A Starbucks Cookie Made Me A Travel Blogger

A stale, overly sweet chocolate chip cookie from a Berlin Starbucks is what I have to thank for the life I lead today.

Back in 2017, I started my year in Europe after getting turned down for 198 jobs (yes, I counted). I found Workaway, had already made it across half of continental Europe, and had landed in Berlin to binge on Christmas markets.

Most people assume that the whole year in Europe or sharing my method for spending that year in Europe on just $2k CAD savings got me going.

Nope! It was all thanks to a craving for a chocolate chunk cookie.

You see, they don’t really have those in Europe.

Gingerbread? By the truckload!

But chocolate chip? …only if you make it yourself.

I was feeling homesick after about 4 months wandering from country to country, largely solo. So I hunted down the very last chocolate chip cookie the entire city of Berlin seemed to have on offer: a slightly stale chocolate chunk cookie from the Starbucks beside the cinema I frequented.

In their defence, it was the very end of the day, and it’s not their specialty cookie by any means.

I waited to savour my cookie until I got back to my flat in Wedding.

The Cookie that Changed Everything

Cinematically, I remember settling into my bed in the studio flat and just being about to bite into my cookie when I got the news.

… but actually I’d got the email earlier that morning.

I’d gotten into my dream law school.

The school that was supposed to set me on a path for my ideal future.

And they wanted to pay me with a scholarship so I wouldn’t be completely broke by the time I was done.

I’d spent a year preparing for the LSATs alone. But I spent a lifetime prepping to maintain my family legacy in the legal field in Toronto.

When I opened the email, I expected to feel…anything.

But I just felt meh.

I messaged some family members, but even their big celebratory reactions felt oddly dimmed to me. Like they were behind a curtain. I could hear them celebrating, but I couldn’t quite join in.

I didn’t feel anything until I took a bite of that cookie.

The rigid cookie and tough chocolate chunk snapped between my teeth. And that made me smile.

I was smiling at a sub par (sorry Starbucks!) chocolate chip cookie, but not at the five zeroes in the scholarship offer.

Not at the joy my family had for me.

Not at the messages about how proud they were of me.

Not at the idea of this life I’d convinced myself I wanted.

If a subpar Starbucks cookie (sorry, but it’s true!) could make me happier than my supposed dream, then I needed a new dream.

hh

I refuse to live a life that I dread every day.

Sure, I may have liked being a lawyer eventually. I’d spent a lot of my childhood doing odd jobs for lawyers and law firms related to my family.

But if I couldn’t feel any spark of joy or hope from massive news like that, then I couldn’t move forward with it.

That being said, it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows immediately.

Sure, this was a big epiphany. But it didn’t exactly come with a roadmap towards my new future.

Now I had to figure out what the hell to do with myself, and all of my furniture sitting in a storage unit in Halifax.

… and to calm my Baba and Dad who were both pretty sure I’d just blown up my entire life.

From Lawyer to Travel Blogger

I didn’t actually mean to become a travel blogger, or even a blogger of any sort.

I didn’t even have this blog officially until almost a year after I realized I couldn’t go to law school.

I ended up deferring my admission so my Russian grandma wouldn’t fly to Berlin and drag me to the admission’s office by my ear to accept my spot.

… she nearly did it anyway when I told her I found a $200 flight to New Zealand and I’d be spending a year down under.

I ended up going back to Toronto for the summer to bartend and save up some money to do a 30 day tour of New Zealand before I’d *hopefully* find a job to be able to stay for a year under a Working Holiday Visa.

Between serving kids virgin pina coladas 100x a day and making what I still say is a hate-crime of a sangria from how bad it was (watermelon should not be in a sangria), I shared stories of my travels with my coworkers.

No one had ever heard of Workaway before, or even had any idea a gap year could be a possibility.

I also started getting emails from my mom’s friends who wanted me to counsel their kids on doing something similar.

And my Baba would call me weekly asking me to tell her some of my stories again.

I realized I loved sharing my stories and I loved getting to help people realize that the world is far more accessible than they might have thought.

So I started Nina Out and About, while sitting in a dog bed in my mom’s living room.

It took a few more years, a sojourn doing my Masters in Publishing Media, and a lot of learning before I turned it into my full time gig.

Now, I’ve been a full-time travel writer since January 2023 and I couldn’t be happier to do this job every day!

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