Mike Tyson's Polish Prison Hostel & The Girl in Paris

A little mini-adventure before the big one and the catalyst for my long-term travels and, yes, of course it involves a girl!

This travel podcast goes from Rome to Florence to Paris and then to Boston and includes an analysis of what makes life, our experiences, and those that come via travel, so special.

While traveling from Rome to Florence, seeing the sights, staying in the worst possible hostel, meeting the most amazing people, and then meeting that special person, this mini adventure made the big travel adventure possible, but it was never a guarantee.
 
I had a lot of fun reliving these stories; I hope you enjoy this episode! :)

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hello. Hello and welcome to Paris. I'm just kidding. We're not there yet. So you're safe. No, one's going to stab you or steal your phone or punch you because you didn't give them a cigarette in the middle of the day, surrounded by thousands of

Speaker 2: 0:12

People.

Speaker 1: 0:15

So Paris is a rather interesting city and it's, uh, oddly enough, it can be one of the least romantic and most horrifying places to go. But I do have a lot of lovely romantic stories that are a bit fairy tale. S I'm sorry. We have to have at least some of them a little bit fairy tale ask, and I'm going to get to that in a moment because that beautiful moment that I had, there was the catalyst for me to travel a long term, but there was a little bit that led up to it. And so I want to back up just a little bit, and then we'll get to Paris. So years and years ago, I wanted to have a little road trip across Europe, or a little backpacking trip where you have a small backpack and you take terrains to all these really cool cities and you see, and you do cool stuff. And I couldn't get anybody to go with me. No one had the time or the money or the interest. There were, there was always an excuse. And so eventually I just gave up and I said, screw it. I'm going on my own. So I buy a round trip ticket for about a month and a half to go to Europe and have my own little road trip. And I started off in Rome where I had a family member living. So I stayed there for two weeks and I toured every thing. It was so cool. I consider myself to be sort of a baby tourist then. So I did a lot of paid tours. I didn't even know there was such a thing as a free walking tour. I didn't even know what a pub crawl was. And so I did all of the basic touristy stuff, and I had so much fun. I saw everything except for the Vatican, oddly enough, that was closed the day I tried to go there, but I saw all of these bricks and all of these stones and all of these really cool things. And it honestly was as cool as I'd hoped it would be. And I didn't even encounter any of the bad things that so many other people encounter. So a friend of mine, their friend is a priest and was dressed in full priest outfit. You know, it's a very easily identifiable, just standing at the station, waiting for the kind of, uh, train the commuter train, to pick people up, going into central Rome. He has a backpack on one shoulder and someone comes up to him, a street person. You'll hear me use that term quite a lot. It's a blanket term for street. People, just people who are going to harass you while on the street. And so one of these people came up to him and squirted ketchup all over him. And as he turns around to see what's going on, someone else rips the backpack off of his right shoulder and runs away. So I had heard a lot of stories like this, but none of that happened to me. I had just the best experience, seeing things. And I have to say, I don't want to focus too much on it, but Rome is so, so cool. The coolest thing that I saw there was this church built on a church, built on a pagan temple. And then when you go all the way down to the bottom, they dug a hole in the wall and you walk into an old Roman Villa and go through their kitchen where they still have running water.

