The Friendly Anarchist

There’s No Internet in Europe

There’s no internet in Europe! People here still drive around exclusively in horse carriages. And they speak Latin! I had to send this post by snail mail to India, where my not-so virtual assistant transcribed and posted it to my blog!

I took a vow of silence! It’s a spiritual thing. I can talk and laugh and meet nice people, but I absolutely cannot blog. Apparently, this will buy me direct access to paradise.

My dogs ate my laptop! These cute little bastards. My large list of post ideas: Gone. All my drafts: Gone. My already edited, finished, and polished posts: Gone. All that was left were some aluminium crumbles, and a couple of letters from my keyboard.

Meh.
None of these excuses work. I always was a bad liar. So here’s the truth:

I wrote “the book.”
It took longer than I thought. (Actually, as we speak, it’s “still taking.”)

In the end, “the book” needed a couple of months for gestation. It took shape after reading the answers from last year’s reader survey – and I think it was worth the effort. Hope you will like it a lot.

“The book” even has a name and a release date now, and I’m glad to announce it here today:

It’s called Beyond Rules, and it will be published on Tuesday, March 15th.

The more I experimented and the longer I wrote this blog, the more I noticed that the problem with rules is not just one of submitting to questionable authorities. Even in the context of “your life, your rules, your pace,” (see the tagline!) rules are often simply not good enough: They are restrictive rather than permissive, they are stubbornly stable rather than adapting to changing real life situations. What’s more, they take responsibility away from the people, and this is nothing I’d like to promote when it comes to living a conscious and self-determined life.

“Habit is the denial of creativity and the negation of freedom; a self-imposed straitjacket of which the wearer is unaware,” Arthur Koestler wrote. If we unconsciously, yet unconditionally adhere to a fixed set of rules in our lives, the same thing happens.

More on that in the book, an excerpt of which I will publish here in the upcoming days, if my next type-written letter makes it to my Indian assistant.

In other news, I just traveled to Denmark, desperately wanting to see the sea, after living in Cologne, Germany during the last couple of weeks. Here, an ice-cold wind is blowing, but the North Sea is just beautiful, and inspiring me to get the last couple of chapters of “the book” written and edited.

I will be back to Cologne for the launch, and plan to travel to Stuttgart, Hamburg, Berlin, Austria, and probably Southern France later in April and May. Let me know if you’re somewhere near and would like to meet up.

Loving Attention

“Attention is the most basic form of love; through it we bless and are blessed,” Zen teacher John Tarrant writes. His words strike me as the perfect reminder for being conscious about what we pay our attention to – especially on a day like Saint Valentine’s!

I personally believe that love isn’t a limited resource. If we only wanted it, it could be all around us, all the time. And still, we rarely experience it that way: Instead of love, there is often stress, loneliness, fear, or simply thoughtlessness and neglect. “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference,” as Elie Wiesel famously stated.

Could the key to a more loving life lie in how we direct our attention?

Quite obviously, the day only has 24 hours, and we cannot pay attention to everything there is. We generally don’t want to accept that, though! Consequently, most of us will pay some attention to the main situations we are finding ourselves in – a meeting, the road traffic, a dinner with friends. But we will also be more than happy to give some attention to any nice distraction that comes along.

It’s the old Talk-to-your-friend-while-checking-your-Blackberry-situation; the well-known multitasking problem: By trying to pay attention to everything, we end up paying attention to nothing.

So am I wrong and love is limited, because attention is? Yes and no: The crux is that we can behave lovingly in everything we do. We can give love to every person that crosses our path, to every experience we make, to every moment we live. A loving life is really an exercise in mindfulness. Attention isn’t the limiting factor – it’s the key!

When Less is More

This insight in itself may not be enough to treat our ADD. In the end, how can we lovingly pay attention all the time, if we feel so lost in the myriad of things that call for it?

I believe that the only mindhack for treating this problem is to accept the practical time limitations we encounter and make a conscious cut. Living tempo giusto often requires reduction, and this doesn’t have to be a bad thing! Of course there are many people who still insist that we have to do more all the time: Get more busywork done, exploit more networking opportunities, do things faster!

Coming from a different angle, I dare to ask two questions:

What’s so bad about doing fewer things, but doing them really, really good?
What’s so bad about knowing fewer people, but knowing them really, really well?

