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Tales of the Introverted Traveler

me at Huxinting Teahouse in Shanghai

 

I have always been a deeply introverted person. I’ve taken a wide variety of personality tests over the years for fun and for professional reasons. For every test that measures introversion vs. extroversion, I consistently measure extremely introverted. I require a certain amount of quiet and solitude to maintain my emotional equilibrium. If I spend too much time consistently around people, I start feeling very antsy and have to retreat into my apartment cave to recover. While I have friends, most of them these days live scattered through different countries, and I rarely socialize with people outside of my current workplace. Most of the friends I’ve made in the past several years are through work. I have hobbies, but it seems like most of them are solitary activities or hobbies more frequently practiced by older individuals. I move every two to three years for work, so just when I might make some good friends, it’s about time to pick up and move (or they pick up and move). I’ve reached a point in my life where I’m just not interested in making new friends, or at least I’m not interested in making superficial friends to engage in superficial social activities. I still very much yearn to find a person I can form a deep friendship (possibly romantic) bond, though it is kind of hard to do at my age and professional rank. Almost everyone my age and rank are married with kids, and my career field doesn’t really allow for much fraternization with subordinates. Factor in my introverted nature that makes me shy away from typical social activities like clubs and bars, and it’s no surprise I spend the vast majority of my free time alone.

So combine my social situation with my deeply introverted nature, it’s also no surprise that I travel by myself most of the time. Back in the day (2001-2002), I had a boyfriend and we lived in Germany at the time. We got a lot of long weekends in our jobs, so we took advantage of all that free time and traveled all around Europe together. We had similar travel styles, because we liked to plan our travels in advance. We weren’t the types who just showed up at a place and played things by ear with accommodations and activities, but rather we reserved as much as possible, and planned our daily itineraries. We also liked to see the same things, like castles, cathedrals, interesting historical sites, and museums. The only thing we split upon was art museums, but that was easily handled by splitting up for a short period of time so I could indulge in beautiful art, and he could shop, sit in a cafe and drink beer, or see some other site that didn’t really interest me.

Since that relationship ended over 10 years ago, I haven’t had a consistent travel partner. The vast majority of my travels, both long weekends and long vacations, have been by myself. The few times I have traveled with another person, it was with my mother, and it went well, because we have similar travel styles and she lets me indulge in my extreme travel planner ways, while she gets to enjoy the ride and the fruits of my planning.

So again, the vast majority of my travel was on my own, and I very much enjoy my introverted traveling. Most travel advice I hear for solo travelers seems to be geared to extroverts in the sense they always encourage travelers to interact with strange fellow travelers or the local populace. While I very much enjoy seeing new cultures and experiencing new things, interacting with strangers in any capacity is not something I’m particularly thrilled to do. Sure there are occasions when I’ve enjoyed a spontaneous conversation with a stranger, but in general, it is not something I seek out, nor something I particularly enjoy. When I travel, I very much disappear into my own head and thoughts. I like observe what is going on around me when it comes to people and local culture, but not necessarily participate.

My introversion manifests itself differently if I am on vacation in a more isolated place known for beautiful nature versus a very large city. When I’m on a beautiful nature vacation, such as New Zealand or my Parks of the American West vacation I took last summer (Zion National Park, Bryce Canyon and Grand Canyon North), I can just disappear into my own head and enjoy the beautiful sites around me. Sure, there are often people, but there are easy ways to enjoy solitude, by either getting off the beaten path for hiking, or start traveling early in the morning before most people get started. However, I also like to travel to large cities to enjoy historical and cultural sites. At some point during every vacation in highly populated areas, I hit what I call my people pain threshold. That’s when the overwhelming number of people, noise, sights, sounds, smells makes me want to crawl into a nice little, quiet nest to escape it all. During my last long weekend in Shanghai, I experienced that acutely a couple times. Shanghai has around 18 million people in its metropolitan area and the population density is rather high. There were places I visited in the city that were literally crammed with people, and I had no personal space whatsoever. Like walking along a market street in Shanghai pictured below.

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It created this feeling of stress where I just wanted to get away to a place where I was alone and it was quiet. That place might have been my hostel room, but it could also be a place with a nice view that gave me more space. Shanghai did have its nice view on the Bund to take in and decompress. The riverside promenade is wide, and at that time of the evening, it was pleasantly and sparsely populated.

