Israel, Turkey and Cyprus. Egypt and Greece. Serbia, Bosnia, Herzegovina and Croatia. Italy. Denmark, Sweden, Norway and the Netherlands. Pauses a moment, takes a breath. England, Switzerland. Italy again, then Vatican City. France. Hong Kong and Japan. Australia.

Sam Morrison ticks off the places steadily with the simplicity of a shopping list and the informality of a discussion about what might be playing on television tonight. But for all of his ease, he isn’t reading casually off a map. Rather, he’s in the middle of talking about where he spent his summer.

From May 6 to the end of August, Morrison, a senior information management and technology major, set off on a solo trip to backpack around the world. Morrison carried hardly more than a backpack, his savings and a few vague ideas of where to travel. After taking a sponsored birthright trip to Israel, Morrison set off to meet a friend in Egypt, and from there, he mostly moved spontaneously and independently.

Morrison did set one solid plan in mind: He intended to backflip in every single country he visited.

Morrison’s history with backflips began years ago on a family vacation where, out of boredom, he taught himself to complete amateur flips backward. Last year, his father jokingly challenged him with $100 to backflip once a day, every day, for a year.

Taking the bet seriously, Morrison set out to flip and record it each day, and by the end of the year, he emerged with not just the money, but also a viral YouTube video montage that earned him momentary digital buzz. Now, his trip has focused more attention on himself: an image he posted to Instagram appeared on this week’s cover of TIME magazine in a photo collage.

Morrison is working on building a social network, backflip.me, around becoming a platform for users to publicly declare and accomplish their goals. For Morrison, backflipping each day was a major goal, and he then moved on to backflipping in his travels. Now, he aspires to backflip on all seven continents. This summer alone, he’s been to four.

In the freedom of travel, Morrison found a rhythm: Determine where to travel. Find a plane, bus or other means of getting there. Convert cash and find a hostel to stay at. Perhaps meet up with a friend; perhaps make a friend or two. Explore. And after his initial trips scattered through the Middle East and Africa, Morrison worked his way across the globe, from Western Europe to Asia and Australia.

Now he is finally back in America, settling in at Syracuse University and reflecting on the trip. He is currently searching for what he’s learned about himself and about others over the summer, he said.

Morrison is the first to admit that his travels weren’t always perfect.

“The later part of the trip wasn’t as fulfilling as the first half,” he said.

A long summer of constant motion and his routine of picking up from place to place began to wear at him, but he added that he wouldn’t have changed anything.

The value of traveling the countries is the experience you make of it, he emphasized. Morrison set to engage with the landscape and the people of each place he visited, from skiing in the Alps to bonding with his Serbian hostel owner, to watching Egyptian protests gather below his room.

In some places, Morrison says he was a tourist, but that he was less interested in attractions than in the general landscape of his visits. He was quick to separate tourism from traveling, and he firmly places himself in the latter category.

“A traveler is self-aware and (recognizes) local customs,” Morrison said. Rather than intruding on the daily flow of the places he visited, he was keen on observation. He was intrigued by the general picture of life in a foreign nation, rather than immersing himself in details and histories. Morrison took more to the people that he encountered.

“You can have a very exaggerated viewpoint of who (the people of a country) are,” Morrison said. He added that he can tend to generalize how the people of a culture behave based upon who he met.

But even seeing the nuances of cultural attitudes, customs and norms, Morrison left each country with a common impression. As he watched, talked with, and befriended others, he feels he reaffirmed a belief he had about all people

“People are just trying to live and work, get food and take care of their family – they want the same things,” Morrison said. “Everywhere around the world, people are all the same.”

Published on August 27, 2012 at 11:58 pm

Contact Gabriela: ggriccar@syr.edu