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August 27, 2020
Introduction
In 1989, I took a trip around the world.
I was 31 years old, working for a software company in Reston, Virginia called Systems Center - the kind of place that attracted bright, hardworking people and knew how to take care of them. Two beach houses on the Delaware shore, generous benefits, good parties.
And in 1988, something genuinely unusual: a sabbatical program.
The idea was simple but bold.
After five years of service, employees were required - yes, required - to take at least four consecutive weeks off.
Full pay, full benefits, and a firm expectation that you'd do something unrelated to work.
Step away, recharge, come back a different person.
The company even reserved the right to force you out the door if you didn't go voluntarily.
I'm not sure it ever came to that.
When the program was announced, I had just crossed the five-year mark. I also had four weeks of unused vacation on the books. Eight weeks. Uninterrupted.
I knew immediately I wasn't going to spend them at home.
I started talking to a fellow employee - Todd Margo, who had also just hit his five-year mark - about going to Australia.
He was in.
But the more I looked into it, the more I thought: if I'm going halfway around the world, why not keep going?
I ran the numbers. A round-the-world trip cost about the same as a month in Australia.
Airlines were offering flexible around-the-world tickets - multiple stopovers from major hubs, fixed price, adjustable itinerary.
That sealed it. Todd said he was game.
We started planning.
What we didn't know - couldn't have known - was that we'd chosen an extraordinary year to go.
By the time we boarded our first flight in August 1989, the world was already shifting in ways that wouldn't be fully understood until later.
The Wall would come down in November.
The Velvet Revolution would sweep through Prague in December.
The Soviet bloc was in its final years.
We moved through cities that were about to change beyond recognition, and we had no idea.
We were just two software guys from Reston looking for a good time.
The journal I kept during those 49 days across 17 countries is the spine of this book.
I transcribed it some years later, expanded certain passages, and have been revising it since.
The voice is mine from 1989 - immediate, occasionally embarrassing, always honest. The reflections are mine from now.
There's one other thing worth knowing before you begin.
Somewhere in these pages, without realizing it at the time, I figured something out.
I encoded it in the final entry - a private note I told myself I'd translate someday.
It took me 36 years.
Click here to read the journal. - Joe Koshuta, 2026
