Hi, I’m Ashlyn.

I’m the girl wandering around with a homemade map and a coffee.

I’m a avid reader, manic writer, and earnest researcher.

I love to learn. I read too much, think too much, stress too much. I ask too many questions. I used to work in sustainability and now in a library, baking and writing on the side.

Originally from the American Midwest, my spouse and I lived in Charleston for ten years before moving to rural Hungary in 2016, and now southern Germany.

I initially developed this site as a way to document our travels (or as I like to refer to them, intentional wanderings) around Europe, but it gradually became a collection of topics closest to my heart — meaningful travel, food stories, and increasingly, memory work and the development of heritage sites across the continent.

My academic background is in political science and environmental studies; I worked in sustainable food policy in Charleston and developed programming around justice and inclusion before moving to Hungary.

Here, I continued learning more about cultural heritage through food and became even more involved in abandoned places and how memorials are built (and by and for whom). I’m currently most interested in how European powers come to terms (or not) with legacies of colonization and how that is seen across the built landscape.

Why “Middle World Adventures”?

In Hungarian folklore the world is divided into three levels. The Upper World (Felső világ) is home to the gods; the Underworld (Alsó világ) is the lowest layer. In between is the Middle World (Középső világ), where we live. At the center of the world is the Tree of Life (Világfa/Életfa) which connects all three layers: its foliage reaches Felső világ and its roots all the way to Alsó világ.

I’m sharing stories from the Middle World. Középső világ kalandok.