A goal of mine in going abroad was, and still is, to meet knew people, ideally from exotic places.

But as I looked back on my two months in London, I realized I have no British friends and the only people I’ve met in London are fellow Syracuse University students. While these new friends are great, I feel as though I’ve been missing out.

The sights and sounds of a place only tell me so much — I want the inner stories that the people from a place can show me. I have no host mom to share with me the local tastes of London and no classmates born in the U.K. who can take me to local bars unknown to the American students I go out with.

While in Budapest, I met a man who encapsulates the Euro trip. His name is Mike (I didn’t catch his last name), but he goes by M Asterix69, he is in his late 40s and he has been traveling Europe for seven years.

“The only most important (thing) to make you rich is your brain and your GPS,” he told me in a bar.

Mike has a cell phone, but right now it is out of credits. He travels the world on his bicycle, but it broke, so he has to build a new one. After seven years and seven countries of travel, he is about to make his fifth bike, which is his only method of travel. He started in Germany, where he was born, and has made stops in Romania, Czech Republic, Greece and Bulgaria, among others. He has more stops to make before he finishes in Iceland (he’ll resort to a boat for that one) and returns to a semi-normal life.

Though I asked him, I could not quite determine what set him on his journey with nothing but a few hundred Euros in hand and a daughter back home. It seems he was fed up with the politics of the world and his relationships — his wife divorced him and only wanted him back when her new husband lost his job.

“When you have nothing, [think] in your brain: everything is possible. And think about me,” he said.

Now, he works as a carpenter, a handyman or anything else he can in random European cities. He gets by on minimal money due to the sheer kindness of other humans, which he said proves to him that we are all better than this politicized world makes us believe.

Mike inspired me to reinvigorate my mission to meet strange people in this strange world. He doesn’t take pictures of the sights he sees; rather, he takes memories and sometimes a physical memento. This man has lived the ultimate European vacation and he hasn’t done a single normal thing. We should all strive to travel this way — it doesn’t matter what we take with us if we don’t experience the places we go.

Recently, Mike’s small caravan of belongings was stolen, and I met him while he was awaiting a friend to take him to the German embassy in Hungary so he could get new legal documents, allowing him to travel again. He was without possessions, but never without spirit. I don’t think he ever will be.

Jack Rose is a junior broadcast and digital journalism major. You can email him at jlrose@syr.edu or follow him @jrose94 on Twitter.

Published on November 4, 2015 at 9:53 pm