As part of my series investigating blogger’s travel stories, I received this cool anecdote from Mark Silver of Heart of Business:
Mark Silver
A best travel experience was when I was 20 travelling behind the iron curtain to Krakow, Warsaw and Prague. Lots of stories- one was wherever I went I traded fire department patches (I belonged to a volunteer rescue squad) with different fire departments. I actually did that all over Europe – walking into fire stations, trading patches. Met some great people. A Berlin firefighter gave me an old helmet of his with a big dent in it- it saved his life, he said. That was pre-digital so unfortunately I can’t send photos without taking a lot of time to dig them up and scan them in.
Just goes to show some of the best travel experiences are not the ones where you spend the days baking your flesh on a beach and the nights pickling your liver in the bars 
