On traveling alone (and yet not alone)
I’ve just come home from a week plus of traveling alone. It was a first for me, and it’s not something I would have gravitated towards in the past. But I had 5 PTO days creeping up on their expiration date and I wanted to travel, so I took the little-big leap.
It’s funny — leading up to my trip, I’d tell people about my upcoming solitary adventure, and they’d say, “Wow, I don’t know if I could do that,” or “Good for you,” (with the implied, “not for me.”).
It made me think about why we’re afraid of traveling alone. Why the default — and preferred — experience is always to go together.
I know why I have a bent towards it. I want to share an experience with another — to laugh over mistakes made, to delight over landscapes and views, to point out the spotted beauties, and then after the trip, to remember it all together.
But I’ve never thought about why I’d want to travel alone. It always felt like the lesser version of it. It would be missing all the key, important reasons of why I travel.
I’ve been sitting in the joy-weariness of this trip for a few days now. And I don’t feel like I had a “less than” experience. In a way, it was a “more than” one. I feel like I experienced new, beautiful things that I may not have experienced if I had not ventured out by myself.
I did quite a bit (in classic Me fashion). I visited four different places — Frankfurt, Tubingen, London (which is like 4 cities in one), and Oxford. I toured museums, ate many delicious meals, took over 170,000 steps (to work off those meals), and biked for 50 miles. (No clue actually if that was my mileage — but I did bike a lot. I feel like I earned my London biking stripes after biking in rush hour, Tube strike traffic.)
And despite all of that, when I tell people about my trip, the first words out of mouth are, “It was the people.”
I learned that even while traveling without people, people were still my favorite part. And when I say that, I don’t mean that I had deep heart-to-hearts with strangers, or built life-long friendships with hostel bunkmates.
It was the seconds-long exchanges at the cafe counter, chatting up the barista. It was walking up to the museum docent to find out what her favorite piece of art was (it was this quirky one). It was simply asking my waiter where he was from, and how he got to London (Daniel was from Moldova via Portugal).
In the absence of having other people with me, I asked people (that I normally would have just passed by) questions.
“Where are you from?” …
“What should I go look at next?” …
“What British book do you recommend that has yet to hit it big in the U.S.?”
“What made you start this store?” …
“How did you find out about The Moth?”
“Tell me your story of how you ended up on this trip.” …
I called them micro-friendships — these seemingly passing conversations that became a highlight, a stake in the ground for my day (and I hope for my counterparts, as well).
A large part of it could be attributed to my personality — I’m a fairly friendly and outgoing person (people who know me well might laugh at that admission). I can carry a conversation like some can carry a tune, keeping the dialogue warm and flowing. But the fire and energy needed to extend the baton of conversation isn’t always lit within me, and traveling alone reignited it and reminded me of it.
And that’s just it — traveling alone opens up the space for you to look around, to see. To study the people just as much as you study the art in the museums you visit. To practice curiosity, instead of just the bare minimum of courteousness.
I’m used to studying people behind the lens of a camera (not a professional photographer here, just a lover of it).
I’m used to framing the picture in my mind, anticipating a movement — the lifting of a cigarette to a mouth, a child reaching down to pet a dog, the cyclist speeding through the perfect backdrop.
Caleb Azumah Nelson wrote in Open Water (wonderful book, by the way) that “the bulk of the camera [feels] heavier in your hands than it should. Seeing people is no small task.”
And that’s the gift of being behind the camera, and not just letting the shutter click-click-click away. It’s treasuring every image in front of you — treasuring people and nature and the sublime way the sun hits the building just so.
The gift is a taste of the weightiness of it all.
So why do I bring that up?
Traveling alone afforded me the ability to see without holding a camera in my hands. Walking around London’s just-after-a-rain-shower streets, my eyes strained to take it all in. It slowed me down, pulling me against the practice of rushing past and bypassing the ordinary-yet-extraordinary things that everyone (read: me) might normally miss.
I recorded these little voice memos and videos of myself during my travels, talking to everyone and no one (and my mom), just telling my unaware audience about what I had done that day and what I was learning in the moment.
But secretly, I recorded them with the hopes of one day playing them back for my (non-existent) kids.
To say, “Listen to this — when your mama was 26, she went on a trip all by herself to Germany and London. She learned and leaned in. She lived stories and walked away with dozens in her heart.
Listen, little ones.”
Because I want them to take their own trips like this one day.
