I've got a great site to share with you today, in an interview with Evan Hadfield, of Big Brother Backpacking. Big Brother Backpacking is the modern answer to the Grand Tour - traveling Europe, finding yourself while exploring other cultures. Perfect for teens, this is a way to explore Europe with experienced guides and fantastic learning experiences!! I am so very impressed with Big Brother Backpacking, and was glad to sit down and chat with Evan, about his company, background, touring vs. school, preparing for travel, and more. Here's what he had to say...

WE: Please tell us about your site, Big Brother Backpacking...

EH: Well, in short, Big Brother Backpacking is the real life version of the "choose your own adventure" stories I used to read as a kid. As a young traveler, I was always amazed at how every company out there was simply giving its customers the option of seeing three cities, sitting on a bus, and forcing them to travel to glorified gift shops masquerading as "cultural centres" added to cut the company's costs and make waste the traveler's valuable time. I mean really, who wants to spend a third of their vacation being hauled from one tourist shop to the next? How can you call that seeing the culture? It just didn't seem to me like traveling. My company is designed to serve future generations with the tour I wanted when I was young, and exchange those unnecessary pit stops for genuine adventure.

Castle View

WE: What was the genesis of Big Brother Backpacking?

EH: Big Brother Backpacking has been a life goal of mine for as long as I can remember giving serious thought towards a career. A majority of my life has been spent on the road, in the sky, or on exchange. I have always enjoyed teaching, and have been a tutor on three continents, and have taught students in kindergarten through to adults in their sixties. However, teaching for me always lacked a certain element. Personally, I always felt stifled in school, and imagine that many other students feel the same. My belief was (and still is) that there is a wealth of knowledge that can only be learned through experience. However, most of those experiences are too hard to find within one's comfort zone. Therefore, as a means of giving way for students to get the most of their education, I landed upon opening a traveling organization designed specifically for teens. Out of my desire to provide the next generation of students with something different, exciting and educational, Big Brother Backpacking was born.

WE: Who goes on Big Brother Backpacking trips?

EH: Our tours are normally designed for students aged 14 to 20. However, there are many people out there looking to learn how to travel who are out of this range. Given special circumstances we have been known to make exceptions and run tours specifically designed for adults. Normally, however, our tours are designed around high school and early university students who are looking to learn the tricks of successful traveling and see all the corners of Europe that conventional tours don't see. Our intent is to treat our students like adults and give them a choice in what they see without determining for them what we think they will like. Although our guides are always prepared to help out and give suggestions, the true leaders of the tour are our students. It is especially important that students are given real opportunities to see what determination and group involvement can achieve while they are still young enough to let it change their future. By focusing on students instead of adults, Big Brother Backpacking hopes to help teens see first-hand what success in school and leadership in life can help them to achieve.

Old City Prague

WE:  How are you different from other tour companies?

EH: Big Brother Backpacking is a mix of both a touring company and a traveling school, without getting too bogged down with either aspect. The focus on most touring companies and traveling schools is the idea of force and lack of choice. With a vast majority of touring companies (especially those for teens), travelers are piled together with twenty other people onto a bus, dragged from one destination to another (stopping only for gift shops and postcard moments), and are taught absolutely nothing. People who go on these tours have no way of choosing what they do or where they go beyond 'opting out' of expensive additions provided by the company.

With traveling schools, the focus is more on the classic model of schooling, where students are told what to learn and how to learn it. The idea of force still remains (although, to be fair, children end up learning far more than with your average tour company). Much like with the touring companies, traveling schools focus on large groups of students on one tour. Instead of focusing on the classroom schooling aspect, Big Brother Backpacking is designed to give a passive education to its students. Instead of being told what to learn and why it is important, they are simply given the reins of their trip, and through working with their tour guides learn a wide variety of skills required for independent activity. Our students are not forced into learning, but learn through conversations with their guides, planning with their group, and given the freedom to pursue activities that they enjoy in a real-world environment. Our students both passively and actively learn history, geography, meteorology, geology time-management, trip planning, foreign linguistics, international affairs, teamwork, personal determination and physical education. These are not things that can be truly understood in a classroom. Our students don't learn about World War Two through a textbook, but by sticking their finger in a bullet hole. They don't learn about geology from a paper-mache mountain, but by climbing the Alps and looking out over the valleys. They learn about meteorology through planning tomorrow's destination, geography through deciding what country to visit next, and physical education by carrying their lives on their backs. Our goal is to leave our students with a lasting knowledge that they will wish to repeat, not just force some information into their brain only to be forgot after a test.

What we take is the best from both a touring company and a traveling school and combine them into the best possible trip for our students. We want people to remember us for not only what we allowed them to see, but the effect it left on them afterwards.

WE:  How can people best prepare for travel?

EH: I find that there really isn't a great way to prepare for travel beyond the obvious. I have traveled across a large number of the world, run my own travel company and have been both traveling and living abroad for over 80% of my life -- and yet I still get butterflies in my stomach before I head out on a new adventure. The idea of a new and unknown experience is the real reason to travel, and what makes it so much fun. Other than double checking your packing, getting a good feel for what you intend on doing when you arrive, making sure you have enough money and that your passport is not left behind on your desk, there is little you can do to prepare. I feel that the more planning and preparation you do before you go, the less freedom you have once you arrive. The more prepared you are, the more you are trying to make it as comfortable an experience as being at home. In my opinion, traveling should be an adventure.

WE:  What do you suggest travelers do, to give back while they are abroad?

EH: The best thing you can do abroad, in my opinion, is to be yourself respectfully. Everywhere you go on earth, if you stay long enough and learn the language, you will find that people are fundamentally the same. The major difference between someone at home and someone elsewhere is a point of culture and raising. View people abroad as a new kid in class or at work, and treat them the same. Most people are just as excited to meet someone from abroad as you are to meet them. Remember that although you are on vacation, they are at home, and given the chance they would visit where you were from, as well. Treating people like they are special, different, or deserving of pity because they come from somewhere different (or less wealthy) than where you are from is a way of making other countries appear childish. I personally think that the best thing for a traveler to be is open, friendly, and acting like they are visiting an acquaintance they don't know very well. Give back by treating people as equals, and acting naturally.

Swiss Scene

WE: Is there anything else you'd like to share with us?

EH: I would like to say that although my company is focused on teaching teens how to travel and the importance of self-determination and independence, it is a message that everyone should take to heart. Just because you are middle aged and have never traveled doesn't mean that it is too late. Traveling abroad, in the right context, can be the single greatest and most educational activity in a person's life, whether they are 15 or 50. It is never to late to learn, and it is never too late to see the world you inhabit. The only way to gain wisdom is through developing a first-hand knowledge of the world around you. I can think of no better way of doing that than through seeing the world as it was meant to be seen. You never know how much time you have on earth, so you might as well see what you can while you are here. Nobody is going to make the decision for you -- It is up to you to get up and go.

Rowing Lake Bled

WE: Thanks so very much, Evan! We are very impressed with Big Brother Backpacking, and am very happy to recommend it to our Wandering Educators (and their kids!).

For more information, please see:

Big Brother Backpacking
www.bigbrotherbackpacking.com

All photos courtesy and copyright Big Brother Backpacking