Speaker 2: 3:16

It was the coolest thing

Speaker 1: 3:18

Ever. And especially because I had no idea it even existed, I just went on this tour. And then I saw that. And really that was the highlight for me. That was so cool. You are literally walking through history with every step down that you take. And then you go through a hole in the wall to the Roman Villa. I was in heaven. I loved it. I had such a good time just seeing everything I'd ever dreamed of seeing. And the Coliseum actually is really, really cool. So I saw a lot, lots of stuff, but after, while I was done with Rome and I wanted to go somewhere else. So I went and took a train to Florence and it is such a cool city in the most romantic city that I have been single. And so a little bit sad walking around single seeing all the outdoor sculpture gardens, but the most important thing about Florence is that there, I started to learn what really matters. So in Rome, I had seen so much and had just been overwhelmed by it, but I loved it. But you know, that is not lasting happiness. It's really nice to say that I saw the Coliseum, but does that put a smile on my face today? I absolutely not. In Florence. I stayed in by far the worst hostile that I've ever been in. And one of the first hospitals that I ever stayed at as well, it was such a scary and terrifying place. You go into an apartment building and you bang on a steel door and a little Indian man in a purple suit answers. The door tells you he's Mike Tyson says he doesn't know who you are. He doesn't even tell you if it's a hostile or not. So you don't know if you're going to a club or God knows what else. And then he makes you look up your reservation online and says, okay, yeah, cool. Uh, you can stay here. It looks like you made a reservation. Stay here. Is this even the place that I made the reservation? Or are you just some random dude? Who's like, yeah, you can stay in my apartment. And so it turned out that it actually was a hostile, but yeah, in the common room, as I am looking at my reservation, I noticed all of the workers, all of the tattooed Polish workers who had just been recently released from prison and were sleeping in his apartment as they remodeled it. And how do I now know that they were in prison at the time? I just thought these look like some rough dudes, but I later learned that. Yeah, they were actually for real real in prison, not that long ago. So it's a lovely hostel run by an Indian Mike Tyson and full of a bunch of Polish prison inmates. And, uh, so it was completely terrifying. But as I'm looking up my, I think, oh my God, oh my God, they're going to chop me up into little pieces and put me in the wall. That's exactly what they're going to do. And then I looked to the left and I see this lovely, petite blonde girl walked by. And I think, no, no, no, no. I'm safe because they're totally going to cut her up first and put her