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But the inverse of the people pain threshold also holds true for me. This is only applicable on my longer vacations (i.e. more than three weeks), but it usually does manifest. Meaning that after three weeks without any significant adult interaction and conversation, I start feeling antsy, but this time craving for human contact. Just like spending too much time continuously around people makes me jittery, spending too much continuous time alone also starts to wear on me. That’s when any sort of loneliness sets in, and my own fantasy life ceases to be quite as effective. Once that feeling sets in, I know it’s time to go home (though I never go on vacation without a set end date anyway).

Essentially what I’m saying is that introversion and travel aren’t mutually exclusive. You can travel all throughout the world, see new things, eat new foods, and even experience new cultures (albeit from a more detached viewpoint), and still maintain true to your introverted nature. It doesn’t mean you aren’t a true traveler if you don’t talk to people if you don’t want to. It just means you experience travel differently than extroverts.

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McDonalds of the World

Shanghai McDonalds traditional looking

I have a “guilty pleasure” while traveling. I say guilty pleasure facetiously, because in reality I don’t feel guilty at all, because it’s just my thing when I travel. Though I have run into fellow travelers who try to make me feel guilty for this particular thing, like I am some sort of ugly American. Ironically enough, one of those same travelers chastising me for this in Egypt was the same one who couldn’t stop moaning for a Starbucks. She completely failed to see the irony in her stance on that one.  That guilty pleasure happens to be eating at a McDonald’s in every country I can. I make it a point to eat at a McDonald’s once during every vacation, even if the only one I can find is at the airport. That means everything from long weekends all the way up to month-long vacations. That adds up to be dozens of McDonald’s in dozens of countries. I certainly haven’t eaten in one for EVERY country I have visited. In those cases,  the countries typically didn’t have a McDonald’s. It may be one of the biggest global brands, but it still hasn’t made inroads into every country as of yet. The biggest global brand I have ever seen is Coca Cola products. I have NEVER been to one country that doesn’t have a plethora of Coca Cola products, but that is probably the penchant for the country to establish local bottling plants to spread the beverages as far as possible. There is only one country that has McDonald’s that I haven’t been able to visit, and that was Iceland. It certainly wasn’t for lack of desire, but this was the one developed country that didn’t have a McDonald’s that was centrally located downtown near the tourist areas. I kept seeing one on the outskirts of Reykjavik  when I was on bus tours [right next to a Taco Bell- which is extremely rare to find outside of the United States], but was never able to find it in my rental car.

Bergen McDonalds

 

What I have found in all these McDonald’s is that there are some interesting similarities and interesting differences. Many of the restaurants were located in actually beautiful and historic places. One in Bergen, Norway was in this beautiful , 19th century clapboard building (see above). I’ve eaten at a McDonald’s next to the Spanish Steps in Rome (though it wasn’t there anymore my last visit), and I’ve eaten in one right across from the Pantheon in Rome. You could eat your American fast food burger and fries outside al fresco and take in the view of the piazza and the ancient building. Talk about a clash of cultures.

Shanghai McDonalds

 

 In all these multitude of McDonald’s the only things standard to all of them are the fries, Big Macs, and some sort of McChicken sandwich. EVERY SINGLE McDONALD’S in every single country has their value meal number one as the Big Mac value meal, just like the United States. After that, it’s all up to regional tastes. I have seen things at McDonald’s you would never find in the States. Stuff like bulgogi burgers in Korea, calamari wraps in Germany (among a multitude of other regional items), and other things. Names might be different for even the same item. For those who have watched the movie “Pulp Fiction” , you are undoubtedly familiar with Quarter Pounders renamed Royales. In most McDonald’s in Europe you can get mayo instead of ketchup, which is a taste I acquired and continue to this day. U.S McDonald’s deliberately fill the cups with ice so you get less soda and they pocket more profit, but you are pretty lucky to find many ice cubes in McDonald’s in other countries (or in other restaurants for that matter, but that’s a post for another time).

My American traveling friends and I sometimes joke that McDonald’s is the “American embassy” just because it is so prevalent in many countries. I can’t really say I eat there because of any great need to maintain some sort of American touchstone. I guess I do it, just to compare the different experiences around the world.

