At the end of April, 1998 I went to Europe with a couple friends, Adam Smith and Michael Karlovich. We were all jugglers and together we called ourselves 'The Three of Clubs.' Our grand plan was to street perform our way through Europe until the European Juggling Convention in Edinburgh, Scotland in August. We had a train pass that required us to travel together for two months so during that time we jumped from city to city seeing the sights and trying to earn a few bucks on the street. Street performing, however, turned out to be quite a bit more difficult than we had anticipated and on top of that, the usual problems of spending twentyfour hours a day with friends started to take its toll. By the time our two months were up we were in desperate need of time away from each other, so we split up in Italy and went our separate ways.
I had gone ill-prepared for this trip and only took a little over $500 to last me the entire time. I think I had planned on making more money from performing which didn't happen. I'm not sure how I even survived the first two months and by the time we split up, I was close to broke and still had a month and a half until the festival. An ex-girlfriend of mine put together the 'Poor Nate Fund' and rounded up a couple hundred dollars for me from friends and family. So I hitchhiked from Italy to Scotland living on less than $5 a day, sleeping in the streets, and surviving mostly off of bread and Nutella. I kept a personal journal and have posted most of the entries from that last month and a half. I hope you find it entertaining.