Friend: what are you up to this weekend?
Me: oh, I’m just going to Cinque Terre, no big deal.
Friend: WOW! Awesome! Who are you going with?
Me: myself.
Friend: oh. Really? I’m sorry, well…. try to have fun anyway!
I have had this conversation what seems like hundreds of times
with friends, family, and complete strangers. I don’t want to sound like I’m
bashing the people that can’t understand that I love to travel alone. I didn’t
understand it fully until very recently. Just two years ago if I wanted to go
to the beach and none of my friends could go, I’d just stay home. Heck, if I
wanted to go to target and none of my friends could go I would stay home. But
something profound has happened since I moved 4,721 miles away from everyone I
have ever known or loved.
The first few trips I took by myself I dreaded it a little bit. Not the actual
trip but the going alone. It sounded so depressing and sad and I would even try
to hide the fact that I was traveling alone because I thought it made me look
like a loser. But the amount of satisfaction and pride I had in myself after my
first weekend trip is indescribable. In my next few trips alone I began to
realize that i enjoyed my time alone. I enjoyed being able to go where I wanted
to go when I wanted to, and see what I wanted to see when I wanted to see it. I
would find myself at dinner alone smiling to myself realizing that I’m
legitimately having fun.
In my time alone, I fell in love with countless cities and myself.
I have met incredible people whom I would never have met had I been traveling
in a group. After a few trips with friends here, I even noted that while I do
love having friends and family to travel with, I almost prefer going alone.
It’s a completely different travel experience.
What I am trying to say here is don’t for a second feel bad for
me. I don’t travel “alone”. I travel. I wander. I get lost in the beauty of
cities, towns and landscapes with a huge smile on my face. I am never alone. I
meet fellow wanderers and hear stories of far away places. I learn from them
and they learn from me. Occasionally, we swap contact information and keep in
touch, sometimes even see each other again. But sometimes, I spend the whole
day with someone and at the end we hug and wish each other well, never to meet
again.
Being from Atlanta, I have always had the tendency to avoid
strangers at all costs, either for my safety, or just to avoid awkwardness. It
is understandable, because in the states, strangers are scary. They have the
possibility to either hurt you or at the very least just be very unkind, simply
because you too are a stranger. So when I first began traveling in Europe and
strangers would talk to me, my instinct was to avoid eye contact and be rude
until they went away. Then at some point I realized that as a culture, people
here don’t have any interest in hurting others. Their crime rates are
ridiculously low. The most common crime is theft, and even then, it is never
their intention to physically harm the person they are stealing from. When I
realized all of this, my world opened in a big way.
Here, as travelers, we’re already in a club together. Our shared
heart for adventure has brought us to beautiful places and to each other. Its
as if we all have an agreement to greet other travelers with kindness, because
we know each person we meet on the road has a story, and something to teach us.
So, please, don’t feel bad for me, or think I’m missing a thing.