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Hosteling in my 30s

I didn’t start traveling the world until my mid 20’s, and that is when I decided to make full use of youth hostels. I like to travel, but don’t like to spend money on hotels in most places. I just want a place to sleep and leave my stuff and take a shower, and hostels were the best way to accomplish that. I’d rather spend my money on the travel itself, activities, memorable meals and local shopping. Lodging was almost besides the point. So over the years, I have stayed in dozens of hostels in dozens of countries. I’ve stayed in some really nice ones, and I’ve stayed in some dodgy ones. I’ve stayed in ones that were overflowing with visitors, and some that were practically empty (particularly when traveling off season). I’ve rarely traveled in a country that doesn’t have many different hostels in all the vacation spots.

Thankfully the Internet has made it easier to stay in hostels (along with all the other aspects of travel). I remember reading a news article several years ago detailing how hostelling has changed over the years. Back in the 1960s/70s, most of the people who stayed in hostels were college students (or just post college) backpacking across the world. There was no real easy way to reserve places in advance, and it was incumbent upon the traveler to just show up in the morning and try to see if a bed was available. Many hostels back in the day even had age limits for visitors, topping out at age 26 often. Most of the people staying in hostels took advantage of the communal kitchens and saved money by bringing their own food and cooking. Hostels were a way for groups of young people to congregate and meet.

There are still many of the same qualities in most hostels. Communal kitchens and bathrooms still exist. Recreation rooms still have the games and books, but now have Internet and free WiFi. And you can still stay in multi-bed dorm rooms, sometimes segregated by gender and sometimes mixed gender. But there are some distinct differences in the hosteling experience nowadays. The Internet has enabled travelers to book rooms or beds days, weeks, even months in advance. There are a multitude of hostel booking sites, such as Hostelworld.com, hostelbookers.com, hostels.com, hihostels.com. Most of these sites overlap in their offerings, but you can get all the reviews of different locations and can book online. It’s great for those of us who like to plan our travel itineraries in advance and not just wing it, particularly during high tourist season of a country. Now hostels don’t just offer multi-bed dorm rooms, but also private and even family rooms. Hostels now don’t have an age limit anymore, so you start to see a different clientele. Sure, the vast majority of the hostelers are still college age students, but now there are more budget-minded families and older solo travelers. There are many hostels located in central locations like city downtown, and not just in off the beaten path.

I fall into the older, budget-minded solo traveler category. Sure, I started out hosteling in my mid 20s, but now I am in my mid/late 30s and still going strong. I don’t do it for the communal social experience, because for the most part I keep to myself. I don’t travel to meet new people per say, and would rather not engage in conversations with strangers. That’s become even more so as I get older, and I feel distinctly out of place with the other hostelers. Granted I don’t look my age (I could pass for late 20s), but I’m still VERY aware of the fact that I am often 15 years or more older than the others. Plus there is the draw of all the free Internet to keep my attention occupied elsewhere.

I do find that I wonder if I should keep doing it. All the reasons I started staying in hostels still stand, but I admit the whole communal bathroom thing is getting old, particularly when they are mixed gender. That was the case when I stayed at my last hostel in Shanghai. There was no actual BATHROOM, but rather an open area in the hall that had separate bathroom and shower stalls. I don’t run into that arrangement often thankfully. I always like it when the dorm rooms have ensuite bathrooms, just for the increased amount of privacy. I also will ALWAYS request an all female dorm room if it is offered (not all hostels do), just because I am REALLY over staying in a room with college age boys, both for the smell factor and for the noise factor. I didn’t particularly like rowdy college boys when I was in college, and I definitely don’t enjoy their immature antics now in my 30s.

Right now, the benefits of hosteling outweigh the drawbacks. I can still stay in a place with a bed and free Internet. I wonder if I will still feel this way when I hit my 40s.

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Arriving in Shanghai

Shanghai East Nanjing Road 1

My profession has thankfully allowed me the opportunity to live in foreign countries. And for me, one of the great pleasures of living in foreign countries is the ease of foreign travel. As much as I like living in the United States, it is a very big country so it is a lot harder to just leave the country for a long weekend. Again my profession affords me a lot of time off in the form of long weekends. So when I live overseas I like to maximize those long weekends. That was what I did this past weekend. I fully intended on spending four full days in Shanghai, and I got close. When you travel on limited amount of days to a place where there is a LOT to see and do, every moment counts. So I try to get one of the earliest flights out and one of the latest flights back in. That was my intent for this trip. My flight out of Seoul was at 0855 and I SHOULD have arrived in Shanghai around 1000. Alas, this was probably about the longest flight delay I’ve ever experienced at eight hours. It was so long, I decided to take the 45 minute train back to my apartment and relax there on the Internet rather than hang around the airport for the equivalent of an entire work day. Of course it could be completely worse, but it was frustrating to lose an entire day of travel, because I didn’t arrive in Shanghai and get to my hostel until around 2000.