Remember, it’s about being attentive, not about unreachable perfectionism! It’s about simply doing the best we can, even if someone else could do it better. It’s not about reaching deepest intimacy with every stranger we meet, but to be open for the possibility that this intimacy might indeed emerge.

It is about recognizing that our time and attention might be limited – but that this isn’t a practical limitation at all: If we can connect with one person on a deeper level, why should we miss superficial connections with a hundred others? If we can finish one marvelous piece of art, why should we worry about not working on a dozen mediocre ones? If the glass is full, why should we aim for it to overflow?

The Valentine’s Day Plug

Don’t just buy flowers for your loved ones. Everybody does that, and while it means good business for the flower industry, it doesn’t necessarily entail greater happiness for the people you care about.

Instead, bring attention as a gift: Try to be completely mindful when being with those persons (and with everybody else!). And when you are alone, pay attention to yourself, your work, and the places you go to.

As far as I can see, life can be pure loving marvelousness – if only we dare to be attentive.

This post is part of the Love Sparks Festival over at Jasmine Lamb’s wonderful All is Listening blog! Be sure to check out the posts by the other participants! As you read this, I am probably packing my bags or heading to the airport to travel to Germany where I will spend the next couple of weeks dancing for the Weather Gods in order to achieve an early beginning of spring. More from the old continent soon!

Good Reads, Booked Edition

I booked a flight. (Or two.)
I’m writing a book. (Or, as I like to call it: “The book.”)

Quite obviously, I had to use these facts for a lame pun in my headline, but it’s 6am and something like 15C (that’s 59F). I haven’t had coffee and my hands are freezing, so I haven’t really reached operating temperature. I still wanted to provide you with a small update.

As announced in How to Live an Interesting Life, I’m back on the road. I’ll be staying a couple of days in Bogotá before heading to the blazing cold lowlands of Hoth Germany. I’ll be living there for a couple of months, and am planning to do a couple of trips to Austria, Denmark and France as well. (Hub Travel FTW!)

Holler if you’d like to meet up somewhere!

Rank Growth

During the last weeks in the Caribbean, I started writing my first book. I originally planned to release it in early February, but I didn’t anticipate the rank growth that accompanies life. This is probably the biggest productivity planning mistake we regularly make: Thinking that everything will go fine. It never will. We will get sick. Friends will need our help. Cooking dinner will take longer than planned. Our fridge will break down. We’ll be invited to a trip to the islands.

Boom. Time’s gone. Rank growth is made of the unplanned things that simply happen – pleasant and unpleasant alike. Generally, these will amount to a significant part of our daily waking time. As we cannot really avoid them, we’ll better welcome them in tempo giusto fashion, learning three essential lessons:

Use the other eight hours, but also be prepared to get used by them.
We’ve all got the same 24 hours a day, so don’t stress out.
Release “the book” in March.

“The Book”

It will be published here on TFA. It will be about friendly anarchism and personal sovereignty. I hope it will be really enjoyable. It will be free in monetary terms, but it will require a lot of effort on your side. It will be a Do Book rather than just a Read Book, and it will come with a free flight to space.

Should I just make this a cliffhanger?

[¶]

Scientists are developing new evidence that helps explain why just writing about fear and depression, or talking with a friend, can help make the pain go away.

It turns out that verbalizing our worries or fears has a measurable impact on various parts of the brain. So does simply sitting on the floor and meditating about such mundane things as breathing.

How talking and meditating change the brain.

[¶]

Go to a bank with your video camera and begin recording the bank interior. When the security guard or branch manager stops you and asks what you think you’re doing, explain that you’re trying to determine how many security cameras they have installed. If they ask “why?” tell them you’re “just doing research” or “conducting a survey of banks” or “interested in security.” Then say, “If you really want to be helpful, you can just tell me how many cameras you have and save me and the boys’ the trouble of watching this recording later and trying to count ’em all.”

This is an exercise in shape shifting, personal transformation, and casting illusions, as well as observing how “authorities” respond to subtle challenges beyond the status quo. The disguise will help empower you to act “out of character;” besides, if you can’t change yourself how do you expect to change the reality around you?

It’s like walking with flowers, but a bit more offensive. Wouldn’t do that in the US.

[¶]

As far as Do Less goes, the online world is all about MORE. More social networking, more resources, more joint projects. Twitter, Facebook, and your RSS feed can start to take over your “one wild precious life.” Often times you must Do Less to accomplish more.

The wonderful Magpie Girl. True words.

