Lessons from the Road: Sydney Hatmaker on Saying Yes to the World pt. 1

Description:

At 24 years old, Jennifer Hatmaker was parenting her first diaper baby on no sleep as a stay-at-home mom and pastor’s wife. By contrast, Jen’s second-born, Sydney Hatmaker, spent half of her 24th year on a gap year travelling the world and banking a lifetime of memories.

In this special two-part conversation, Sydney walks us through some of the best moments and lessons learned from her life-changing adventure, beginning in May in Berlin and ending in October in Vietnam. With stops along the way in Sicily, Turkey, Portugal, Spain, Malaysia, Indonesia, India, and Thailand, Sydney gives us some of her best tips for travelling solo on a shoestring budget. It might entail a 40-hour journey taking a car to a bus to a ferry to a bus, to another ferry, to a train, to a taxi, to a scooter, to a hostel, all to save $60, but the point is it can be done and she’s here to inspire us all with tales from her adventure.

Highlights from this conversation include:

• In our GenXcellence Travel-Edition, we reflect on what travel was like for us in the 80s-90s, before satellites and cell phones and Expedia (Sydney has never heard of Traveller’s Cheques)
• Sydney gives us her best tips for getting into one of the world’s most popular techno clubs in Berlin (shh! It’s very hush-hush!)
• We learn about surfing camp on the coastline of the Portuguese Riviera
• Why you need to budget more for European travel than Asian travel and how you can eat in Asia on $4 a day
• Sydney talks about learning to be comfortable travelling on her own and being in her own company – something she thought she was already good at but was pushed to new limits
• And a lot more…..

Be sure to tune in for part two of our conversation next week to hear how the story ends.

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Thought-provoking Quotes:

I didn’t have a phone for the last two months of my trip. I still had a laptop so when I was at the hostel on wifi, I could do research and book things but it was a different kind of travel. I made the most of it and it ended up being a bit of an adventure.I obviously had an initial reaction of panic (not having a phone) but then I felt this complete freedom. – Sydney Hatmaker

I did have some big ideas that I would get something out of my system on this trip, that I would come home and settle down, get a real job, root down in one place but halfway through my trip I realized there is so much more (in the world) that I want to see. There’s so much to do, so much to see and explore and so many ways to make it happen. – Sydney Hatmaker

Travelling feels different and way more real when you’re by yourself. I love my own company and my company is better than some random person that I’m not really connecting with. And realizing that, makes it really easy to connect with more people. – Sydney Hatmaker

Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

The 9 Enneagram Types Descriptions - https://www.enneagraminstitute.com/type-descriptions/

Skyscanner - https://www.skyscanner.com/

Rick Steves Travel Guides - https://amzn.to/41mKeFX

Berghain Techno Club in Berlin - https://bit.ly/4gfaMNq

Sagrada Familia - https://sagradafamilia.org/en/

Jen’s MeCamp - https://bit.ly/3D1qX2I

The Banana Pancake Trail - https://trail.bananabackpacks.com/banana-pancake-trail/

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