What was great, and saved a ton of time was the ride on the maglev (magnetic levitation) train to and from Pudong Airport. If you are ever in Shanghai, I HIGHLY recommend the maglev train. A round trip ticket costs 80 RMB (roughly 13 USD), and it is completely worth it. The 19 miles between Pudong Airport and the metro stop of Longyang road is covered in under 10 minutes with brief top speeds of 400 kph (248 mph). The maglev train is fast and smooth, and cuts down travel time significantly. I mean, who likes to waste time getting to and from the airport when you can cut out the traffic entirely? That just means more vacation time for you.

Shanghai East Nanjing Road 2

Since it was relatively late when I got to my hostel, and I was tired, I only walked around a bit. I was staying just off East Nanjing Road, which is a major pedestrian shopping street between People’s Square to the west and The Bund to the east. I have more night pictures of Shanghai in a future post, but the whole street was bright with a multitude of neon lights and it was buzzing with activity and people. It’s like Seoul or Tokyo or London or even Las Vegas. I saw more than one instance of Shanghainese dancing music routines in the street. I could never figure out if this was just an exercise routine or had some deeper meaning, but the participants knew all the dance steps and were dancing in time with each other. Even for someone who has spent a lot of time in large cities (and in fact I live in Seoul now), all the people, noise, lights and activity were a bit overwhelming at first.

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New Years Eve celebrations of years past

Like I mentioned in my previous post, I’ve spent 13 out of the last 15 New Year’s Eves in foreign countries. So you would think I would have some wild stories to tell. Sadly you would be wrong. But nevertheless, there were a few very fun evenings over the years.

The first of those was NYE 2000 and I was in Frankfurt, Germany. I had just moved to Germany about 10 days prior. I was armed with a tour book and a better than working knowledge of German (I studied it in college, because I knew that I wanted to live in Germany one day). I knew one person at that point, and she was away skiing for the weekend. This was supposed to be the big New Years Eve. I mean we were heading into the year 2000 and the Y2K bug was supposed to crash everything at midnight. The doomsday pessimists predicted the end of the world as we knew it, so I felt compelled to go out and do SOMETHING to commemorate it and experience it for myself. Lucky for me, I was reading our local paper and saw all the different New Years celebrations that were taking place across Europe. Frankfurt was only a 20 minute train ride from the city I lived in (Darmstadt), and it was a simple matter of taking the streetcar to the train station and getting on a train to Frankfurt. Simple matter yes, but this was my first outing in Germany, so of course I was a bit nervous. I mean I was only 23 at this point, and while I had lived for a year in Korea, I hadn’t gotten out THAT much (in comparison to what I do now), and I hadn’t gained my full travel confidence yet. But with no issues whatsoever, I got myself on a train to Frankfurt for my first adventure. I spent the entire day just doing a walking tour of Frankfurt and taking it all in. The city was decked out for all the NYE festivities later that evening. They had carnival rides, different music and dancing booths, food vendors, booze vendors. As the night got later and the later, the crowd got bigger and drunker. At this point I wanted to make my way across the Main River to see the fireworks. The polizei tried to contain the crowd, but couldn’t hold back the sheer force of all that drunken happiness. I will confess to feeling crushed for a brief moment and thought that there was no way I could die in a crowd on NYE 2000. When midnight actually struck, the sky lit for several minutes with the intense amount of fireworks. It was pretty overwhelming, but in a good way. I didn’t actually get back to my quarters until around 5 am and couldn’t help but notice that the trains were still running and the world hadn’t stopped. Whew! That one evening not only gave me something fun to do for a big NYE, but also gave me the confidence to continue exploring Europe.

