Westminister Abbey a couple weeks ago...

It started with my first and one of my only (I am a teetotaler) sips of alcohol.  I was 14.  I was sitting in the back of a Church of England service in Binfield, the little English village where my family lives.  I was there for a school project in which I had to observe a service from a tradition other than my own.

We had gotten as far as Communion and I had decided that to get the full effect of attendance, I was going to join in.  So I joined the line of parishioners heading to the front of the church to sip from the same cup.  When it was my turn I took a generous sip and to my utter astonishment, the liquid burned all the way down.  “I think I just had alcohol,” was my one big takeaway from the service as I left.

After I got over the novelty of the fact that I had had my first drink, I started to focus on the overall experience.  It had been different from services that I was used to.  The formality, the gowns, the High Church music, the centuries-old village church – it all was seriously intriguing.  It was my first taste of church tourism and I was hooked.

I have no idea how many churches, temples and synagogues I have crashed since, but here are a few tips I have found helpful for doing so without getting thrown out or (perhaps worse yet) being targeted for recruitment…

Watch Fight Club

You know when when Ed Norton’s character in Fight Club is visiting support groups and he says that if you say nothing as a visitor people always assume the worst?  Well, I am not sure the same holds for crashing religious services but if you remain silent (and you don’t physically look different from everyone else) there is a chance you can just observe without being identified as an “outsider”.  Of course, your chances of flying under the radar are better if you pick big churches where everyone doesn’t know everyone.

Give Places the Benefit of the Doubt

Here’s a good rule of thumb: Don’t compare the worst of other religious communities to the best of your own.  If in doubt about a novel practice or something that seems “weird”, assume that these are good people and that there is a good reason for how they worship.  Are people jumping up and down?  Crying dramatically in pews?  Falling over?  Let them do their thing and don’t just rush to assume the worst.

Find Common Ground

When I was younger I would immediately start making a list of things that I disagreed with whenever I was exposed to people and environments from different faith traditions.  This is stupid, alienating and unproductive.  It is far better to find the common ground between what you happen to believe and what is happening around you.  There are nearly always things that you have in common with the community you are visiting.  It makes for far better conversation and relationship-building.

YOU are the Guest

Remember that you are the one visiting and you are not there to question or lecture anyone.  As fun as it may be to start asking controversial questions, don’t do it.  Even if you totally disagree with things, ask questions and show appreciation for anything and everything that looks remotely interesting.  If you do this, people will lower their guards and you will be able to get to know them.

Learn How to Ask Questions

Asking good questions is an art form.  Do some research and think of some insightful questions to ask when you visit a place of worship.  I like to ask questions of a range of people.  I compare what I hear from little children to what I hear from bored teenagers or charismatic clergy.  The answers will often be different and if you ask questions of a lot of people you will become more comfortable asking questions and you will be more able to root “scripted” answers from reality.

Stay for Coffee

In an Armenian Church in Switzerland it was tea and cookies.  At a Lutheran Church in Chico, CA it was coffee and at a hip worship service / 20-30 something Jewish mixer in Beverly Hills it was sushi and sake.  Whatever form the social hour takes after the religious bit, stay.  It is fun.  People are more relaxed and have time to chat.  You can learn a lot and meet very interesting people.  FYI… young singles often flirt shamelessly at these kinds of occasions.  Don’t believe me?  Visit ATID LA for Friday Night Live (the Jewish mixer I mentioned).  It gets crazy.

Draw Boundaries

The problem with being a religious tourist and crashing random services is that you will definitely get pitched with every religious spin under the sun.  Not only will people try to convert you, they will sometimes do so aggressively.  Be ready with answers to the most common questions:  “Will you be here next week?” is a common one.  I have found that saying something vague like, “Next week might not work but maybe sometime in the future,” works.

How about you?  Have any tips you want to add to this list?  Any horror stories from church crashing gone bad?  I’d love to connect in the comment section…

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Bjorn Karlman

I remember having a conversation with a missionary of a different faith when I was living in the Pangasinan province of the Philippines.  We got to a juncture where it was clear that we disagreed on something.  Her helpful comment?  “I am right and your are wrong.”  Classy.

Holy Simpletons

I have always hated this about some religious people.  They often tend to be the most annoyingly narrow people I come across.  Don’t get me wrong.  I have always seen myself as religious.  (Yes, for those that prefer the term “spiritual”, I see myself as a spiritual person.) But what is it about religion that draws the intolerant and the simpleminded?  The types that have to be right?  It’s nauseating.