[¶]

Every line of work has its charlatans. But the self-help industry is rare in that such characters have come to define it almost completely. (…) This is strange: nothing’s more important than happiness, yet we’ve ceded much of its territory to the kind of people we’d never trust to do our taxes. (…)

Such counterproductive advice has persisted for so long surely partly because self-help exists in a ghetto, separated from philosophy, experimental psychology, and psychotherapy.

Pure brilliance by Oliver Burkeman. I’d like to do a full quote, but you can just click and check it out.

[¶]

“Unlike Napoleon the PR industry has never known retreat.” Interesting article about the history of Public Relations, including anti-corporate PR and political “reputation laundering”:

Bernays’s greatest opportunity came with the outbreak of the first world war. President Woodrow Wilson realised the government needed to bring on board the many doubters who saw it as a capitalists’ war that their country should shun. Bernays and other leading PR men were recruited to a new Committee on Public Information (CPI), a vast propaganda operation. They were to put into practice one of Bernays’s main findings from the studies of mass psychology by Uncle Sigmund [Freud] and others: that the public’s first impulse is usually to follow a trusted leader rather than consider the facts for itself.

From the same piece, consider this quote by Tim Bell, “one of British PR’s leading figures (and a former image-maker to Margaret Thatcher)”: “I am not an international ethics body. We do communications work. If people want to communicate their argument we take the view that they are allowed to do so.”

Sure, they are allowed to do so. But giving a professional platform to such unethical people simply isn’t the right thing to do. It’s as easy as that.

[¶]

The banality of heroism, the “pitfalls of herd mentality,” and how we can rebuild “heroism as habit”:

By diminishing the ideal of heroism, our society makes two mistakes. First, we dilute the important contribution of true heroes, whether they are luminary figures like Abraham Lincoln or the hero next door. Second, we keep ourselves from confronting the older, more demanding forms of this ideal. We do not have to challenge ourselves to see if, when faced with a situation that called for courage, we would meet that test. In prior generations, words like bravery, fortitude, gallantry, and valor stirred our souls. Children read of the exploits of great warriors and explorers and would set out to follow in those footsteps. But we spend little time thinking about the deep meanings these words once carried, and focus less on trying to encourage ourselves to consider how we might engage in bravery in the social sphere, where most of us will have an opportunity to be heroic at one time or another. As our society dumbs down heroism, we fail to foster heroic imagination.

The solution? “We should try to develop our “discontinuity detector”—an awareness of things that don’t fit, are out of place, or don’t make sense in a setting. This means asking questions to get the information we need to take responsible action.”

Friendly anarchistically speaking, be sure to fine-tune your bullshit detector.

Second, it is important not to fear interpersonal conflict, and to develop the personal hardiness necessary to stand firm for principles we cherish. In fact, we shouldn’t think of difficult interactions as conflicts but rather as attempts to challenge other people to support their own principles and ideology.

Third, we must remain aware of an extended time-horizon, not just the present moment. We should be engaged in the current situation, yet also be able to detach part of our analytical focus to imagine alternative future scenarios that might play out, depending on different actions or failures to act that we take in the present. In addition, we should keep part of our minds on the past, as that may help us recall values and teachings instilled in us long ago, which may inform our actions in the current situation.

Fourth, we have to resist the urge to rationalize inaction and to develop justifications that recast evil deeds as acceptable means to supposedly righteous ends.

Finally, we must try to transcend anticipating negative consequence associated with some forms of heroism, such as being socially ostracized. If our course is just, we must trust that others will eventually recognize the value of our heroic actions.

This is basically a blueprint for living a decent life, really. Plus, a procrastination-buster. Take some time for this article, it’s worth it.

[¶]

It seems to me that the desire for the spirt of compassion to pervade the world is fairly universal. It doesn’t matter who you are or who you vote for, chances are you perceive a lot of problems and you’d like to see a bit more compassion floating around.

This wish comes before being Democrat or Republican. So I chanted for compassion and I hoped others would chant with me–or at least quietly share my sentiment in their own hearts–whether they had different opinions from me or not.

Because we need to find a way to come together. To bond over our caring.

And the point is not where the chant comes from or from what religion. If I knew the appropriate Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Muslim or humanist prayer or chant for a compassionate world, that would be just as good (…).

The point is trying to find a common point. A place where we can all agree and begin from there. A place to start. Can’t we just find a place to start?

