All posts tagged: friends

Who is this creature called the “backpacker”?

Published by nathalie alyon

Yesterday a Frenchman accused me of being a fake backpacker at a Cuban bar in Lisbon. His allegation came after I revealed that I was staying at an AirBnB rather than a hostel. We had a lot to chat about–he had recently returned back to his nine to five IT job in Paris after a seven-month “backpacking” trip in Australia and Asia. “I bet you don’t even have a backpack,” he said with a smirk. “I’m not a backpacker!” I said in protest. “And I certainly don’t carry a backpack on my sensitive shoulders.” Our discussion made me realize once again why I decided not to stay in hostels and why I defied the categorical “backpacker” label. Though I indeed was once a “fake backpacker” and it was while I slept in hostels in Colombia. Thankfully my fraudulence only lasted five weeks. Before arriving in Colombia I read various blogs on traveling alone—all posts instructed staying in dorms for a fulfilling social life on the move. So who was I, a novice solo-traveler, to stray from the path? While staying …

The Secrets of San Miguel de Allende

Published by nathalie alyon

“En San Miguel cada uno y su vecino es un artista,” Louis said–in San Miguel everyone and his neighbor is an artist. It was my third day in this colonial town and I had already grasped the San Miguelean spirit: drink mezcal, party hard, and make art. Hung-over from the wedding I had crashed the night before, I managed to drag my cruda self from my bed to attend my Airbnb host Crystal’s birthday BBQ in the garden. Herself a jewelry maker, among Crystal’s guests were a painter, a pianist, a graphic designer, and a gallery owner. I felt as if I had found myself in the 21st-century version of Paris in the 1920s. As Gerardo the painter poured me another shot of mezcal, the group began to speak about secrets: how they were different than lies and why we loved our secrets so much… I wondered whether a secret had to involve two or more parties; was a secret an interactive concept by its very nature or could it also be internal? “Everybody has …