My next fun New Years Eve wasn’t until NYE 2007, and I was back again in Germany. I had moved back to Germany in June 2006. I also had recently become obsessed with a band, Scissor Sisters, because their second album had been released a few months prior. It was one of those deals where I just fell hardcore in love with something. It’s happened before, and it’s happened since with some pop culture things. As luck would have it, Scissor Sisters’ popularity was expanding out of the UK where they first started, and was spreading across Europe. I hadn’t seen them in concert yet, but kept hearing what an amazing live show they put on. So imagine my delight when I saw that they were headlining the New Years Eve festival in Berlin at the Brandenburg Gate. I had been to Berlin before when I was living in Germany a few years prior, but this was a bit different. As you can imagine, the NYE celebration in Berlin is HUGE filled with so many people and so much booze. The crowd at Brandenburg Gate was enormous, but through some calculated and careful maneuvering, I made it to the barrier gate by the time Scissor Sisters was due to perform. It was cold as all get out that night, but I was giddy with anticipation. They performed as well as I had hoped, but I have to say the audience themselves just wasn’t giving them the sort of love they had hoped and were used to experiencing with smaller crowds. They tried admirably, but by that point…*shrugs*.  Anyway, I had a great time and it was amazing to see them perform (though for the most part I prefer seeing them in smaller venues). Walking back to my hostel was like negotiating an obstacle course of drunk people falling down, trash, and an amazing amounts of broken glass. What was even more amazing, is that a few hours later in daylight, the mountain of trash had been cleared from the street like it was never there. You have to admire the German efficiency.

The next years NYE was not memorable for the actual party around midnight, because by that point I was dead asleep. It was what came before it that was so great. That year, 2007, I decided to take a group trip to Egypt over the holidays. I always wanted to see the pyramids and the other historical sites of Egypt, and figured the temperatures would be much cooler than the beastly heat in the dead of summer (and they were). By New Years Eve, my group was on the Sinai Peninsula and we were headed toward St. Katherine’s Monastery. We had a choice of walking up Mt. Sinai for the sunset that evening, or getting up at 2 am for the walk up for sunrise 1 January. We elected to go for the sunset. Walking up Mt. Sinai isn’t difficult in the sense that it requires any sort of mountain climbing ability. It just get steep at parts, particularly the final stairs to the peak. But it was worth it to stand up there and take the full view of the Sinai desert around me and watch as the last sunset of 2007 slipped below the horizon.

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After that though, we still had to get DOWN the mountain, and it was pitch dark at this point. We agreed to take the Steps of Penitence down, because it was quicker, though substantially steeper, and all we were armed with was our own personal flashlights. I had seen these steps enough in daylight to know that it was probably best that I could only see right in front of me, so I just had to take the necessary steps and put one foot in front of the other. I am very clumsy, lack sure-footedness, and tend to trip and fall very easily, and if I could have fully seen how uneven these steps were, I probably would have fallen many times. By the time we descended the mountain, it was around 7pm and we headed out to a very scrumptious buffet at our hotel. It was a nice, relaxing evening, but I was so tired from all the walking, I was probably asleep by 10 pm and didn’t wake up until New Years Day. That was some of the deepest sleep I ever had on vacation.

The final NYE that was anything memorable was NYE 2010. That year I elected to take a holiday trip to Peru, and made sure I was in Cuzco for NYE, because I had heard many good things about it for the NYE celebration in town. It wasn’t any one thing that was fun, but it was a large group of people completely drunk, singing and dancing in the streets and just having a good time. As midnight approached and passed, the crowds in the main square swelled until it was full of people. I extricated myself from it so I could watch it from above and take it all in. I liken the whole experience to a rave in a combat zone. There was loud music, wild dancing, groups of friends carousing, and there were so many pyrotechnics the air started to get thick with smoke. I had to get up the next morning fairly early to catch my flight back to Lima to return home, and by that point, the streets were almost eerily silent and empty. It was a good end to a really great vacation.

I guess the themes for most of those fun NYE, is not so much that I personally was doing something amazing and cool, but I was a part of something amazing and cool going on around me. Since I was alone for all of these events (I may have been part of a tour group in Egypt, but I wasn’t friends with anyone there), I enjoyed these experiences, but at a sort of remove, like I was simultaneously enjoying everything, but also observing everything. While I can’t ever say I have ever had a completely wild, off the chain, NYE, I am always on the lookout for something fun and unique to do to celebrate the new year.