The No Impact Man on finding a common place to start making things better. Sounds so naive, but it’s also so true.

[¶]

“The moment you start caring, that’s when your work gets shit.” Phil Toledano in an interview with Jonathan Blaustein:

PT: For me, I just like to make art, so…even if you want to be a photographer that’s surprising and have a long career, you have to have something new, you’ve got to say something new, and it can’t be a technique, it can’t be cross-processing or desaturation, or whatever the fuck it is. You know what I mean? It has to be something inside your noggin. It has to be an interesting idea.
That’s my advice. Do exactly the thing you want to do. It’s really hard, to separate yourself from the gravitational pull of the norm, and the gravitational pull of what sells. For me, that’s the only way that you’re ever going to be successful. (…)

JB: I’m hoping with this conversation that we can encourage a bunch of people to figure out how connect to their inner abilities, to their inner risk-taking, so that they can shift. What happens in recessions, the end result of shakeouts like this is that people lose their jobs, they lose their livelihoods, and then out of necessity, out of desperation, they scratch their heads and say, OK, I’ve got no choice, there’s no job being offered to me, how can I make a job, what am I good at, what do I care about, where is my passion?

PT: You know what I say to that, man, is you make a job by surprising people. I know that sounds simplistic, but ultimately, the reason, that “Days with my Father” and “A New Kind of Beauty” are interesting to people is that they’re surprising. They happen to relate to people in a particular way that I never thought they would. It’s originality that surprises people. (…)

PT: But you talk about this fear thing, and what should people do, and I think, you can’t say “Don’t be afraid,” because that doesn’t work. No one’s not afraid.

JB: I think we all have fear.

PT: You have to just say “Fuck it.” That’s the best advice I can give to people is to just say “Fuck it.” Just do the thing you want to do.

[¶]

Lisa Baldwin in an interview with Michael Nobbs:

I spent a great deal of time and effort concocting absurd schedules and reading stuff that was supposed to make me all motivated and get-stuff-done-ish, but it really just made me feel like crap.
Deliciously, I found that I got good stuff done when I was gentler, softer, more curious and less pushy.

[¶]

Without clear guideposts to direct you, it’s hard to know whether or not you’re spending time on the things that matter.
You could easily be flapping away in the winds of chaos. It may look impressive, but you’re not going anywhere.
So it can be useful to have a set of guiding focuses in your business.

These areas of focus help structure your action and act as a filter for whether or not you decide to do something. They also help you achieve balance in your actions, acting as a gauge to determine when you’re lopsided and have been spending too much time and energy in one area. Regularly taking stock of how you’re spending your time helps you realign your course back to a balanced approach.

Jonathan Mead on guiding focuses in business. Also true for life as a whole.

[¶]

Do nothing for two minutes: Do you dare?

Thanks to little-angle for the wonderful photo!

Undistraction

Look, there: Something new and shiny! It says it will improve your daily productivity levels by 200%! Hush, click it!

Wow. Their website is really pretty designed. And they got a Twitter account. These guys know about customer loyalty, I can tell! And their new app, it’s un-pre-ce-den-ted! It’ll get you focused right away. And it’s so pretty! And thoughtful! I mean, it uses tags and categories and it hides the icons on your desktop. Hell, there’s even an iPhone app! How cool is that? It syncs with the computer version, just like that!

Quick, buy it now!

Or wait. Just one second. Do you really think this will work?

Think again.

“Reducing Distraction through Care (Rather than braces, armatures, and puppet strings). Removing interruptions and external distractions that harm your work or life? Great. Counting on your distraction-removal tool to supplement your non-existent motivation to do work that will never get done anyway? Pathetic.” (Merlin Mann)

Unfortunately, Merlin is right. More and more people want to sell us pre-packaged solutions to deal with distractions, procrastination and our creative work. But there’s an inconvenient truth we should consider:

A minimalist workspace won’t save us from getting overwhelmed.
Getting Things Done won’t get things done for us.
iPhone apps won’t give us eternal focus and concentration, no matter how new and shiny they are.

Remotely related question: Have you ever seen a Buddhist monk sleeping like a baby in some corner of a crowded and chaotic farmer’s market?

