The Finding Light Moment: *Big Whoop*

Wylie Demin

@wyliedemin

What is your reason for wanting to travel? What is drawing you to the country you bought your plane ticket to? No matter how big or small the trip, and whether you know it or not, there's a reason that the little vagabond inside of you is leading you forward. And in your daydreams, you will see wine flowing, new music thumping, foreign languages buzzing, travel stories passed back and forth, and smiles of new friends that don't yet exist.

Beautiful.

Hold onto those visions, because I can guarantee you that they will become your reality. But amongst our daydreams, in between work, school, and play, we tend to forget that beauty in life is not found without turmoil. To enter this unknown world that you long to experience, you must change as an individual. Not to say that you need to change as the person you are.

It is that the environment around you has changed so drastically with one twelve hour flight, and that requires personal evolution.

This type of evolution is painful. At times, it will make you question why you took this trip.

'Why did I leave my comfortable life? I have a queen bed at home and a dog, why the hell am I sleeping on the top bunk of a twelve person dorm with a snoring Italian under me?'

I don't know why, and neither do you. But there will be a moment where it all snaps together, a moment where you shed your home country from your back and your touristic tendencies, and you step fully into the light of being your own traveler.

This is my story of stepping into that light.

Croatia.. In October.

That was my plane ticket, that was my destination. And I had a reason why.

The trip was off to an awful start. There I was looking for closure around every Game of Thrones castle-like corner, in an Eastern European city that follows the tourism calendar. When the tourists aren't there, neither is tourism. The whole city felt anticlimactic to me. Like I was standing on the set of a thrilling movie set that wasn't being shot. Looking back now, I can see that Split was a plenty fine city. It was my expectations that tarnished my experience.

I set out on this endeavor to find closure over the death of a close friend. And I know now that there just aren't many places in the world that could bring such a thing to those who have recently lost a loved one.

I was chasing vapor, and festering more contempt with each passing day.

No need to worry, the good news about traveling in a depressed, don't-know-what-the-f*ck-to-do-manner, is that you are guaranteed to run into others just like you. They make up 3/4 of the hostel population (even when they look the happiest). I found one, and a cute one. A sweet little Asian-American from Seattle who ended up living a couple blocks away from where my sister lives today. She'd been successfully exploring Eastern Europe for the past three months, while I was sitting across from her ready to throw in the towel after week one.

Now normally, I'm quite frugal with my story and the reasons why I travel. But this girl was going to be out of there the next day, and I was on my fourth gin and tonic. It was time to let the emotions fly. And boy I told her everything. Why I was there, what had happened to my friend, my expectations, my disappointments, my fears, and maybe a few turn-ons

(on G&T number five at this point).

I didn't know where to turn.

There I was in Croatia, the place where me and my best friend were supposed to meet up just weeks after he unexpectedly passed. I was a mess, rapidly approaching a boiling point in Croatia within my first week, and I had three weeks in total planned there.

My new day-long girlfriend insisted that I get out of the country. I rebuked, with all my travel plans. The flight I had to catch to Spain in the coming weeks, not wanting to stray too far away from the country I spited just because of a silly boarding ticket. To which she calmly reminded me, "Dude, you're in Europe. You can take a three hour bus and be in an entirely new country". Long story short, she sold me. I was on a bus to Budapest a few days later.

But that's not what this story is about, this story is about how I found my light. Believe it or not, I found it in Croatia. With my last remaining free day around Split, I decided to take a ferry to an island I had heard was famous for Croatian wine, Hvar. I decided I would spend the night, and see what the island had to offer.

Like the rest of Croatia at that off-season time, it still did not have much. But I am here to tell you, from my travels and experience, do not let that stop you. There is always beauty out there to find, you just have to shed some pride and open your eyes. It will come.

One neat thing my very unpopulated hostel was still offering to their guests was the ability to rent a dinky little moped for the day to go and explore the island. Not too many questions asked, just bring it back before sunset with a full tank of gas. Sold.

Away I went in search of a specific winery that I couldn't recall the name of that was told to me by a bartender that I didn't care for.

In between the struggles of riding a moped for the first time and attempting to follow Croatian road signs, the search was off to a slow start. I kept getting lost, but I was getting lost in the most beautiful little port towns, surrounded by sunshine and Mediterranean water on walkways that were indistinguishable from roads, forcing me to wobbly ride my moped through groups of pedestrians. After multiple hours of terrorizing relaxed locals while attempting to find this well hidden fortress of wine, I needed some food. I decided to come back to my search after I had eaten.

So again I went, beep-beeping down the highway of Hvar, looking for anything that caught my eye, beckoning me to turn for some food. Finally, I saw some English words!

"Turn Left. Nude Beach. 800 meters."

That was the moment I learned how to drift a moped. Another five minutes of anxious riding, and I finally came up on the water. There wasn't a single boob or binky in sight. Again, it was the off-season, another disappointment. So I turned my moped back around the gravel road I had come in on, and I recalled a disheveled sign possibly advertising a restaurant or a car mechanic, I couldn't tell. The road was halfway between the highway and the not-so-nude beach, and I could see smoke coming from that direction. I decided to give it a shot.

What happened next flipped my trip on a dime. I walked toward the restaurant and swirling smoke. I approached a group of five adults standing by an open grill, with the most inebriated of the group tending to a large tenderloin with a medley of vegetables cooking around it. They looked at me, and I looked at them. There was a long silent moment before I asked if I could order some food. They looked at me, and looked at each other. Long silence.

"Sure, why not" they said.

I slowly made my way over to find a seat at a table. There I saw more people who gave me a friendly, but unwelcoming smile. I felt uneasy, like an intruder. After about ten minutes, I found out that I was, in fact, an intruder. This was a restaurant, but it wasn't open for business. I had unknowingly walked into a group of competitive winemakers, and close friends, of the island. This group of worldly wine connoisseurs were gathering for their final farewell dinner to celebrate the season ending. They were all about to return to their respective countries, and were having an intimate final blowout with their best friends before they departed. And I stumbled right into the middle of it.

They sat me down, threw mountains of food on my plate, and let the wine flow.

Let me tell you, there is no better place to accidentally end up, than in the middle of a friendly competition of professional winemakers, in some of the most prestigious wine country of the world, all wanting to know what the young American boy thinks of their finest wines. This diverse group of people, in a melting pot of culture, ebbed and flowed between multiple languages at the beginning of the feast. They generously switched to speaking English with me and amongst each other, simply so I could feel included in what they considered a family dinner.

I know, I know. A thousand word story and this guy spends maybe 250 of them explaining his big, climactic "finding light moment" *big whoop*. But that's how it goes. For days, weeks, and months, everything can seem so slow. Every wrong move feels like a disaster. Ever dollar spent feels like another day lost on the road. Then, all of a sudden, you feel it.

Now, you are a traveler. And wherever you go from here, there will be light.

Lead the way, my friend.