Hello! I’m guessing you are here to find out more about me and what is Curious Journeylist.

So, let’s start with me!

My name is Lara and here is a list of the things you might want to know about me:

• I come from a small and beautiful country Croatia. Wikipedia says it is a country between Central Europe, Southeast Europe, and the Mediterranean. Others will just say it’s a country in the Balkans.
• I  studied Law in my hometown Rijeka where I graduated in 2014.
• I was also part of Erasmus program and spent a year studying in Wroclaw, Poland.
• I have lived and worked in Rhode Island, USA, as part of a student work and travel program.
• After my graduation, I took an internship in Prague, where I have lived for 6 months.
• In 2015 I finally settled down in my hometown Rijeka, found a job and thought I was done with travels.
• In 2016 I already started hating Mondays. I missed traveling, but mostly I was unhappy with my career choice. A lot of contemplating, soul searching and self-questioning was going on.
• In February 2016 I applied for a competition organized by STA travel agency in which they were searching for the best travel blogger. I applied because the winner was getting an airplane ticket to Thailand and I thought I could use a vacation. I wrote my first travel blog post about work and travel experience in the USA, an experience that probably changed my life.
• I have won the competition among hundreds of people, got a ticket to Thailand and an offer to write travel blogs for STA travel agency, which I happily accepted.
• I took all my vacation days and in April 2016 went to Thailand.  After one month of backpacking, I came back home with one thought only. I will quit my job. However, I didn’t want to just quit my job and find another one, I knew I needed to change my career.
• In October 2016 I applied for a Master in Journalism at the Faculty of Political Science in Zagreb. After finding out I got accepted, I quit my job, sold my car and moved to Zagreb.
• Today I am living in Zagreb, studying something I really like, freelancing and traveling as much as I can.
• After one year of writing travel blog posts for STA travel, I’ve finally decided to start my own travel blog.

I don’t know why I started writing. I don’t know why anybody does it. Maybe they’re bored, or failures at something else. Cormac McCarthy

About Curious Journeylist

Curious Journeylist is a blog about travel and travelers. I write about my own travels and experiences from living, studying and working in different countries.

However, I want this page to be more than a personal blog. I will not just share my own travel stories, but also stories from other people, local or travelers, in a form of an interview.

What is my goal here?

In the years prior to starting my own blog, I’ve been reading travel blogs and stories from other travelers. Some of them have really inspired me and made an impact on me. I thought how cool and brave those people are.

However, as I started to dig deeper into travel blogging industry, I was getting more and more disappointed. It seemed to me that most of the content is coming down to bucket lists and captions under Instagram photos. Also, I got this unpleasant feeling that so many travel stories and experiences are just… #fakenews.

I understand that a big part of having a successful travel blog is being able to inspire and motivate other people. And I understand that with a mass production of travel blogs it became harder and harder to do so. The situation created an environment where people started competing who has a better lifestyle which consequently led to exaggerated stories and experiences.

How I want to change “the game”?

Of course, I am not thinking I am going to change the game alone, but I want to do at least a small contribution to the travel blogging community which is still trying to keep it real. Everything I write on this blog is my honest opinion and personal experience. I don’t want to write bucket lists, I want to dig deeper. I want to give you real stories from real people. I want to tell you when something sucks. And if I recommend something to you, it is not because I have to, it is because I think it’s awesome.

I just want all of us to stop bullshitting each other and sometimes be more like Karl Pilkington.

Simple, straightforward and honest. Because sometimes things aren’t “the best ever”, they are just “ok”. And that’s perfectly fine.