A nave and reckless tourist...or

[Laughter]

[Music]

this

is what it could look like traveling

through a country at war

or this or this

or this two years ago

i was backpacking around afghanistan in

the same way as i had experienced

countries before that in order to get

the

purest and most genuine travel

experience

i always try to see places through the

eyes of the local people

and i do so by staying with strangers

who are kind enough

to host people like me who are on a

quest for authentic

travel experiences many of my hosts were

full of wanderlust themselves

so for a young afghan like nasser who i

stayed with in kabul

one way of traveling was through the

experience of hosting people from

different cultures

he would list this place on an online

platform called

couchsurfing where i had found the

profile of both him

and his friend so through an officer’s

friend

i had the chance to not only visit the

local afghan school where he was working

but also to give a guest lecture to his

english class students

the kids there were delighted to have a

visitor from far away

and were eagerly asking questions about

what life was like

in my country and they also gave me some

insight into what life was like in

theirs

to my astonishment i found out that

hiking is also a national activity in

afghanistan

and i got to join nasser and his friends

for a hike

and a picnic in the pancha valley

you guys have to simply imagine us

sitting there and

chatting about trivial things like

dating culture

favorite foods and movie actors

it was remarkable to think about how

much i had in common with these young

men

who were living in a country very

different to my own

and the more i talked with these people

the more i realized how limited my

understanding of this place had been

alongside with all of the war and the

terror

that is clearly going on there there was

also a reality which was

much more rich and much more complex

it was a reality which also had a lot

more beauty

and a lot more peace than i had imagined

i almost couldn’t wait to share this

finding with my friends back home

so when an international press agency

asked me for an

interview i felt like this was the

perfect opportunity to share the story

not just with my friends but to share it

with the whole world

for almost two hours i was sitting in

nassar’s living room

answering the questions from this

journalist before she left

me there high in expectation for the

article that was going to be published

but unfortunately

once the article was released all of my

excitement disappeared

the story did simply not voice out the

idea

i had wanted to convey

you can imagine i was absolutely

devastated by seeing this

i was hurt and i was disappointed

even more so as the article spread like

a plague

of misinformation and ended up in nearly

100

newspapers around the world like fox

news

your news the telegraph

i cannot understand why these newspapers

had to present me

as a naive and reckless traveler to

their millions of readers

for sure i had failed to communicate my

idea

and for a long time i was bashing myself

for not sending a clear enough message

but eventually i realized that perhaps

there was another question

which i should have been asking myself

am i naive for traveling the way that i

do

i knew that i had not been clueless back

home my parents had been fostering two

afghan boys

who had become my brothers at heart

and the horrid grim and frightening

story

of young boys escaping from their homes

and

running for their lives is still

resonating in my mind

so through them i gained a great respect

and regard to this country

and i knew that such places was nowhere

to simply fool around

one month after leaving nasser and

afghanistan behind

i ventured into syria and already while

waiting for a taxi to take me from

lebanon

and into the syrian capital i met

another stranger who i would trust with

my life

nora was a single mother working as a

dancer

and invited me to spend the next days

living with her

in the suburb of damascus

she shared her one-bedroom apartment

with her

unemployed mother and her eight-year-old

daughter called nastya

and i would babysit nastia when both

nora and her mother was not at home

and through her school books we were

learning arabic numbers and words

together you guys can imagine

how much nora must have trusted me to

let me stay

with their only daughter me

who was a stranger from another culture

it was clear that the door of trust was

open both ways

and this experience with nora and her

family

gave me the confidence to travel

independently to other cities

throughout syria afterwards so

the fact that i got to see as much of

syria as i did

and to get a little bit of an

understanding of what life was like

there during the war

was all thanks to the fact that i had

been naive

and trusted a stranger who i shared a

taxi ride with

and my experience with such wonderful

people are not just limited

to nasser and nora by now i have stayed

with over a hundred such strangers

ranging from the slums of liberia to a

huge mansion in kuwait

all who have become my trusted friends

you see for syria and afghanistan as for

the other 193 countries i

visited i had to bring along a basket

full of trust

and to be honest it wasn’t always a

choice

sometimes it was rather a necessity as i

simply did not have the time

to fully build my confidence in people

in a more cautious way

so i offered this trust basket to those

who trusted me enough

to let me stay in their homes

and this social connection has become my

core reason to keep on traveling

even after some pretty tough challenges

i have faced along the way

like being interrogated and imprisoned

being robbed

and even stabbed in my hand on one

occasion

you can call me naive if you want but

this word

does no longer hurt me in the same way

as it used to

because i know that it is my openness to

strangers

that is my key to getting to know places

and its people

and for making friends wherever i go

so maybe we all just need

to be a little more naive to genuinely

get to know the people around us

and maybe instead of meeting people with

an empty basket of trust

we can all put a dash more into it

and i believe that if we all do this we

might

all realize that strangers

are just friends who we have not gotten

to know yet thanks

you