Give and Take

I believe in a higher power.  I believe that life has meaning in and of itself and that I do not “create” its beauty and texture, I discover it.  I could go into a long list of the things that I believe in but I have never seen CultureMutt as a place to score any sectarian points.

I am, however, very interested in promoting understanding and patience between people of different cultures and beliefs.  I really enjoy some give and take, some mutual learning.  I am always interested in ways that people from diverse faith and cultural backgrounds can actually dialogue.

Is the Answer to be Agnostic?

I certainly sympathize with agnostics who simply do not believe that truth is knowable.  To a certain extent, I agree.  Truth, in its perfect, ultimate form is not something I believe we will ever grasp.  But I certainly want to be open to discovering more and more of it as I go through life.  Is my faith getting in the way of this?  Is the fact that I am actually a member of a Christian denomination (Seventh-day Adventist, to be exact), a hindrance to my discovery of truth?

People have different reactions when I ask this kind of question.  There are some who, being believers themselves, immediately get on the defensive.  “How could you say such a thing?  You have the truth don’t take that so lightly!”  I’ve met other churchgoers who are more sympathetic.  They say that it is a good thing to be open to a fuller understanding of life, reality and truth.  I’ll let you guess which type I associate with when I go to church.

The Flip Side

But enough scrutiny of the churchgoers.  I have found equally narrow-minded people that profess no faith whatsoever.  They are religiously convinced that religion and any articulation / organized understanding of reality has to be wrong. They write it off before even considering it.  It kind of reminds me of political diehards (myself included from time to time) that are so busy calling out the other side for their partisan narrowness that they forget to remove the plank in their own failed policy eye.

The antidote to narrow-mindedness then, can’t be the mere act of embracing or rejecting religion.  In a way, your status as far as faith is concerned is not the point.  Your willingness to experiment and to be generous enough to give others 50% chance of being right is where it has to start.  Is this messier than the blessed assurance of those that think they have it all or those that are dead set on disallowing any chance of truth’s discovery?  Of course.  But what good is assurance if it is built on blinkered, sinking sand?

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Partying hard in Hong Kong (bottom left)

I stuck out like a sore thumb.  I was this chubby, blond, sumo-looking kid growing up in Hong Kong.  As you can see in the picture opposite, I looked very different…

As if looks were not enough of a distinguishing factor, I was also being raised very differently from the Chinese norm.  From an early age (about 3), most kids in Hong Kong would start kindergarten and begin study in what was quickly becoming one of the most competitive educational systems in the world.

Competition for jobs and higher education in Hong Kong was (and is) fierce and linked closely to educational rank so there was a huge emphasis on educating children as quickly as possible.

This may have been the case in Hong Kong but my mother was of an altogether different, Swedish persuasion: kids should be kids and play outside for as long as possible.  They had their whole lives to be formally educated. So while my Chinese friends were running through math drills I was tearing around the neighborhood in my classy red pedal car.

I have come to look at this classic East/West division as the difference between the “pressure cooker” and the “crock pot” approach to childhood education.

Pressure Cooker

There were definite advantages to the pressure cooker style of education.  Kids were pushed through school as quickly as possible.  My Chinese childhood contemporaries were WAY ahead of me in reading, writing and math.  I mean there was no comparison because I basically couldn’t do any of it until I was seven years old.  I remember going over to friends’ houses and asking if they could play. And nope, they were studying.  It was an early experience in rejection and I took it stoically, as a Swede:)

Crock pot

The Swedish model that I was subjected to was different and fell more in line with the overall Western style of education where you start educating kids a little later.  Education then takes place at a more gradual (crock pot) pace.  Western kids don’t catch up with their Asian contemporaries educationally until late high school / undergraduate studies. I was almost seven when I started first grade and until then I had only gone to kindergartens that basically focused on socializing kids rather than giving them an academic head start.

Which System is Better?

I was happily surprised to meet some of my childhood friends from Hong Kong when I was in university in Michigan.  A few of us ended up at the same school and by then it looked as though the educational gap had closed some (although I am sure they could still run circles around me in math and the sciences).  The fact that each of us had chosen to come to the United States for college education, was, to me, significant.

Many of the Americans and Brits that I have talked to are completely convinced that their universities are the best in the world.  Maybe that is still the case.  Certainly Western tertiary educations are still in high demand and are well-respected around the world. The fact that English is very definitely the world language probably has a lot to do with this.  However, front runner status in terms of world educational systems will likely shift East as the balance of economic power shifts toward Asia. So the pressure cooker may win out over the crock pot in the end.  For now, maybe a hybrid of the two approaches is the way to go…

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The happy couple

Last week I flew to England to be the Best Brother (Maid of Honor) in my sister Karin’s wedding.

