Luke's Travels

Since Leen still has a job and they wouldn’t let her take off 3 months, I had to say farewell to her in Lebanon which means this next trip would be the beginning of the solo-portion of my adventures. I’ve always had a bit of a love/hate relationship with traveling alone, but one of the goals of this journey was to put myself in uncomfortable situations so even if I have a terrible time, at least I’ll be accomplishing something.

History of Dubai

So I started my travels off doing a walking tour of “Old Dubai” which is about as accurate an oxymoron as calling Donald Trump a genius. While there were a few people in the region millennia ago, the area that would one day become the United Arab Emirates was still very rural several decades back. In 1950 the population of the entire area was only 70,000 people (and Dubai is only one of the eventual seven Emirates). That means “Old Dubai” is essentially a place where some people lived in tents 70 years ago. Despite its modest beginnings, Dubai is now home to one of the most modern impressive skylines of any city I’ve ever seen.   

So how does a city transform so rapidly? Oil was found in 1966 which brought wealth to the region and then the United Arab Emirates were formed a few years later to bring together the various people of the area. In the 90’s, the government realized that an oil-centric economy wasn’t sustainable forever (oil deposits in the area are currently estimated to run out in 2029) so they poured resources into becoming the trade epicenter of the Middle East. As part of that, they wanted to make Dubai a city which would attract tourists from all over the world regardless of whether they had business to discuss or not. So since the mid-90’s, Dubai has been constructing everything you see in the picture above and then some. Crazy rapid growth.   

Dubai Mall 

 I’ve haven't been a fan of malls since my horrendous middle school dates where I would freak myself out the entire time debating whether I should hold the girl's hand or not only to end up sweating so profusely that when she finally realized I wasn’t going to do it and she held my hand, she was greeted with a nearly-pruney soaked palm. Gross - sorry I made you re-live that with me, but it was cathartic. 

Anyways, I say that because I wouldn’t typically go out of my way to check out a mall, but this one is special. The Dubai Mall is the largest in the world (everything in Dubai tries to be the largest in the world). Inside the mall is a real dinosaur skeleton, a 3-story-tall waterfall / art installation, a huge Virtual Reality "theme park”, the largest piece of plexiglass in the world (for the aquarium because of course there's a massive aquarium), a zoo, an ice rink, and over 1,200 stores.

And that’s just inside the mall. Just outside one of the entrances is by far the most mesmerizing fountain I’ve ever seen as well as the tallest building in the world (the Burj Khalifa). If you’re not sure how a fountain can be mesmerizing, check out the video below this post. 

Watching Liverpool v. Man City:

Okay - enough city explanations. My first respite from my solo travels was meeting up with Mohamed and Hiba whom I met at K&T’s wedding in Cyprus. They graciously invited me over to their place at midnight Dubai time to watch one of the more important Liverpool matches of the year. Unfortunately, Liverpool lost, but fortunately their warm hospitality made it a bit more manageable. Thanks a bunch for having me if you guys ever read this :). 

Exploring the sand:

Countless miles of sand dunes begin 30 minutes outside of Dubai. My last morning I jumped on a half-day tour to cruise around on an ATV, try my hand at sand-boarding, and ride a camel. I like camels. Overall, it was definitely "touristy", but it was a good way to meet some people and experience the juxtaposition between Dubai's ultra-modern lifestyle and the surrounding uninhabited desert.   

The fountain show outside the Dubai mall. 

After 3 days in Cyprus, a group of us took the 25 minute flight (!) over to Beirut to send out 2018 in style. I love Beirut for many reasons including the beauty of the city, the history, the delicious food, the trendy nightlife, the incredible people, etc. All of those could have essays written on them individually and many were covered in my last post on Beirut a few years ago, but this trip unveiled two new loves for me. 

1- The Mineral Museum 

Okay, yeah I know what you’re thinking - “Minerals? You mean like shiny rocks? Boo.” - and yes, I would have agreed a month ago. But oh my lord, these naturally occurring minerals are the some of the most incredible things I’ve ever seen. How are human artists supposed to compare with the magic that our earth can create without us? 

Like, what? If I don’t find any other professional directions at the end of these three months, I fully intend on becoming a crystal hunter.

2 - Cats

So when I look back at my posts from 3 years ago I’m exceptionally proud of the number of times I was able to bring up Fireball organically into nearly every post. Sadly, over the last few years my fireball consumption has waned, but I’m pleased to announce that my newest obsession is even more incredible - Cats. One of the worst things about leaving for 3 months is being away from Denna, but fortunately for me, the American University in Beirut is known for being a safe haven for stray cats! During our hour or two on campus, I made dozens upon dozens of new best friends :).