Speaker 2: 6:20

In the wall. There was

Speaker 1: 6:22

Way less of her to cut up. And there is of me. So I'm probably saying, and the girl who I saw there, I went and talked to her. It turned out to be one of the coolest people I ever met, a French Canadian who was so fun to hang out with. So I'm in this horrible, horrible place and there's more horrors to come. I mean, I didn't even use the bathroom in two days. I waited until I checked into a hotel later. I mean, it was just so bad, but because of this girl and meeting her and then meeting all of the other people in the hostel, I had an amazing time. We solo travelers ended up being a group of us that range between three and nine, depending on the time of day and what activity we wanted to do. We toured the city together. We went to museums together, outdoor sculpture gardens listened to live music, drink beers on the street, went to, uh, an illegal bakery place that wasn't supposed to be open that serves you out the back door late at night, went to an amazing cow's own place. Having beers in cows zones with these awesome people, all from different places, with different experiences. It was beautiful. It was perfect. It completely overshadowed what happened in Rome. Yes. It was nice that I got to see the stones and everything. I mean, I'm joking. I loved it. I loved it. But what left a really lasting impression on me and what made me feel so just full and warm and what made me smile or the people that I met in Florence and that God forsaken hostel. Mike Tyson's Polish prison hostel. Oh my gosh. Oh wow. I need to have a little drink of wine. I haven't thought about that place in a long time. And there was also a long-term guest who was very, very friendly with Mike Tyson and she was staying there for free. Yeah. She, she knew how to work system. So I had an amazing time there. Those two experiences taught me that. Yes, things are nice, but what makes you really, really happy by the experiences that you have ended up people that you meet? There are things that you really do want to see, and it can make you really, really happy. But after a couple of weeks after you've seen what you want to see, what really makes you happy? What really fulfills you are people. Also, some people can just be horrible, but when you meet the right ones, nothing else matters. And I started to feel something which I hadn't felt for a very, very long time. And that was, I don't know, dare I say happiness. So in Rome I had all of these things, things, but I didn't have the personal connections in Florence. It was kind of beautiful. Right. But I didn't have as many things. I had a lot of personal connections. And so I like that contrast because that would inform a lot about how my life would pan out. Now, now that was not strong enough to be the catalyst for me to travel for years and years. And there are many times when I didn't want to travel for years and years, but it would lead up to it. So I'm beginning to learn. What's actually important. And then I leave Florence. I continue on with my Euro trip. And a funny little story is my dad meets up with me for part of it. And as we are taking the escalator up in central Vienna after arriving at the airport, oh my gosh, I will never forget this torture scene of this rather rotund woman using a trashcan to brace herself as she launched her turds onto the street in the middle of the day in the middle of the city. Welcome to Vienna my friends. Oh my gosh. So, and it isn't actually that exciting. I have to say it's, it's, uh, it can be nice, but, um, that was, uh, that was a traumatizing experience. So I continue on with my road trip and at the ER with my Euro trip. And by the end of it, I'm getting ready to leave. And the people that I had met in Florence invited me to come and spend a few days with him in Paris. I only met them for maybe two hours maximum, but that was the mindset was travelers, having a good time, meeting new people, making new friends, going out for drinks together and wanting to get to know you and wanting to enrich their lives through your experience and vice versa. So they invited me to go to Paris. So I go there and I stayed in a Chinatown, which actually has awesome. I love Chinatown in Paris. Uh, it's, it's much nicer than why I stayed before that. And, um, we hang out for three days, drinking wine and having strawberries and the gardens in the middle of Paris with all of their friends and having a great time. And everybody welcomed me into the group. And it was as perfect as you'd hope and experience in Paris would be, but is usually never going to be if you're a tourist there, I'm sorry. It was great. So my month and a half is coming to a close I've seen amazing things and I've met amazing people and amazing experiences. And I'm leaving the very next day. So after our picnicking and wine and fruit and listening to Spaniards talk so fast, you can't even believe it's words. We go bar hopping. So we lose half the group and the drinkers stay. And we go from bar to bar, to bar, to bar. And it's the middle of the week. We end up in a Canadian bar early in the morning, late at night. And there's not that many people there and we have more drinks and more drinks. And we laugh at each other and talk about our funny accents and where we've been and make fun of each other's countries. And just the most jovial ways. I mean, the differences that people have are what make them interesting and to ignore them is to ignore the beauty of life. It really, really is. So I was on cloud nine, having a great time. Then I'm going up from my last beer where my last two beers, the Spaniards were done. They didn't have their siesta that days. They weren't gonna stay out very late. And I go up to the bar and has I'm walking up to the bar. I see this girl, oh my goodness. Sitting on a stool at the corner of the bar, waiting for her, drink, skin, tight jeans, black lace top that hid almost nothing beautiful, thick black hair, all of skin. And it was, I mean, my heart's beating faster. I'm like, oh my God, this woman is so beautiful. What am I going to do? I get closer to the bar, closer to the bar, closer to the bar. And then I get up next to her order, my drink, and immediately look over and just make fun of her for ordering a coffee, because that's what you do when confronted with a really pretty girls, just make fun of her for, for ordering a coffee. And, uh, the next two hours, they are a blur. We did not leave that bar the entire time my friends left. I didn't leave the bar to say goodbye, stayed right there. Say goodbye to all of them. As they came by, her friends left, same thing happened. We didn't leave the bar. We didn't leave that corner of the bar for two hours. We entered, oh, this is going to sound ridiculous. But it felt like we, we had gone into our own little world. We were on a new plane of existence where it was just the two of us and nothing else mattered. How unexpected after all of this time turns out that happiness is a people. How unexpected? Of course it's not unexpected. What am I saying? So we're sitting at the bar and do you know, beauty is one thing, but if you are only beautiful, then you're nothing. That's where a painting is. A sculpture is beautiful. I don't want to date either one of them, but she is smart, witty, funny, hardworking. If she wants something, she goes for it. I love that. And, and she, when I like someone, apparently I, I kind of not make fun of them, but I sort of, um, how do you say it kind of make fun of them a little bit, I guess. And she would hit me or right back right back immediately and better when, uh, we would just be poking fun at each other. And I loved it. And we got along on every level about every single thing. I couldn't believe it, all the movies that I like to, everyone made fun of me for liking. She made fun of me for not knowing enough about them.