Almost exactly a year ago she had been Best Sister in my own wedding in LA so it was fun to have the role reversal.

I was a little nervous about my speaking role in the wedding because I hadn’t lived in Britain for a while and there are some definite cultural differences between California and the UK.  In addition to the Best Brother role, I was Emcee for the reception and I was concerned that I would mess up my speech or the transitions between different program elements.

In the end things worked out for the most part.  Here are some things I learned along the way:

1)  Mirror what is going on around you.

One of the things I was hyper-aware of was the fact that because I am a naturally loud person I could very easily be perceived as the brash American.  I’ve heard it said that Americans communicate through overstatement and the English through understatement.  I did my best to “tone down” my remarks accordingly.  I only partially succeeded in the end.

2)  Say less than is necessary.

I freaked out when, ON THE DAY OF THE WEDDING, I timed my Best Brother speech and it was over three times longer than it was supposed to be.  I kept trimming away at it and luckily it did not end up being the longest speech at the wedding.  Especially when communicating in cross-cultural context, less is more.  Going too long may be perceived as cultural insensitivity or imperialistic bullishness, especially if you have an American accent.  If your remarks are being translated in real time it is even more important to cut the length down drastically.

3)  Find a local sounding board

Luckily I had several English friends at the wedding that were willing to give me pointers on my speech prep and tell me how the emceeing was going day-of. They mocked my nasal American accent to bits but also offered very helpful advice on what kind of material would go down well with the crowd.  I will confess to stealing a joke or two and passing it off as original material…

4)  Dig for dirt tastefully

Luckily for me, Britain has a very developed “piss-taking” culture where outright insults aimed at friends are an accepted expression of camaraderie.  So it was fairly easy to cobble together enough dirt on the groom (based on restaurant chatter the night before) to spice up my Best Brother speech.  I will say, however, that when I have tried to use the same piss-taking approach in the United States, some Americans have been offended at what they deem unnecessary trash talk.  Know your audience.  What works here may not work there.

5)  If you have a foreign-sounding accent…

I mentioned this earlier but this bears repeating: accents are significant.  They can be a barrier or a facilitator in cross-cultural communication.  To get around anti-American sentiment in Europe, I often joke about my American accent and issue fake apologies for it.  This typically goes down well.  Whether or not you decide to point out your different accent, be sure to proceed confidently with your material.

Me and my pal Kayla, the flower girl

You are who you are and they can deal with it.

6)  Piggyback

If at all possible, try to build common ground with an international audience as fast as possible.  If you can open your remarks with something funny someone else said at the wedding or if you can reference a popular point that a prior speaker made, do it.  Come across as the “reasonable” foreigner who gets it.  Even the staunchest nationalists will appreciate a “good” American/Brit/Swede – one that is not pushing a competing agenda and instead appreciates the local scene.

There’s a lot more that can be said but in the end commonsense and cool heads prevail.  International weddings are a lot of fun.  Don’t let the complexity of the intercultural dynamics scare you off.  There is all kinds of common ground to celebrate.  And in the end it’s not your day anyway, so relax.

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Bjorn Karlman

I’ll never forget it.  I was 16, working in a little village in the Cavite province of the Philippines, just outside Manila.  On this particular occasion I was at a Korean friend’s house.  I was joining about 10 other guys in repeatedly bowing down to a Korean grandmother.

The occasion was Korean New Year (the first day of the lunar calendar).  The bowing was part of an ancestral ritual called Sebae and was basically a way to show respect for elders.  With the grandma being the eldest person in the room, she was the object of our ceremonial bowing.

The ritual, the traditional hanbok dress that some of the crowd wore, and the absolutely amazing food that lay waiting made for a pretty unforgettable impression.

Have any FOBS in your life?  “FOB” stands for Fresh Off The Boat and basically refers to a very recent immigrant.  Today’s post, comes at the end of a week dealing with friendships so what more fitting a way to finish up than to tackle the topic of FOB friends?  Here’s how you pick one out in a crowd:

1)  They are making a peace sign at the camera in every photo – OK so this definitely holds for Asian FOBS… don’t hate me for pointing it out.  My wife did it as a joke sometimes when we first started dating.  Then she went to work in Korea for 6 months and it is now her permanent pic pose.