I don’t know why all college campuses don’t recruit thousands of feline friends, but you best believe I’ll be writing a letter to Stanford’s President making my case soon.

Besides those two lovely encounters, we had a great time celebrating my last birthday before 30, and the Earth’s last birthday before it turns 4,545,362,432 (makes me feel young). Many thanks to the entire Cheaib clan for hosting us (especially Ruba and Marwan - you guys rock). Also special shoutout to Mehyo for being the only person who got me a birthday present this year even though he only met me earlier that day. And no - this isn’t a passive aggressive way of shaming everyone else who got me nothing...

Let me preface this by saying - no, Leen and I are not engaged. I didn’t think much when I posted these two photos on Instagram a couple weeks ago:

But after Leen, myself and even my parents received a bunch of “Congratulations on the engagement!!!” texts, I realized that I probably should have been a bit less coy with the “Love is cool” caption. Alas, sorry to disappoint you all, but we appreciated the kind words nonetheless :).

Coincidentally enough, we were in Cyprus to celebrate love, but it was love in the form of Leen’s brother’s wedding to his fantastic wife Tala. Leen was asked to officiate the wedding, and between her refusal to call herself anything other than The High Priestess, and the beautiful vows shared by K and T, the wedding was wonderfully memorable.

For those of you who don’t know where/what Cyprus is (I had to look it up the first time too), it’s a beautiful island in the Mediterranean located here:

The government is pretty interesting around these parts since the island is its own country in the European Union with considerable Greek influences. However, nearly 40% of the island calls itself "The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus” and declared independence from Cyprus in 1983. However, to this day Turkey is the only country which recognizes the independence which makes relations rather awkward between the Cypriots and the Turks.

So I have recently made the decision to quit my job, and leave the Bay Area for 3 months to explore the world and re-assess life’s next steps.

“But Lucas, you had a great job, and seemed to have life figured out, why would you disrupt that?”

As a mechanical engineer the first way that comes to mind as a way of answering this question is by drawing a parallel to the classical problem of harmonic motion with damping. Since that’s just complex jargon to non-supernerds, let’s look a graph to outline what I’m talking about.

Like this graph, my life has been oscillating closer and closer to an equilibrium over time. Now, I have to admit - my life is great - but how do I know this equilibrium is the best one? How do I know I wouldn’t be happier if my equilibrium was 3 times higher on the Y-axis? How do I know I'm not missing out on something I would never experience if I settled in on my current path? The best way I know to experiment with this is by altering my current graph with some high-amplitude disruptions and figuring out whether there's other things I should be incorporating into my future equilibrium.

If those graphs don’t do it for you, let me try some words. Essentially, I want to spend the next several months trying a bunch of new things and hopefully that will help me determine what I want my future life to look like. Part of that will be seeing what my friends are up to all over the world, and other parts will be putting myself in strange situations and seeing how I react (hello 10-day silent meditation retreat in Thailand!). The last part is recognizing that this is a special opportunity to detach from my professional aspirations and give myself some time to enjoy life so I’ll be doing plenty of that as well :).

I’m pretty sure that if you asked anyone who knows me well what my favorite thing in the world is, they’d say sports (followed closely by fireball). Thus, as my last adventure in Europe, I thought it would be fitting to make the pilgrimage to Anfield to check out the best football club in the world: Liverpool FC.   

Ever since August 17th 2013, when I woke up at 7:00 AM on a Saturday to watch Simon Mignolet save a Stoke penalty in the 92nd minute to salvage a victory and start Liverpool’s epic season, I’ve woken up at absurd hours in the morning with JR and Hep to watch at least 40 of their matches. Thus, to be able to check out Anfield (essentially England’s Wrigley Field), and to see the team I’ve grown so close to was a pretty special opportunity.

Since I watched the movie Green Street Hooligans recently where they portray all English football fans as hating anyone who uses the term soccer and hasn’t memorized the club’s exact results for the past 100 years, I was a little nervous about standing out like a sore thumb since I was going by myself. Luckily enough, I met a couple other international supporters in the hostel who were heading to the game, and even more fans while drinking pre-game pints in the pubs who I hit it off with. It’s nice that fan-dom can break down borders and create friendships where they otherwise wouldn’t have existed. Score another point for why sports are great. What I’ll take away most from the day was how red the entire city was before the game. Yeah, college campuses will dress up in their colors on gamedays, but I’m talking about a city with more than 2,000,000 people that you can distinctly notice the majority of people wearing jerseys, shirts, scarves and other memorabilia to show off their pride for their team. They truly eat, sleep, breathe and dream football in Liverpool.   