Here’s a thought: The real Zen creative is the mother with a 5-year old kid romping next to her, while she is sitting on the floor of a shabby room illuminated by a 20 watt light bulb. It’s a cold room, because she didn’t have enough money to pay the heating bill. Right outside her window a massive load of city traffic drives by – honking, creaking, raging – filling her dim room with exhaust fumes and never-ending noise. She doesn’t have a clear desk. Damn it, she doesn’t have a desk at all. She doesn’t have the latest gadgets. She never read Getting Things Done. She doesn’t know about Zen Habits. But instead of freaking out and complaining, all she does is concentrate, boot her 1999 IBM laptop, and do her fucking work. Because she cares. Because she’s got something to say.

Let’s be honest: Most of us are better off. But instead of doing our fucking work, we prefer to whine and nag and bitch around. We look for new distractions, so we have a reason to buy a new anti-distraction tool to distract us a little more. Buying new anti-distraction tools and decluttering our workspaces and setting up new productivity systems won’t get our work done. Sitting down and doing stuff will.

So if you care and if you’ve got something to say, you know what you should do: Get undistracted, sit down, and do that thing.

Wonderful Sleeping Monk photo CC (BY-NC-SA) Frank Boyd. (You have to picture the farmer’s market by yourself. Thanks!)

Hub Travel: The Anti-Hacker’s Guide to Seeing the World Without Stressing Out, Going Broke or Losing Your Mind

I am always impressed and a little jealous when I see travel hackers outline the way they organize their trips around the world. A recent example was this über-post on how to organize an international adventure. Tyler covers it all: From budgeting your trip and earning airline miles to hiring tour guides the smart way.

The hacker’s tricks, discipline and organizational talent can certainly make travel classier (airline miles used for free upgrades, anyone?) and save you money.

I’m a bit wary of the downsides of extreme travel hacking, though. The huge amount of planning it requires is a bit intimidating to me. Also, many travel hacking strategies require you to be based in the US and picking up several credit cards – deal breakers for me and many other people.

The good news is that there is a double remedy at hand!

First, there’s Chris Guillebeau. Chris is the guy who made travel hacking popular, and if you are interested in learning more about it, I’d suggest you to take a look at his new site: About half of the hacking deals there are available worldwide, and he teaches many ways to earn miles without the need to sign up for credit cards. Chris also guarantees that as a member you’ll get four free tickets a year by only investing 30 minutes a month into applying his lessons. Fair deal, as far as I am concerned. ((Disclosure: Chris’ products are always high quality and come with no strings attached. That’s why I am an affiliate for them and earn a commission if you buy anything from Chris through my links. The price for you remains the same, and the commissions help me to finance my dilettante lifestyle. Thanks a lot!))

Second, there is a way to travel that’s directed to dilettantes rather than hackers, and that has worked great for me for several years. It allows you to see the world instead of spending time in your planning room or on your airline’s hotline, it’s inexpensive – and all it really takes are the guts to leave your current home base for a while. Marketers would call it “The Anti-Hacker’s Guide to Seeing the World Without Stressing Out, Going Broke or Losing Your Mind.” I call it Hub Travel.

What is Hub Travel?!

Most travelers know travel hubs from their air journeys. A hub is an airport used by an airline as a transfer point to get passengers to their final destination. “It is part of a hub and spoke model, where travelers moving between airports not served by direct flights change planes en route to their destinations,” as Wikipedia states.

For example, Atlanta is a huge hub for Delta Airlines, serving Delta travelers as a connection point to their intended destination. ((I once spent a night at that airport thanks to the incredibly “fast” immigration lines. Since then, I react allergic whenever I get a Delta offer, although it wasn’t really their fault.)) Panama City is Copa Airline’s hub to connect the two Americas. You get the idea.

For long-term travelers, the hub approach can be taken to a whole new level. It is quite different from more organized ways of seeing the world: The classical tourist only travels for a very limited time and often has a strict schedule to keep. The backpacker moves slower, but still rarely stays at one place for longer than a couple of days, maybe weeks.

As a hub traveler, in contrast, you become a (temporary) expat and move from your home to a place that intrigues you and that serves as a hub: You make this city your new headquarters – and use it as a stepping stone for exploring the broader region.

Instead of over-organizing and preparing the whole trip from home, you just plan as you go, always with total peace of mind from the comforts of your temporary home. What’s more, travel will be inexpensive, as you are already in the region of your interest, say South East Asia or Western Europe.

Thanks to this approach, I was able to not only see large parts of Colombia, but also to travel to Florida, the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, the Bay Islands of Honduras, the Orinoco and the Uairén in Venezuela, and the Brazilian Amazon department. In Europe, it was the hub approach that allowed me to visit friends and see places all over Germany, in the Netherlands, Belgium, England, Austria, Spain and France.