2)  They will gladly tell you that you are fat. – Especially FOB parents your parents age have no problem hitting you straight.  For more on FOB parents, click here.

3)  They can be super polite and then super blunt – Typical lines from FOBS:  “Excuse me, Bjorn, but do you mind if I tell you something?  You are such a nice boy and this makes me “embarrass”.  But your hair looks no good.”  WOW.

4)  They seriously think Vicks can fix EVERYTHING – When I lived in the Philippines they had something like Vicks that was believed to have all kinds of powers.  You could use it for any ailment, just rub it on where it hurts… I used it for a stomach ache once when I was 11.  It worked.

5)  They are SUPER cheap in everyday life and then they throw the BIGGEST BIRTHDAY PARTIES you have EVER SEEN – FOBS can be NEXT LEVEL cheap.  Check out the Happy Slip video above of the mom sawing the paper towel roll in half.  This is TYPICAL.  But then you go to a bday bash and they have rented out a hot venue, there is a band, tons of food and the place is packed. HUH??!!

6)  They’ve got plastic on the furniture they bought years ago. – How this is supposed to help their living rooms I DO NOT KNOW but I have seen this quite a bit.  And the plastic is getting ratty…

7)  They are VERY superstitious – My grandma, an otherwise intelligent, grounded woman would swear up and down that there were “little people” that lived in the forest in Sweden.  She would defend this belief to anyone.  I have FOB friends that you would never want to take camping because they could tell you ghost stories that would make you wet yourself.

I know you’ve got your own FOB spotting tips.  Hit me with them in the comments.

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Photo Courtesy of Peniel Eya

One of the friends that I am in touch with from childhood is Peniel Eya, a Cameroonian that I met when we were both about seven, growing up in a rural corner of the Philippines, about an hour from Manila.  In the picture opposite, we respectively make up the back left and right.  We were as close as early grade schoolers could get and shared a lot of experiences in school, sports and overall rabble rousing. As Peniel was one of my first close friends I remember being extra bummed when his family left the Philippines after a few years to go back to Cameroon.  Friendship, even back then, was a huge deal to me.

International Posse

I’ve made a lot of other close friends in the years since but I am really glad that Peniel and I are still in touch (and that he posts good pics on Facebook so I can illustrate my posts:)).  Being able to look back at the 20+ years that we have been friends I like to reflect on how friends impact me.  Peniel gave me insight into his Cameroonian/Francaphone culture and I learned a lot from this exposure.  Other closest friends were Filipino, Korean, Ghanian and Singaporian.  Although this kind of international exposure didn’t exactly solidify anything about my Swedish identity, I feel like it gave me a good start in becoming more of a world citizen.

Your Influencers

Several months ago I wrote a post titled Choose Your Friends Carefully… Building Your International Think Tank.  In it I made a case for having a strong accountability group of positive friends who push you towards becoming a better person.  I want to develop on that.  I really believe that, whether or not it is immediately obvious, we more often than not end up being the average of the handful of people that we hang around the most.  I mean this in the broader sense of environment – both online and day-to-day in-person interaction. Because this is reality, it makes a lot of sense to be proactive about the kinds of friendships you create.

Choose Friends that are Different

Does your network bring out the best in you?  Do your friends make you a generous world citizen?  Do they exert positive peer pressure on you?  Do they make you want to give of yourself more, to be more open-minded?  I have often found that developing friendships with people from vastly different backgrounds from me can really help me grow.  For example, moving up to to Northern California I was initially very nervous about the transition from ultra urban LA living and the accompanying lifestyle and political norms, to the exact opposite up north. For non-Californian CultureMutt readers, Northern and Southern California may as well be two different states.  There is no love lost between the two parts of the state.  ”You’ll stick out like a sore thumb”, I was warned as I announced I was leaving LA for a little Norcal mountain town.  And I did.  But more than three years later I am really grateful for my friends up here that have helped me grow.

The Challenge

As we start another week, let’s pause and be grateful for the friendships we do have.  Let’s also give some thought to how we can grow our circles to become more open-minded, better rounded and more generous.

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some volunteer friends pretending to pass out after feasting in a Seoul restaurant

There is something seriously refreshing about service-minded globetrotters.  Some of the best people I have ever met, I have gotten to know on campuses and other outposts around the world.  They have generally been volunteers of some kind or people working for nonprofits.  Once you take away money as the main motivator in people’s lives and add a love for global travel in its place, people tend to really blossom into amazing human beings.   They just seem to automatically sound more interesting, more fun and better rounded.  They have real spark and a definite energy about them.  It’s incredible and I always enjoy meeting them.

