One of my unexpected duties in India as the “guy,” was to chase down any unwanted critters from our hotel. And since this was India, this turned into a somewhat regular occurrence. Generally, I preferred not having to kill the unwanted…
Pest Control
Author: Zachary A. Marx
Zachary Marx is currently living and working in Munich, Germany. He graduated with a degree in Political Science in 2006 from the University of Tennessee, and continues to bleed orange. So far, his vagabond lifestyle has brought him to five continents, and twenty-eight countries, with extended stays in China, Japan, and Korea. He started 80couches.com in February of 2011, with the ultimate goal of using it as the premise for couchsurfing around the globe. Your feedback and suggestions are welcome. He can be reached by carrier pigeon, smoke signals, telegram, and via the Interwebs, at zachary.marx@gmail.com.
Dating in Korea
This piece was originally written for a local magazine. After requesting the piece, they apparently didn’t want it, so here it is for you the reader on the Interwebs. The names, except for mine which seems like a mistake in…
America the Violent
This column has been bouncing between the synapses of my brain for quite some time in one form or another. There is a difficult reality we Americans must face. Difficult words need to be spoken, and difficult choices need to…
A Stand Against Smart Phones
Today, a coworker asked me in a slightly accusatory tone why I didn’t have a smart phone. My reply was simply, “Because I refuse to get one.” She noted that it makes certain things, like inviting me to lunch, more…
How does one say “Baseball” in French?
This is the latest installment of my on-going narrative of my experience with Couchsurfing. The full story can be found here. Say what you will about Milwaukee in winter, but in summer, the city truly comes alive. Well, it comes…
Creationist Korea
After nearly two years in Korea, and another one yet planned, the reader might assume that I generally like this quirky little country of 50 million people, perched precariously on the edge of Asia. The reader would be quite right…
Atheist Me: What’s the Big Deal?
This is a follow-up to two posts that I completed in January 2012 on my Atheism. Within a few days of releasing my post first post on Atheism: “Atheist Me: Coming to the Conclusion,” I received the following facebook message from…
The Furriest Couchsurfer
This is the latest installment of my on-going narrative of my experience with Couchsurfing. The full story can be found here. The other day, while talking to my mom, she posed the following question, “How difficult was it to get…
Darjeeling
The 16-hour train ride to New Jalpaiguri and the subsequent 3-hour jeep ride to Darjeeling gave us time to chill out from a stressful last day in Varanasi. The noisy, hot, packed train (at one point there were 18 people…
Varanasi
I made the decision to not share my thoughts on Varanasi right away. Of all the places we visited, Varanasi was by far the most intense, dirty, chaotic, and quintessentially Indian city of them all. Quite simply, I needed some…
Khajuraho
Yesterday was a long, but mostly pleasant trip on a train. The trip lasted more than 8 hours, and we were more than a little nervous at a few points, when the train didn’t seem to be going where we…
Agra and the Taj Mahal
For third time in as many days, we found ourselves waking up far earlier than we would normal expect to on vacation. But this time, it wasn’t merely from jet-lag or from having to catch some sort of transit to…