The totality of these trips would have required either a huge amount of advance planning or quite a bit of money. Thanks to the hub approach, neither of the two was necessary!

The Advantages of Hub Travel

The hub approach has a couple of advantages over other ways to travel:

You don’t need to plan everything: If you want to leave your home for a longer time and organize a whole round the world trip, you will meet good old Mrs. Overwhelm rather sooner than later. The good thing about hub travel is that you go step by step: First, you leave and only research your hub – then you continue to plan and explore from there.
It’s cheaper: Instead of paying expensive hotel rooms or living in ugly dormitories all the time, you just rent a place on your own. This lowers costs and improves standards. As it turns out, living in foreign countries often will be significantly cheaper than living at home: Friends of ours generally spend three to six months a year in Thailand and use it as a hub for South East Asia and Australia. As pensioners, they actually save money during their vacations – and they don’t even sublease their apartment!
You find a new home: By living for a couple of months (or even years) at a completely new place, you make deeper connections with local people and culture, and experience the place in a much more profound way than most travel hackers ever could. If you take enough time, you might eventually call that once “new” place your second (or third, fourth, fifth, …) home.
You learn a new language: Living at a foreign-language hub is the perfect opportunity to learn and practice a new tongue. Thus, you can not only skip travel hacking, but also language hacking: Immersing yourself with time in a new place will allow you to learn the language naturally, just like children would.
Go at your own pace: From a tempo giusto perspective, the hub approach is the perfect way to travel. You don’t really know now where you want to be in three or six months, so why force yourself to plan it all down to the last detail? By living at a hub, you are free to react spontaneously to invitations, new discoveries, and follow your feeling, using the pace and the degree of organization that makes you feel good about it.

The Hub Traveler’s Checklist

Visas

We’re living in a 21st century world with 19th century nationalist attitudes. Thus, living in foreign countries (and, especially, living there for more than a couple of weeks) can still be tricky.

That said, there are almost always workarounds, depending on your style and taste. Here in Colombia, as a EU or US citizen ((And surely as a citizen from many other countries!)) you can stay up to three months on a tourist visa that you get when entering the country. This visa can be extended for another three months. Depending on your negotiation skills and the person that attends you, you could extend it even longer, but it’s getting harder. ((Note: I am not talking about bribing here. The bureaucrat in front of you is almost always human, and often able to connect with you as long as you are playing nice. Sometimes, of course, they want money. It’s up to you if you enter that game – I personally don’t, and just try with another person or accept my fate.)) In Thailand, people will do a visa run to the borders of Laos or Cambodia every three months in order to get a fresh stamp. In places like the EU or the USA, visa extensions are way more complicated. It really depends on where you are going.

Work

While visas are still easy to get for people who are lucky to have the citizenship of the “right” country, ((Ask someone from Colombia about it: Unless you are rich, getting something as simple as a one month tourist visa for the EU is a huge pain in the ass.)) work permits are way more complicated. I personally wouldn’t care to dive that deep into bureaucracy, unless you have a company that backs you up.

If you are self-employed and work remotely, you might be able to just stay on a tourist visa. As far as I can tell, there just doesn’t exist a visa category that is apt for location independent professionals (LIPs) yet. As LIP expert Lea Woodward points out, things change if you run a business that “caters to and sells to locals.” Be sure to keep this in mind – and do your research in order to avoid trouble.

Rent

I’m a bad bargainer. Still, my outlook on things has changed a little since reading this awesome post over at Earl’s blog on how to save 40% on rent and still make a great deal for everybody involved. The major trick is to offer high flexibility to the landlord in exchange for a huge cutback on rent.

While this probably won’t work everywhere, it’s certainly worth a try: By bargaining a little, we were just able to rent our beach house during high season here in Cartagena for 300 dollars instead of more than a 1000.

Food

As far as I am concerned, street food is great and should be part of a good travel experience. That said, if you stay at a place for a longer time, cooking for yourself will generally provide you with best quality for a fair price.

Be sure to buy local groceries, even though they might look weird: Whenever I’m not sure what I’m about to buy, I just ask the vendor at the market place or a housewife in the supermarket what it’s good for, and give it a try.

You will also find local cookbooks pretty much anywhere, often also in foreign languages. Courses directed by locals could be another option to avoid eating only the same stuff as back home.

