Professional Blogger Marea’s guest post

When I was coordinating my visit to Europe with Kristy and Gabe, we discussed several options for my arrival given the limited information they had about their future whereabouts. Dublin, Morocco, Egypt, Barcelona; really the only thing they were totally sure of is that they would be … somewhere.

Where are we?

I finally settled on a flight to Madrid a few weeks before I left with the hope that they would at least be in the same country when I got there. I was told, “Don’t plan. We’ve been doing this for months now, we know how to maneuver on the fly!” As a person who usually prepares for big trips by reserving hotel rooms several days in advance and then drawing detailed maps to their exact location, this worried me slightly. The weeks leading up to my trip, my friends and family would ask me what my plans were and I would answer with a tense smile: “I don’t know, I’m relinquishing control.”

These girls don’t always know what country they’ll be in tomorrow or when they’ll shower next (I don’t know if that’s totally true – I mostly just want to put Kristy on blast for recently going seventeen days without bathing – but it’s still a good illustration of the nature of their vagabond lifestyle). Being a planner, I wasn’t quite sure how they lived like this, but I decided to join them for a sliver of their journey anyway.

Bathing and washing clothes vegabond style

We spent four nights in Barcelona and we didn’t decide where we were going next until the night before we had to leave our apartment. We found a bus leaving for Montpellier, France the next afternoon. Montpellier fulfilled all of our travel criteria: none of us had been and it was cheap to get there. Perfect! Except when we got to the bus station the next day there were four of us, but only three available bus tickets. Okay, no big deal, there has to be a train to Montpellier right? Yes, but we had missed the only train by about an hour. Being homeless and out the money we had already spent reserving a hotel room in Montpellier would normally make me anxious, but then I was informed that it would be fine because, per Kristy, “Gabe and I always get lucky!” Very reassuring.

We sat down at the train station for some adult beverages and a snack and weighed our options: contacting a couch surfer in Barcelona, picking a new city at random and taking a train there, drinking until spending the next sixteen hours and an enchanting night at the train station didn’t seem so bad… Instead, Gabe went back to information and figured out that France and Spain are bad communicators, and if we just got ourselves into France on a train leaving for Cerbère, we could find a train to Montpellier from there. We arrived at our hotel in Montpellier about twenty minutes before the doors would have been locked for the night. Kristy: “See!? We always get lucky!”

It seems that planning within the Kristy/Gabe lifestyle is actually the enemy because even your best laid plans probably won’t work out exactly as you envisioned. Vague goals are better because you leave wiggle room for budget, time, and general mishaps. If your goal is to “arrive in France sometime this week,” you are almost guaranteed success. If your goal is, “arrive in Montpellier, France by bus at 7:00 PM on January 2,” you might experience some frustration, or accomplish it at the expense of another, cooler experience (like Jillion almost getting in a fight with a pushy Frenchman in the ticket line in Cerbère).

Enjoying treats in Montpellier

Gabe and Kristy really wanted Jillion and me to experience the couch surfing aspect of their travel life, so they contacted a few potential hosts in Montpellier for our next few nights. I will admit that at first I was a little cynical about Gabe and Kristy’s use of the Couch Surfing program. “A total stranger is letting you invade his space on short notice without financial compensation, for no other reason than the spirit of universal hospitality? Clearly you are going to be robbed or sold into an international prostitution ring.” Our experience couch surfing in Montpellier completely changed my opinion.

Our host Sannah had just gotten home that morning on a twelve hour train ride from Switzerland where she had been on holiday, but still answered affirmatively to our request to stay with her for a few nights. This by itself was amazing to me. When she met us later that day with her boyfriend Luis still toting his rolly suitcase having just arrived from his own travels, ready to show us around, I was sold on the program and the people involved. Our hosts gave us their keys and full use of their home in the middle of their finals week. I was humbled both by their generosity and their language skills. Luis: “I’m sorry my English is so bad. How do you say, ‘I grew up in the countryside and I am passionate about the environment?”