Speaker 2: 15:41

I mean, it was great. We got along

Speaker 1: 15:45

In every way possible and the two hours pass and, uh, we're being kicked out of the bar because it's closing time. And the only people who are still in the bar are the six regulars that are sitting towards the front. So we go to the front of the bar and we had been living in our own world for two hours. We, there was nothing physical. There was just, I don't know, a spiritual connection. It was, it was something amazing. Something I had not to that date felt it was beautiful. And uh, so we get to the front of the bar. It's raining cats and dogs outside. It's just pouring rain. So we're not going to walk outside. This is going to be our last moment together. And did I tell you that I'm leaving in 10 hours? My trip is up. I fly back to America in 10 hours. She knew that I knew that we hadn't really planned for what was going to happen at the end of the night at all, because we were just, like I said, in our own little world. So we get there. We know that this may be the last time that we are ever going to see each other and we are totally not ready for what's going to happen. Next. We have fun. He is the most awkward, most amazing kiss. First kiss ever at the front of the bar in front of all the regulars and the bar tender. And everyone starts clapping and cheering and jeering. It was so embarrassing. You know, if you don't like someone, it is so easy to make a move on them because you don't care. If you get rejected, you don't care. If your breast smells bad, you don't care about anything. But when you have just met someone that makes you feel like you've entered another plane of existence on parallel with heaven. Yeah. You're pretty scared for that first kiss. It's pretty darn terrifying. I have to say. And, uh, it was the most beautifully awkward kiss ever. Yeah. So our time was up. We had our lovely kiss, got our cheers. Then it was time to head home. So she went to the next bar with her friends because her friends are pretty awesome. And my friends, you know, they didn't have their siesta, so they were a sleeping. So it was time to walk home in the rain because I don't know if you know this about Paris, but the moment a little tiny drop of rain hits the ground. All of the taxis are immediately full and the Metro doesn't run all night. So 45 minute walk home in pouring rain without a coat, which normally would not be such a big deal. I'm not going to complain about that. But this time I had a very important piece of paper in my pocket, a paper that had not only her name and her email and her social media contacts, but also her address. Every piece of information, even phone numbers, well, everything so that I could contact her afterwards. And she had the same piece of paper with all my information on it. We wanted to make sure that we could contact each other again, because both of us felt something. And this could not be the end of it. It could not. The irony of the universe is that they present you with this amazing thing right before they make it so that you have to make a life-changing choice in order to preserve that amazing thing that they had just given you. So the universe is a real universe, right? I'll have a drink to that one. I go back to the hostel. I chat off the ear of the night manager, nightmare managers, usually don't mind. They don't really have anything else to do. And they're mostly happy that they're not fending off crack whores that have chased you back to the hostel. Yeah, at least in Paris. Um, and I fly home and the weirdest thing happened. I can remember, I can't remember landing in Boston or getting to my apartment, but I can remember walking in the front door and every single step that I took up to the third floor, because every single step felt like I was walking into a prison, a beautiful, lovely prison. Like one of those Norwegian prisons, they show you on social media and it's better than any apartment you ever lived in kind of thing. Like it was, my apartment had everything that I wanted except for the two roommates, but it was a beautiful spacious apartment. Quiet. I had the bed that I wanted. I had the special sheets that I wanted, the special pillows that I wanted. I slept like a baby. Every night. I had all the clothes I wanted for summer and winter and everything in between. I had the computer desk, how I liked it, a special chair for the, everything, exactly how I wanted it. And I loved it. I loved it. But I realized that these things didn't make me happy and they didn't fulfill me. None of them made me feel better than all of those fun people that I met in Florence. And certainly not better than the girl that I met at the bar. So I don't know, are we supposed to go back to fight club? Now you've got this perfect department, but uh, it's not really making you happy. And you've got friends and I was also dating as well. Didn't have a girlfriend, but I had gone on dates, right? So I'm socially interacting, but just not feeling fulfilled. So you can imagine that I had a decision to make, well, my apartment lease was going to be up in three or four months. And I had to figure out if I'm going to stay in Boston and keep living the life that I'm living, my nice, comfortable life, where I'm making pretty good money. I would have been making a lot more money by this point. If I had just stayed there or if I want to chase these crazy feelings and crazy experiences that I had over the last month and a half now, the way that I have sort of framed this, it may seem like it was an easy decision, but it was not easy. I had everything that I wanted. I just wasn't fulfilled. It's very hard to leave everything you want and your dreams. And I had opportunities that were presented to me as well, that I had a good feeling. I may never be able to get again if I were to leave Boston. And it seems like that that was true. Those opportunities are long gone. So now was it worth it or not? I don't want to talk about that right now, but the point is, these are the things that I'm thinking about. I'm given opportunities to do some amazing stuff, but do I want to feel unhappy for the next few years doing these things or do I want to go on the adventure and potentially be really, really happy but not doing what I had planned in my mind that I was going to be doing for the last few years. That was difficult. That was difficult for me. So I'm really not some bad-ass

Speaker 3: 23:03

Traveler,

Speaker 1: 23:05

Real excited to give up my whole life and go explore the world. No, I had a lot of conflict and it was a very difficult decision to make, man, it's making me sad thinking about it now. Gosh, what would I do if I had that decision today, that's a tough decision to make. But at the end of the day, a saying, which I have for years often used, but at the time did not the people you meet define the experiences that you have. People are very, very important. And yeah, I made a choice to go. I did not renew my apartment lease. I sold as much of my stuff as I could. And I bought a one-way ticket to Paris and the adventure begins.