Weather

If you plan to visit India, you probably don’t want to go only during monsoon season. So if you plan to stay at your hub for less than a year, you might want to consider weather conditions before scheduling your voyage. Weather2Travel is a good resource for this.

Major Events

Another thing to keep in mind are important local events at your hub: You wouldn’t want to live in Rio de Janeiro for six months and miss the carnival because of unwittingly leaving two weeks early. Wikipedia or a simple Google search will easily inform you what events you should not miss.

High Season versus Off-Season

The flipside of the weather and event recommendation is that it might actually be likable to live at your hub off-season: The beaches are quieter, there are less salesmen around, travel around the area will be cheaper, as will be many apartments and restaurants. What’s more, the sights won’t be crowded, and it will be easier to get in touch with the locals.

A good strategy thus might be to bring both season and off-season into your mix. For example, Cartagena would be a good place to stay from November to May: You get the independence festivities, the parties and cultural festivals during December and January, and then a lot more relaxed city during the coming hotter (but still dry and less mosquito-polluted) months from February onwards.

Insurance

Depending on your travel time and health requirements, it can either be cheaper to get a travel insurance at your home country or to buy one locally at your hub. Here in Colombia, the latter is much cheaper, but the quality is also inferior to the private clinics a travel insurance would cover. As I am (kinda) young and generally healthy, ((Ironically, I am writing this right after recuperating from a tough fever during the last couple of days.)) this is a good deal for me. Also, my German insurance is obligated by law to take me back as a client without any further inquiries once I move back to the country. Be sure to check these things before leaving.

Family and Friends

“But – only young and wealthy singles can do this,” is a common objection to the hub approach. ((It’s also a common objection to a happier life in general. SCNR.)) I for one am (kinda!) young, but I’m also married and almost broke. Admittedly, I am rather flexible and have hobo blood running through my veins, but even if you are committed to your current place of residence, have a house and a family with children, the hub approach can work for you: A sabbatical year (or two), subletting your house, and organizing a college year abroad for your kids is really all it takes to get you started.

Have in mind that the sublease you receive for your house in Europe or the US will often be (much) higher than the rent for your seafront apartment in Cartagena! Also consider that modern technology makes it easier than ever to keep up with your loved ones at home. You’ll be more comfortable bringing your expensive laptop if you follow the hub approach and rent a place rather than staying at shady hotels. Having your own place will also allow you to get a decent broadband connection and make you less dependent on slow wi-fi.

How to Find a Hub

There are a myriad of places that could serve as a hub, but some are better than others. To check if your dream destination allows interesting and inexpensive getaways, first of all take a close look at a map, and maybe at a travel guide of the area.

Then, consult these huge lists of major airport hubs and low-cost airlines. The latter matters because low-cost carriers will offer you more flexibility and are very convenient whenever you travel with no or little luggage. As you can leave your stuff at your hub, this should generally be no problem.

So far, three hubs have been working great for me, and I came to all of them by coincidence rather than planning. Let’s have a closer look at them:

Cologne, Germany

Cologne is the 4th-largest city of Germany, but with about a million inhabitants still fairly small. While Berlin certainly is the go-to place in my home country nowadays, Cologne has still a lot to offer: Bars, restaurants, a vivid concert scene, several interesting museums, the Dome and the old city, many parks and green zones, the carnival, and very friendly and open people. In the summer, you can enjoy barbecues in the parks; in the winter, you can just sit inside one of the cozy breweries and enjoy a Kölsch beer and some local food.

As a hub, Cologne is perfect because of its large train station in the middle of the city and because of its airport that has been catering several low-cost airlines for a couple of years now. You reach it with a simple subway ride for 2,50 euros, and are ready to fly to pretty much anywhere in Europe for a couple of euros more. If you are adventurous, some airlines like Germanwings even offer “blind booking” at a very cheap price – you will only know your destination after the booking procedure.

Cartagena, Colombia

Cartagena has been my base of operations for two years now, but I know the city much longer. Like Cologne, it has about a million inhabitants – although it’s way more chaotic, as you might expect. Situated on the shores of the Caribbean, Cartagena is famous for its colonial city center that was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1984. The old houses and defense structures are beautiful sights, and as tourist streams begin to grow, several new restaurants have opened to offer more exotic dishes to well-paying foreigners.