Montpellier has a lot of young people and a university town vibe. It is completely pedestrian friendly; there are trams to the periphery and almost no cars allowed in the center. The streets are therefore cutely narrow, windy and full of people, and there is an occasional church, plaza or monument jammed in a space that seems almost too small for it; in other words, it perfectly fit my image of a town in the south of France.

Montpellier church

Montpellier

Jillion in a plaza at sunset

Jillion, Sannah, and Lear posing with a local

There are a lot of fancy looking shops with designer clothing that I’m sure I would have been very excited about if I was at all interested in shopping. There are also creperies and pasteleries with bomb quiches, croissants, etc. basically every few steps, and I’m pretty sure if I lived there I would be both broke and morbidly obese. Fortunately we were able to use Sannah’s kitchen and my personal chefs Gabe and Jillion shopped and made many delicious, healthy and inexpensive meals with local ingredients (with mine and Kristy’s expert chopping skills of course.) I am going to say their crowning achievement was feeding seven people dinner for six Euros.

Couch Surfing Dinner

Animated conversation with the roomies

Personal chefs-Gabe and Jillion

Since we were able to cover the sites of downtown Montpellier in a day or so, our hosts suggested that we check out St. Guilhem desert, the site of a medieval town nestled in the mountains nearby. The tourism office gave us what seemed like a straightforward bus time table and we set off on our way. As soon as we got to the back of the bus, we began debating whether Gabe had correctly interpreted the driver’s French instructions and we needed to transfer, or if the bus would take us all the way to our destination as the time table suggested. Rather than clarify with the driver right away, waited until we reached the last stop on the line, several stops past where we were indeed supposed to transfer, and too late to backtrack and catch another bus. We had no choice but to get on a bus back to Montpellier, three hours of our day sacrificed to a sort of unscenic drive.

We had to do something that day, so we found a vineyard on one of our maps that we decided was within walking distance. A new plan that ended in wine seemed appropriate at this point. The map didn’t exactly indicate what kind of road conditions we’d have, and after nixing some highway walking options, we basically walked the three kilometers to Chateau de Flaugergues in back road bike lanes.

When we arrived, we took pictures next to dead grape vines, because we were taking pictures of something god damn it. A small French woman who seemed very surprised to see four young Americans on foot approaching her establishment in January opened the door for us before we reached the building. “I would take you to see the gardens, but they are so ugly right now! Why would you come here in the winter? Do you just want to taste the wine?” Yes, Madeline, that is precisely what we want.

Our new friend gave us some tastings and an extensive French lesson that she clearly thought was essential after Kristy told her she loved her when she was trying to tell her she liked the wine. “No, no no! I love my husband!”

"Why would you come to the vineyard in January??!!"

"Je t'aime!"

All in all, not a terrible ending to the day.

The next day we decided to try to make it to St. Guilhem again. We got off at the correct transfer stop, and as we were boarding our next bus, Kristy showed the driver the time table just to make sure we were in the right spot. He began flailing his arms and throwing unrelated bus schedules at us and we got off the bus confused. We walked to nearby tourism office where they confirmed that contrary to what was implied by the crazy driver, that was indeed our bus and also the last bus to St. Guilhem that day. Strike 2. The tourism office called the area’s sole taxi driver to take us the rest of the way. This had better be the most awesome medieval village EVER.

The village in St. Guilhem is made up of a small cluster of buildings that date back to 800 A.D. and sit a crevice of a mountain. As you walk up the hill on the path adjacent to the village, you look down on it from above and it is so small and densely packed it felt to me like I was looking at a model instead of the real thing. A river at its base and the occasional waterfall added to the overall scenic effect. Even though it was winter, most places we visited during my trip were still crowded with vacationers. St. Guilhem was basically empty, and it was the only place that seemed sort of peaceful, or secret. For that reason, it seemed appropriate that we had to take some pains to get there, and it was definitely worth the effort.

On the way to Saint Guillem

Medieval city- Saint Guillem

Overall, loosening up and letting the “no plan” plan happen worked out pretty well. If anyone is still worried about the Kristy and Gabe travel combination, don’t fret: they are pretty savvy travelers and bus mishaps aside, they do always get lucky.

The Crew

***To read Marea´s professional blog- Occupation: Cubicle Monkey CLICK HERE!!!