Jennifer Truschka has traveling in her blood

This archived article was written by: Morgan Verdi

Jennifer Truschka, a professor at USU Eastern, has been all around the world from Brazil to Australia, and just about everywhere in between. If travel is your passion talking to this woman is the thing to do. Truschka said, “I’ve been to a lot of places in Western Europe, Italy, Spain, all over in Western Europe. I also spent quite a bit of time in Brazil when I was in my 20s.” She started traveling because she was “born to travel.” “You know nature verses nurture, we are born to do certain things, and I believe the desire to travel is something we can be born with, and I was born with that desire. I really believe traveling was what I was meant to do.”
She still wants to travel through Africa. “I’ve only been to North Africa, Morocco and Egypt, but I want to be able to go throughout Africa. Once I do that, and after my trip this summer, I will have been about everywhere.”
Truschka packs light when she travels, even on the long trips. “I bring a backpack and that’s it. It’s a 55-liter backpack. My last long trip was throughout the Middle East and my backpack came with me, it was new at that time. It’s also come with me on shorter trips, I love it.
It’s funny, the backpacks I like are the ones made for rock climbers because they are narrow, and easier for me to carry. I bring a lot of Tide with me too, and just wash my clothes as I go.”
Truschka said about her favorite place, “Favorites are interesting because I think favorites change depending on where you are in your life. Right now, it’s the Brazilian Amazon. You can read into that all you want.” Her favorite food she tried is a dish she had in Brazil called Lingua ao molho Madeira. “It’s cow tongue served with potatoes. It’s strange for me because I’m actually borderline vegetarian, but it’s so good.”
She sometimes travels by herself, and other times she travels with her friend Mark, who is from Australia.
“It’s a mix. When I was in my 20s and 30s, I traveled a lot alone, mainly because I didn’t know any Australians. There people get time off work for like three months at a time. It’s pretty neat.”
She usually has a plan when she goes places, but some trips, she just wings it. “I have these trips that I call wandering trips where I just wander around. The last trip I took during Christmas was a wandering trip. Mark and I went to London, Paris, Lisbon and Porto in Portugal, and Toledo and Madrid in Spain. It was a three-week trip. We knew what cities we were going to, but we just wandered around.”
Truschka talked about the enriching experiences of traveling. “It’s very enriching. I think when people are attracted to travel, they really need to think about what they want to get out of it, if they want to relax, or experience inner-growth, whatever it may be, and that will define what kind of trips you take. I’ve always been an inner-growth person.”
She has a big trip planned for this summer. She will be going to India for a month, and then she will travel to Thailand, Laos and Vietnam for about 40 days. From there, Truschka will go to Myanmar for two weeks and Malaysia for about three days. Her last stop will be in Tasmania, Australia, for a week. “I’m excited, but it’s kind of exhausting when you travel places like that because you need visas, which are a hassle to get, and its very tiring to plan everything out, but it gets more exciting when it gets closer. I’m actually still stuck in Australia. I haven’t gotten a plane ticket to come home yet; I’m waiting for the prices to go down, so right now I have no idea when I’ll be home. Keep your fingers crossed.”