Solo Travel: Advice from a Moron

Hey my dudes, Victoria's sister here. 

I have been asked to write a guest post about “something”. Very vague, but I’m here anyways. Disclaimer: I’m not as artistic or creative or linguistically inclined as her (or probably as any of you, for that matter), but I do have a bachelor’s degree in experience and stupidity, so stay with me.

So I recently went on a month-long trip to Europe with a childhood friend and I must say, I had a great time. We hit Greece, Croatia, Bosnia, Italy and Spain together, seeing the sights and doing the things. Very fun. However, because we live on opposite sides of the world and hence have different schedules, we couldn’t get the timing right to meet up in the same place at the same time. So that meant a little bit of solo travel for me. Now, my only previous experience in solo travel included small domestic flights with family or friends to pick me up on either side, or trips to Asia with my Japanese class or my sister.

As you could predict, my parents: not too thrilled.

Technically, I didn’t need to solo travel, but I had this weird urge to. Not quite a need to prove my independence to my parents (though that was part of it), but more to myself. As you can see from the title, I am a moron. The parents were definitely stressed for me, and rightly so. Sometimes, I’m real dumb. Often on purpose, mainly to get a laugh from someone (Victoria mostly, she’s my no. 1 fan). This was the first thing travelling solo taught me, was that I’m only dumb when I have people around me that allow me to be. When it’s just me, I take the reins with ease and know how to handle myself. But I’ve proven my worth in the past, and my parents reluctantly agreed, as long as I chose safe places to visit while I was alone. So I booked my flight to leave the day after my last Clinical Biochemistry exam, and off to Austria I went.

Now, the first day was rough to say the least. At customs, I had to stand in the foreign passport line and I was the only white, only blonde and only female human there. I had all the dudes giving me the eye and the customs agents were so rude. There was a guy who followed me very closely and suspiciously to the train station, and a twitchy woman who paced in front of me before stopping to stand a foot to my left in that huge, empty train station. They then sat beside each other on the train and kept glancing at me the whole way into Vienna. I was ready to fight.

For context, Victoria consistently tells me I look like I’m about to beat someone up. I only wear black, do dark makeup, boots… I swear I’m nice. I just look maybe a bit intimidating, and often get told I look in my mid 20s when I’m only 19. But I found my appearance to be very helpful in getting people to leave me alone, because I find people (*cough* men) don’t leave you alone unless you’re scary, rude or with another guy. My friend and I started a tally of how many uncomfortable/creepy encounters we had with guys every day but we lost track because there were so many. An unfortunate reality, but until that changes, let’s just do what we can and not let it stop us from living our lives.

Back to the first day in Austria, there was so much construction I couldn’t find my hotel (which had no signs and was only in a small entranceway tucked out of sight) so I had to walk in and out of various dark apartment lobbies, elevators, stairways, rooms… I was going to get killed, no doubt. On my way down in an elevator, a man walked in and asked if I was looking for ___ hotel. I reluctantly said yes, where he told me to follow him back up the elevator, down a hallway, asked if I was alone, what my name was… yeah. Recipe for murder. On the first day, I had done everything that was engrained into me as a child to not do. Follow a man up an elevator, down a dark hallway and into a room (which was the reception). Here’s the next thing travelling alone taught me. You have to trust your gut. I know I didn’t know this guy, but I felt like I was in the right area, knew they were expecting me, and it just felt… okay. I’m a very very paranoid person to begin with, so I did hear the screams of “YOU’RE GONNA DIE” circulating around my head, but for some reason, I knew it was okay (not the dying thing, but the situation). I was still cautious, told him I was meeting with a friend that day, didn’t give any info until we were at reception, made sure he went first through the doorways, didn’t let him take my bags, etc. Turned out he was the manager of the hotel and was super nice, gave me great recommendations, etc. So kids, generally as a rule of thumb, DON’T DO WHAT I DID. However, I feel like with a bit of experience comes a level of ability to judge the “sketchy-factor level” of some situations. Trust your gut.

My next country alone was Germany, after I had done the bulk of the trip with my friend and we had split ways. Now, after travelling with my friend for so long, it was a bit of an adjustment to go back to being alone, as well as the exhaustion of literally not having even an hour off from the past three and a half weeks had finally caught up with me. This was the next lesson I learned from travelling alone. I’m definitely an ambivert. I love my introvert time where I can sit in silence for literally an entire day without talking to anyone, but my extrovert side really exploded over FaceTime every night I called home. I just had so much to tell everyone, so many little things I saw that I would laugh at or almost comment on, only to realise I was alone. Like a guy who picked up a random cigarette off the streets of Munich and just started smoking it and walked away. Or the old drunk couple fighting on the street (which was hilarious by the way) (I’m painting Munich to be kind of a nasty city but believe me, it was beautiful, I was just in the wrong area of town). Or the girls who adopted me for the day, took me for dinner, the Christmas markets and then breakfast, who invited me to stay with them if I was ever in London.

Travelling alone really makes you appreciate things differently because no one’s there to distract you from anything. You’re aware of all your surroundings because you need to be. Because you’re making all the decisions, all the tough calls all while under pressure because there’s a guy who looks like he’s on crack and he’s staring you down. And do you know what? I’d do it again. Any day. Because it teaches you to be comfortable with yourself, do what makes you happy, learn new things and be alone while doing it. Which is, I think, one of the greatest lessons in independence.

If you’re thinking about travelling solo but don’t know if you’ll like it, just do it. You may hate it, you may love it. Either way, you’re going to learn and experience a lot of crazy, cool things. Worth a shot, I’d say.