Bums like me still can find cheaper places, although it’s getting harder. Unfortunately, many of the normal citizens of the city can’t afford the growing luxury either, and thus the center is endangered to become just another tourist Disneyland. Future will show if the striving black culture manages to take back what is theirs, or if the foreign investors manage to sneak this pearl of the Caribbean.

As a hub, Cartagena is beginning to be more and more interesting. Unlike many other countries in Latin America, most Colombian cities have one or two central bus stations, so whenever you go there, a huge selection of travel options is offered. From Cartagena, the beautiful beaches of Parque Tairona (near the city of Santa Marta) are easy to reach in a little more than four hours. A few hours more, and you pass the Guajira desert and reach the Venezuelan border. You could also head towards the Panamanian border in the West – or take a bus upcountry and explore the Andes.

Cartagena’s airport is getting better each year. Nowadays, you can get flights to Bogotá for as little as $20, saving you what was a 20-hour bus ride with way too cold air conditioning! Flights to Florida and Panama can be found for $150 or so.

Bogotá, Colombia

Elevated at 2.600 meters or roughly 8.500 feet above sea level, Bogotá is a lot chillier than you’d expect from a city around these latitudes. Traffic jams, high pace and the overall vibe of a city of 8 million manage to heat things up pretty fast, though.

Without a doubt, Bogotá is the cultural heartbeat of Colombia, featuring the greatest museums, restaurants, concerts and alternative culture in the country. The huge universities of the city are great places to start looking for what’s going on once you move there.

In an article I wrote about Bogotá a couple of years ago, one of my favorite features of the city was its bus terminal and the possibility to leave – despite its advantages, the city is just a bit too large for my taste and starts to annoy me whenever I spend too much time there.

As a hub, Bogotá is great because it features a very nice hinterland: Beautiful mountain villages can be reached easily within an hour or two by bus, and if you get bored by the climate, you can reach hotel resorts in tropical heat in the same time. As you might expect from the capital, there are also buses leaving to pretty much every city in the country.

Bogotá’s El Dorado airport is too small, quite chaotic, and unfortunately still a little hard to reach if you’re not a pro user of the crazy bus system of the city. Things might get better soon: A new terminal is currently being constructed, aiming to convert El Dorado into the biggest and most modern airport of Latin America by 2014. Also, a connection to the bus rapid transit system Transmilenio is currently being created.

Flight connections are decent. The military-run airline Satena leaves for almost every departmental capital of the country, and there are several competitors for the more popular routes. You can also book direct flights to Central America, the USA, Peru, Ecuador, Brazil and Venezuela, and connections to all over the continent.

The Heads-Up

Money

I want to reiterate this: Travel doesn’t have to be expensive. To get an idea, consult this list revealing budget travel costs in 94 cities around the world.

But with so few things in life being perfect, hub travel probably isn’t one of them. I leave this to the hackers: Free flights would still be nice to have. So yes, I personally will definitely check out Chris Guillebeau’s Travel Hacking Cartel, and maybe you want to do the same. Considering the name, I hope you don’t have to smuggle cocaine in order to get the best airfare deals. I’ll keep you updated on how it goes!

Time

As should be clear by now, you will need more of it. Hub travel isn’t the way to organize a quick 6-week getaway with 18 pre-scheduled flights and bus rides. But this higher time commitment also allows you to travel naturally and enjoy the pace of the road – and for me, this is what travel really is about.

When I went for my Orinoco/Amazon adventure in 2009, I just left when my Colombian visa was about to expire (I barely made it to the frontier on time), and then traveled as long as I felt right. About three months later, I arrived back in Bogotá, having bought my flight out of the jungle just a couple of hours earlier. Traveling like this can be a first step towards reaching time independence.

State of Mind

You need to keep cool. There are some people who like to plan every single detail of their trip. Most of you, though, probably enjoy a good mix of planning and spontaneity on the road.

My personal approach is sometimes a bit more extreme: No plan, just go. Last year, I went to Europe on a week-notice or so, and I had a great time: I managed to visit several cities in Germany, take a trip to England, and travel all over Austria. ((This year, I’m a bit better off with my planning, although I still don’t know where exactly I’ll be going nor how long I’m going to stay. No, there is no flight booked yet, but I’ll be leaving in February.))

As always, how you do it ultimately depends on your own preference: It’s your life, it’s your trip, and you decide how you want to live it!

The title image is based on picture (CC-BY-SA) by Upon A Tree. Thanks a lot for this great work!