Who am I and why should you visit my website and read my stories? Those are probably the first questions popping into your mind now.
So let’s begin! My name is Fruzsina (Fruzsi/Fru – I listen to all). 🙂 Unless you’re Hungarian, you’ve probably never heard such a name before.
So two things here: 1) it’s not the same if you write it with an “sz” or a “zs”, so please try to stick to “zs” 🙂
2) I think this is the right name for me, as its meaning describes me, and my attitude towards life and the world: “joy, cheerfulness”.
As it turned out from my comment on my name, I’m from Hungary, previously living in Oxford, England, then living in Thailand, and now again in Hungary. I’m a bit of everything: from being a market research analyst, then I returned to my original profession – which I always have been in heart: teaching -, and now back to market research again. But I’m also an ex-receptionist in a hotel, an ex-receptionist-cleaner-bartender-co-manager in a hostel, ex-intern at the US Embassy, and above all, a passionate traveller.
As you could tell from having multiple profiles, I’m a really curious person (curiouser and curiouser! – if you see what I mean…you get to know Alice in Wonderland, especially if you ever lived in Oxford). I have varied interests, and I’d like to know everything, or even if it’s a bit of exaggeration, I’d like to learn as much as my brain can take in. What common in all my above-mentioned profiles is human-centeredness: shoppers, students, guests etc. In all these fields, there is an essential need to understand people: what they think, how they think, and why they think in a certain way. I would probably get a Nobel prize if I found all the answers for these questions, so let’s just keep it simple.
Among so many different factors, culture and living environment play definitely essential roles. They form people’s behaviour, way of thinking, beliefs, attitudes, as well as their language (and so much more). So first of all, I want to go to their living places, to feel it, see it, smell it for myself, not only to read it from a book. I’m an “I belive if I see it”-type of person. I need to live in it, experience it before I could make an opinion. Just like Kerouac wrote in his novel On the Road:
“The best teacher is experience and not through someone’s distorted point of view”
I could easily say how beautiful and easy the life is in Zangla (a village in North India, in the mountains at 3900m altitude). Until I go there and discover that I’m out of breath after 5 steps walking uphill. Or unitl I see that they don’t have running water, and electricity is turned on only 8-11 pm.
Knowing these is still not enough. I need to feel how it affects me, what feelings and thoughts arise in me while experiencing all this. I need to feel in my bones how it is to pour cold water on myself to “have a shower”, or how I can regulate my breath. I also want to meet and talk to the people, to get first-hand information how they see and live life. I want to understand the differences from my views.
This leads to my second passion: learning languages. Well, not only learning a language, but more like studying it: where it’s coming from, which other languages it relates to, how they create words and sentences, if it’s place or rather time-oriented etc. etc. Language not only enables me to talk to people, but also gives an insight of their culture. For example, English has lots of tenses, so we can assume that it’s (or it was) very important to express when exactly things happened on a time continuum. In Hungarian, we only have 3 tenses (or only 2 if we take that we express future with our present tense). However, we have numerous suffixes to express place, exact location, directions. So we can assume that for Hungarians (at least in the past when they were nomads), determination of place was much more important than time.
Or if we take the classical example of how many words eskimos have for snow depending of the condition/type of the snow; whereas, in English or in Hungarian, we only have one word for it, and maybe in some parts of Africa they don’t even have it in their vocabulary. These are just few very basic examples how expressive and descriptive languages are, and if we carefully look behind the words, how much more information we can gain about a country, about history, about the people.
So turning back to my personal story: I find travelling the best way to learn and satisfy my curiousity. It has never disappointed me, and it’s never enough. I’m always amazed by the wonders of nature, seas, oceans, forests, mountains. None of them are the same, and it’s always a different feeling that I get from them.
I’m also astonished of the colourfulness of the people. There might be some underlying universal traits, but so many different ways of thinking, ways of understanding things, ways of interpreting the world! When I travel to a new country, I always learn something. Every place and every person adds a new shade of colour to my own way of looking at the world, and makes me richer.
That’s why I believe in the power of travelling. By sharing my experiences and stories, I would not only want to give some entertainment to my readers, but also give some inspiration either for a new destination or for travelling itself. It’s worth it, believe me! And it’s easier than you might think!
Finally, some words about my destinations and travel style. I believe in the golden mean: not too mainstream but not too extravagant. I like adding a twist to the mainstream. People like going to the Austrian Alps for skiing, but what is it like working in the mountains in a hostel during the summer season? Many like to show off with pictures from Cuba, but only from the fancy resorts which have nothing to do with the real Cuba. So why not going on a tour around the island, sleeping at locals’, getting recommendations from them on what to discover. Or how about sunbathing on Rio de Janeiro’s silky white sand beaches not only as a simple tourist but as a volunteer of the Rio Olympics? Adding a pinch of salt to everything – that could be my motto. So could be the next quote by Boorstin, an American historian:
“The traveler was active; he went strenuously in search of people, of adventure, of experience. The tourist is passive; he expects interesting things to happen to him. He goes ‘sight-seeing.”
Therefore, if you’re like me, i.e. if you’re interested in people, cultures, languages, and beautiful places, if you want hands-on experience, adventure, and like getting a bit off the beaten path, this is the right place for you.