The game was a victory, I learned a few fan songs, and I got to show the people I was sitting next to that not all American’s are imbeciles when it comes to football (soccer? I’m torn on what to call it now…), so I’d consider the day a rousing success. I’d love if American sporting events had a bit more of the tenacity and passion that Europeans show at football matches, but alas, I guess that’s why you travel - to see little parts of every culture that you admire and then try to incorporate them into your life in some small way. 

Now I’m on a train down to London where I’m gonna meet back up with the Badr-el-din’s who have been excellent hosts and even better friends once again this trip even though Leen is in SF. It’s been awesome having another family over here to hang out with and I’ve gotta thank them immensely for welcoming me in and taking such good care of me. 

Zurich was intended to simply be a day and a half stopover to see what “The Most Livable City in the World” was all about, but it turns out 36 hours was enough to leave an impression on me. To start off, you know how I said traveling alone wasn’t easy in the Alps? From the moment I walked into my hostel in Zurich, I made eye contact with Paul and it became clear we were going to become best friends. Him and his girlfriend Natalie, despite being Canadians, were awesome people to explore with and they quickly remedied my loneliness problems by graciously allowing me to third wheel for a couple days. 

By far the best part about Zurich was the river swimming holes smack dab in the middle of the city. Both days we found a spot where hundreds of Zurichites (Zurichians?) would go as soon as they got off work to kick back, relax, and enjoy life. Everyone brought their own beers, got into their swimming suits (or just took it all off since it was nudity friendly), and either laid around in the sun chatting with friends or swam in the refreshingly chilly water for hours. I guess there are parallels between Dolores Park, or other public places in SF, but the combination of beautiful weather, swimming,  an open-container alcohol policy, the sand-volleyball courts/skatepark neighboring the river, and everyone being young, fit, and friendly made this one of the coolest places I’ve visited on the trip.   

Now if there’s something I enjoy more than sipping on a cold beer in the sun next to the river, it’s ping pong. Luckily for me, every park I saw had ping pong tables that were constantly being used by some of the best players I’ve ever seen. Unfortunately, I didn’t work up the courage to challenge anyone, but we all know the rest of the world hates Americans for coming into their country and being way better than them at everything, so I guess it’s good for our country's international relations that I left my paddle at home this trip ;-)…  In addition to the ping pong, most parks were set with a similar scene to the river with sand volleyball courts, and plenty of people fresh off work sitting around and relaxing with picnics, which really made me want to find similar scenes in SF next year. Where are these? 

Anyways, my last takeaway from Switzerland is that you definitely pay for all the amenities. And by that I mean that a Burger King Whopper meal is $15, a frapuccino is $8, and a bottle of water from a supermarket is $3.50. Basically take the price you’d expect to pay for anything, and then multiply it by 2 and you’ll be in the right ballpark. Now that’s all good and fine since the population is one of the wealthiest in the world, but for a young, recent-grad who’s already been traveling for the last two months? Let’s just say I went with the instant noodle option more than a couple times... 

So you see that “Suggestions?” button at the top of this page? I put it there because I embarked on this trip with a one-way ticket across the ocean and zero plans after Amsterdam so I was hoping to get some inspiration from you all. While I’d love to say my inbox was flooded with incredible feedback, it turns out only one person suggested anything. Considering that one person was the fantastic Maria Malone, I knew she wouldn’t lead me astray so I booked a ticket to the Swiss Alps! 

Now I completely trusted Maria that the Alps would be a sight to remember, but the one thing I was unsure about was how I’d react to traveling alone. Despite meeting plenty of kind people at the hostel, our schedules never aligned so all of my hiking and adventuring was done by my lonesome. Now don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a little bit of me-time as much as the next person, but I also feel like I enjoy a solid conversation and a partner in crime more than the next person so I was constantly aware of being alone. Since it was only 3 and a half days, I was able to manage it and even come to appreciate it, but it made me appreciate having such awesome travel buddies on the rest of this trip even more. 

Once I got the courage to venture out by my lonesome into the big bad world, I was treated to some of the more breathtaking landscapes I’ve ever seen. The average day included me taking boats from Lucerne to a mountain base (four in total) and then combining hiking and gondolas until I made it to the peak, but in the case of Mt. Rigi, I #startedatthebottom and hiked up the gorgeous top. There really isn’t a lot to say since the beauty is so much better described by the pictures around this post, but it was a much appreciated change of pace to walk around mountains that make the thousand-year old cities I’ve been seeing look like babies.