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Maryan-ri Sunrise Festival New Years 2013

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I always have been ambivalent about New Years celebrations as an adult. Part of me wants to go out and party, but that is something I don’t really like to do alone, and being at a raucous party alone on NYE makes me feel extra lonely. I have been lucky that since I graduated from university in 1998, 13 out of the last 15 New Years Eve have been spent overseas. You would think that I would have amazing experiences in foreign countries, and there have been some fun ones (which will be addressed in a future post), but for the most part, I’ve celebrated NYE alone and in my room drinking (it’s really not as sad and pathetic as it sounds). But I am always on the lookout for something new and different.

In the spirit of that, I searched all over the Internet to see what sort of NYE activities Seoul offers. Not surprisingly, there were a number of clubs and parties, but that just wasn’t what I wanted to do. During that search, I stumbled upon the concept of sunrise festivals. While the stroke of midnight is widely celebrated in Korea just like in the rest of the world, there is also a special emphasis on experiencing the first sunrise of the new year. Understandably, most of the sunrise festivals occur on Korea’s east coast and the island of Jeju-do, since that part of Korea is the first to see the sunrise. However, there is one festival at a place called Maryang-ri near the town of Seocheon. It’s located on the west coast about a three hour train ride south of Seoul. For 60 days surrounding December 22, the sun rises and sets in the same location, which has made this a popular spot for a sunrise festival.

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The festival begins right before sunset with a ceremonial drumming performance and enjoying the last sunset of the current year. This particular sunset was rife with beautiful cloud formations and intense colors. Once the sun set, there was an array of musical performances up until midnight, while several bonfires were lit around the port. The bonfires provided warmth and heat, and also a sense of community.

ImageAround the bonfires, family and friends congregate, keep warm and grill up a variety of foods, such as rice cakes, chestnuts and sweet potatoes. I don’t speak Korean, and I’m very introverted, so I didn’t make much attempt at conversation, but rather just observed the activities going on around me. However as a Western woman traveling alone, I was treated as somewhat of an odd duck (other experiences as a woman traveling solo will also be explored in a future post). There was much astonishment at the fact that I was a woman alone, and I heard the terms “brave” and “dragon” more than once. In a country where solitary activity is not very common, particularly among females, it made me stand out even more, but not in a bad way. I find the Korean people are very generous and love to share, particularly their food and beverages. So I got to experience a never ending supply of treats and sparklers that evening.

I usually love long, cold winter nights, but you get a different perspective when you are outside from sunset until midnight, and then midnight until sunrise. There was approximately six and a half hours from sunset to the stroke of midnight and that is plenty of time to enjoy the bonfires, listen to the music, take in the near full moon, all under a very cold winter’s night. Once midnight struck, there was the typical jubilation (though not the mass of kissing you see at some western NYE parties) and celebration with fireworks.

What was interesting was what to do with myself after midnight. Sunrise wasn’t until 7:44 am, so that is nearly eight hours of time to kill. Thankfully I brought some reading material to help pass the time. For future sunrise festivals, I will be sure to go to one with a hotel room nearby, so I can go to sleep and stay warm. As it was, there were still people like me who traveled via public transportation and elected to stay until sunrise, and also had no place to go. Movies were played on the large screen, bonfires were kept active, and the food vendors were still selling their wares. Thankfully there were also large space heaters in tents, but they were partially offset by the growing chilly breeze and ensuing snowfall. When the sun set, it was clear and cold, and I anticipated an equally cold and clear sunrise, but Mother Nature had other plans. It started snowing around 2 am, and at first it was just flurries. But as sunrise approached, the snow came down harder and harder, and with the blowing wind, it felt like it was pouring snow instead of rain.

Then the time came to shuffle from our tents and heaters to take in the majesty of a winter’s morn on this first sunrise of the new year. Amazingly enough, the snow stopped right as official sunrise hit. Since this was a sunrise festival, there was another countdown to sunrise culminating in a massive balloon release to celebrate the dawning of a new day in a new year. While the sunrise wasn’t nearly as colorful as the sunset, the growing light was welcome upon the new fallen snow and the calm sea.

ImageI will admit to being cold, wet and tired by the end of it, and I felt I rushed through the appreciation of the sunrise. But it still was a different sort of New Years celebration. I very much enjoy communing with nature, and this festival is a way for me to appreciate the beauty of this world and the beauty of a new year, without the pain of a massive hangover.