Travel Stories

My toughest time while living abroad was undoubtedly my first time living abroad. My first season I was young, broke, going through a quarter-life crisis, and really didn’t know the ins-and-outs of the game yet. I swung at Barcelona with my eyes closed and luckily I made decent contact. What I hit was the opportunity to live across from a hostel. I was timid still at the time so I wasn’t necessarily eying to take the next base, rookie mistake. Occasionally though the Gods would reward me and I would come around to score. One of the times began with me sitting on my window sill (as I normally would), having a beer and looking out, when a group of around 10 people walked out of the hostel. They were a friendly bunch. When they looked up and saw me they initiated conversation and invited me to drink with them at Placa Del Sol, a place where (mostly) locals sit on the floor and drink what they brought themselves. I had zero reason to say no so off I went to join them.

The leader of the group went by the name of ’Toast’ (no idea why), a Hostel worker whose job was to take guests to mini local drinking tours. Toast was from some european country, and he was your stereotypical ‘I live and work and hostels in foreign countries’ type, which to clarify I have absolutely no problem with. He was a chill dude. While at the Placa we talked and expressed how cool it was to go out with them and be able to meet more people, and girls, and blah blah blah. Being an immediate teammate, he lets me know there’s a pitcher tipping pitching and I should step into the box and take a hack (That’s absolutely not what he said because he’s european and doesn’t know shit about baseball). He points towards one of the girls, Cobra, and lets me know that he heard she’s looking for ‘it’. Like a normal dude, I thought and responded something along the lines of, ‘yeah, cool, thanks dude, I’ll see what’s up.’ From there I can’t honestly say if Toast had anything to do with it or not, but who did I eventually find myself chatting to? Cobra.

Cobra was 26, born in Canada to Afghan parents, and to say the least a chill girl. She was traveling solo through Barcelona as part of a much longer trip around Spain. She explained how the trip was the first time she was really stepping out of her comfort zone, but she was determined. I admired that, as I was immediately able to relate. I then explained to her how I ended up living across the hostel. How I was there playing baseball and occasionally teaching English. How I had recently graduated, had absolutely no idea what to do with my life, hit a quarter-life crisis, then said ‘fuck it, I’m moving to Europe’ (something like that). She found that admirable. I explained how I was nervous about it, but it was a move I felt I strongly needed to make for my own personal development, which she felt related to the theme of her trip.

While at a bar she buys a round, then I buy a round. During one of these times she kissed me and said something like ‘I wasn’t sure if you were going to’. I tried explaining that I probably would have, but that I appreciated the straightforwardness (luckily for me that would continue). Eventually she waved her arm and we rounded third and she proposed we head home. The drinking tour was in the local neighborhood so my place/the hostel was only a few blocks away through the narrow streets of Gracia. We laughed as we walked out of the bar and off we went. During this walk Cobra explains how much of this is new to her. Explains that she doesn’t party much, works often, and definitely doesn’t sleep around. Lots of this was new to her, but it was part of her purpose. She had even gotten a small tattoo of Spain as a symbol of it. I thought it was cool that she was making a conscious effort to do things differently than she normally would. I was happy to be the target of her current motive. As we approached my place she told me a story about a recent night. She was about to give our boy Toast a blowjob, but he had some issues with his erection. We laughed (sorry Toast), and went into my bedroom as I did my best to assure her we were good to go in that department.

The next morning Cobra woke up early and went next door to the hostel to pack because she was off to her last city before heading back to Canada. She thanked me for being cool about the whole scenario, to which I thanked her. We exchanged numbers and instagrams and I wished her well as she continued on. Later I would check that instagram page (naturally) and find a link to a website and follow it. It was a blog she had started and it was called ‘Year of No Fear’. It was small with just a few posts, but the message was clear. Though I felt her vibes and found her explanations the previous night to be genuine, they made more sense to me now. Going home with me was just one aspect of a much larger purpose for her. She basically used me, but I respected that because I respected the idea of personal growth that motivated it.

My first season abroad was undoubtedly my toughest one. In reality my biggest motivation for going was not to pursue baseball, but to develop as a person by placing myself in a completely new environment. I too was actively trying to take different courses of action than I ‘normally’ would. A few of those actions have stuck and become part of my current personality (like actively enjoying the dance floor). Before leaving I was naturally nervous. I was fearful. But, like Cobra, I was committed to make a change. She might have pieced it together when I explained how I ended up in Barcelona, or maybe she didn’t, but I too was attempting to live a ‘year of no fear’. Part of that personal pact included saying yes, without hesitation, to every group of strangers that asked me to drink with them after catching me looking down on them with a beer in hand from my window sill.

The Alligators regular season ended a couple weeks ago. We are in third place with a 19-9 record which is incredible given how much of a roller coaster the season has been. Every day there is new drama with the board, our centerfielder nearly broke his ankle striding out for first, our catcher dislocated his thumb twice, one pitcher thought his throwing hand could punch through a brick wall and another turned into Rick Ankiel in 2000 NLDS three weeks in a row.  It doesn’t feel like we should be in the top four, but here we are.