traveled my country. So often you hear Americans don’t travel, they lack passports and culture. What is seldom brought up in those articles is that the United States is massive. This year, I found myself nearly traveling from the Pacific Coast to the Atlantic. A wedding out in California spurred a road trip across Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada and California. I found the loneliest highway in America and appreciated the lack of activity. Loneliness can be good for you. I returned home, only to plot another road trip, this time across America’s South. Beginning in Arkansas, I made my way across Tennessee, North Carolina, down through South Carolina and Georgia and up through Alabama and Mississippi. I spent a weekend in New York City, revisiting a city so unique and overwhelming.

The two road trips were different, but their meanings were the same. I set out to get to know parts of my own country I traveled mostly on family road trips as a terrible toddler. I wanted to get to know where I am from on levels many don’t deem worthy these days. Glamorous and fulfilling travel doesn’t have to be off in Moscow or on the streets of Paris. It can be in one’s own country, a notion I picked up this year.

Next year no doubt will bring new realizations, new appreciations of why I travel. I don’t know where I am going, how I am getting there or whom I will go with, but I know I will go.

What have your learned about travel in 2011?