I’ve often tried to work out what it is that makes these globe trotters tick.  Here are a few things that I have observed:

1) They see the bigger picture

I remember skiing with a guy in Northern Sweden who was convinced that he would never need to learn English.  I was 16 at the time but I still felt like the guy needed to travel a little and expand his understanding of the world.  The tragedy is that he may actually have been right.  If you stay in the same place your whole life, you may not need to grow and develop into an informed world citizen.  But you miss so much by this kind of complacency.  Those that travel are almost automatically more open minded, tolerant, understanding and more likely to see the bigger picture.  This is a very valuable quality.  Getting stuck in provincial nit-picking bickering is highly unattractive and a waste of time.

2) They are more curious – Travel – specifically service-minded travel – grows you as a human being.  It specifically grows your mind and forces you to ask questions – both of yourself and of those around you.  You discover more ways of being human.  You learn that there are different and often better ways of doing things.  You discover the beauty of other cultures and ways of seeing life.  It is exciting and drives you to learn more and more.  As you try to help people from other places, you yourself grow – it is always a two-way street. 

3) They are flexible – Anyone who has traveled extensively or done service-related work oversees knows that in order to be happy you have got to learn to be flexible.  You do give up a lot of c0ntrol in travel.  That is part of the beauty.  New environments will often mean an unpredictable schedule, re-written rules and a lot of other situations forcing you out of your comfort zone.  It is here that the seasoned international do-gooder adapts and stretches – it is healthy and a very positive thing.

4) They love the unknown – One step further than learning flexibility is actually learning to love the unknown. I find that seasoned service-minded relocators actually relish the adventure and growth that comes from deliberately tackling more of the unknown than most will see.  A foreign environment keeps you on your toes because you are constantly exploring and learning.  What lies ahead is unknown and with practice you can learn to see this for the excellent, suspense-filled growth opportunity it brings  rather than mourning the loss of the familiar.

A service mindset, powered by global travel has incredible power to make you a better, more interesting and exciting individual.  Why delay?  Find a cause, find a location and make the jump.  The world and you yourself will be better for it.

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Bjorn Karlman

The reason I am so passionate about what I call savvy, global do-gooding is that it quite literally has changed my life more than once.  Between finishing the equivalent of high school in England and finishing college in the United States I had done the following:

1) Spent 12 months with an international volunteer organization that had me stationed in two Filipino villages for the first six months and then a little town in Swedish Lappland that was 80 miles from the Arctic Circle and so far north that people cared more about their snowmobiles than they did about their cars.  I taught English, worked with kids and built several lasting friendships.

2) Studied in Cedex, France for an entire school year, just across the border from Geneva, Switzerland.  I skied the Alps; floated in the Mediterranean; ambled around Paris and bluffed my way around Monte Carlo casinos.  And I learned French:)

3) Taken a year out of college in the United States to work doing Public Relations, recruiting and some teaching at the international boarding school that I had attended several years prior in Watford, just north of London.

4) Spent a semester studying Spanish in Buenos Aires, Argentina.  In addition to all the language classes I went to Tango shows; survived the madness of a River-Boca match (the biggest soccer rivalry in Argentina) and dodged some genuinely energetic political protesting, complete with gas bombs.

In each case what I craved more than language acquisition or work experience was transformational life experience.  I wanted to reinvent myself each time.  I wanted to be a very different person after each period abroad.  I wanted to put the regular growth experience on steroids.  Although I had a number of disappointments and some painful failures, I can honestly say that these times abroad stretched me and allowed for the growth I was seeking.  I’ve deconstructed my experiences to understand them better and I’ve come up with a a list of benefits to taking a “gap” year abroad to study, work or travel abroad:

1)  A Clean Slate – For better of for worse, relocating abroad gives you a chance to start from scratch.  Yes, this means starting from ground zero to build a social circle and to get to know the neighborhood.  But it also means that past missteps and complicated messes are behind you and you have a completely new opportunity to create your life.  Build it from the ground up.  The first time I was abroad I took advantage of the clean slate to transition from being a 16 year-old high school nerd to a far more independent and socially courageous 17 year-old.

2)  You are more receptive to learning abroad – Where you might tune out mentors and helpful friends at home due to long-developed biases, the newness of being abroad means that you are grateful for those that help you and you learn more readily about the culture around you.  I found that while I was highly critical of my own culture and society, going abroad allowed me to rest that sense of cultural self-critique and genuinely enjoy learning from those around me because what they brought to me was fresh and new.

3)  Language acquisition helps you understand a new way to be human – You cannot begin to understand culture and people before you understand their language.  And the beauty of different languages is that they allow for different expressions of what it means to be human.  When you start to learn languages you begin to realize that certain sentiments can only be correctly expressed in certain languages… Try translating a Spanish love song by a popular artist like Shakira into English and you’ll see what I mean – beautiful in Spanish, cheesy in English.

4)  Negative home influences are nowhere to be found  - I’ve noticed that I have a tendency to get complacent when my surroundings get too familiar.  I find a niche of friends, carve out a comfortable life rhythm and settle into a little too much of an autopilot existence.  The negative attitudes, limiting beliefs, low expectations and general monotony of everything around me threatens to become part of me.  Travel has helped me shake this cloud of mediocrity.  With travel my surroundings change, I meet happy fellow adventurers and I am constantly confronted with exciting new ideas.  Travel is a great way to jump start life when it seems to grind to a halt. 

5)  You are who you say you are – As much as it is “important to be yourself”, it is equally true that you can define and redefine yourself throughout life.  In no context is this more true than when you are on the road.  I’ve noticed that international service projects in particular are great because you can seize them as opportunities to become who you really want to become, a better person.  Whether you end up become more self-aware or whether you successfully learn to be a very different person from emulating the life of an excellent service-minded mentor, travel provides a great new environment to focus on service and intentional development.

I would love to hear your top reasons for taking a year out abroad.  Leave me your thoughts by leaving a comment!

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Bjorn Karlman

Bathroom breaks can be seriously complicated when you are globetrotting.  A toilet seat may be missing.  You may be greeted by a simple hole in the ground.  Toilet paper may be replaced with a water scoop.  The toilet may be fully electronic yet labeled in a completely foreign writing.  Your sense of balance may be tested if squatting on the bowl is required.  It is important to anticipate a whole range of restroom realities. So in the spirit of facilitating easier bathroom breaks on the go: here’s a survey of different toilet troubles and how to hack them:

1) No toilet paper – This is often the case in even the most industrialized of nations.  While you may be very prepared and carrying rolls of toilet paper in developing countries it is wise to at least carry a couple tissue packets whenever traveling.  I’ve seen everything from bare toilet rolls to places that charge you for toilet paper.  Toilet paper shortages are not fun and are CERTAINLY not something you want to contend with if you are in a hurry or if the local cuisine has caused some kind of an emergency.  Come prepared, march confidently into that cubicle or charming hole in the ground and take care of business knowing that clean up is covered.

2) Check if you can flush the toilet paper - The question of whether or not you should flush toilet paper may seem a no-brainer but in many countries you can’t do it or you will plug the plumbing up.  The protocol in these cases is to dispose of the TP in the trash can that is often provided right next to the toilet.  Get this right or risk very embarrassing incidents/humiliating explanations later.  Guide books will most likely tell you whether or not to flush TP… but ask if you are confused.

3) Be adventurous - When I lived in a fishing village in the Philippines, I learned to squat on the seat-less toilet bowl and then use a water scoop to take care of clean up – people just did not do TP.  In fact the very thought of TP grossed locals out.  Water was cleaner and more thorough.  They were probably right… just took some getting used to.  It was a case of being confident, stepping onto that bowl and making it work.  You can do it!!

3) Do not hold it - Some newbies insist on holding it because they are too put off by the local bathroom situation to go.  That turns into a problem quickly and can result in UTIs and other unwanted medical stress not to mention severe discomfort… DON’T do it!

4) Use hotels – When traveling I am ALWAYS on the lookout for hotels.  If you suspect that bathroom conditions are going to be problematic, look for major hotels that cater to expats.  Generally no questions are asked if you walk in confidently and use the restrooms.  You will avoid fees that may be charged at local restrooms and the comfort and hygiene of a 5-star hotel is unbeatable.

5) Carry Change – Europe can be notoriously bad about free restrooms.  It makes sense to carry a healthy amount of change to take care of restroom charges.  It is one of those unfortunate realities that you may just have to surrender to.  In Britain and Scandinavia I almost don’t even think about the bathroom charge anymore… they are basically the norm and its better to pay up than to spend your day hunting down free facilities.

Good luck everyone.  Savvy global do-gooding is so much more fun on an empty bladder:)

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Bjorn Karlman