The Year I Became A Traveler; Travel Lessons Learned

It’s difficult to find the words to describe the last year of my life, and even more difficult to avoid feeling overwhelmed as I attempt putting it all into words.

2013 was a whirlwind of a year – living in London, experiencing so many different cultures, and traveling to places that I couldn’t even pinpoint on a map a few years ago.

I traveled occasionally through the years 2004 until 2011. I traveled regularly and more frequently beginning in January 2012 when we first moved to London….but 2013 was the year I really became a traveler. The year that helped shape the person and the writer I now am. Here’s some things I learned from all that travel:

Travel preparation & planning only gets you so far.

Traveling sometimes makes you feel “out of control” but you always have control of the most important part – your attitude and how you react to every new situation you find yourself in.

In 2008 I went on my first ever backpacking-style trip with Jim for two weeks where I faced the biggest traveling test of my life up until that point. The first 17 hours of the trip involved  three plane rides, two bus transfers, and a long layover at the Amsterdam airport.

Finally we arrived at our hostel in Gdansk, Poland – a barged boat in the river where we were greeted with a flock of mosquitoes flying inside our bunk-bed room. That same night my bath products were stolen as I showered in the communal style bathrooms. Not exactly a great start to our 2-week trip exploring Eastern Europe and Germany.

Our accommodation for the night in Poland

I reacted horribly to the situation. In hindsight, though I never will be a real backpacker, I still should have sucked it up and stopped complaining. After all, this was an adventure, and I was with my boyfriend (now husband) who I loved. I should have cherished every moment instead of letting my bad attitude get the best of me those first couple days of our trip.

I would do it differently today.

Obstacles during travel may result in stress and frustrating moments, but there’s often great lessons to be learned from the unexpected.

24 hours in Tangier with my mother-in-law and father-in-law. Within that time we managed to get lost in the ancient medina and almost miss a ferry back to Spain when the taxi mistakenly drove us to the airport instead of the port – 50 kilometers in the wrong direction. At the time it was incredible stressful and I think my heart was beating in overdrive for the rest of that day.

Looking back now, there was no need to get as worked up as I did. We weren’t in an unsafe situation. In the worst case we would have had to delay our journey in Spain by one day and go back to our beautiful hotel in Morocco.

We were in Africa, a place many people never get the chance to see. How wonderful to be able to visit this continent!

Getting stuck in a ditch from driving my first ever scooter in Goa, India was also a stressful moment. It was embarrassing and kind of frightening when it happened, but years later it’s now turned out to be a really funny travel story. And in the future it might cause me to be a little more cautious in how I attempt to turn around a scooter on a narrow road.

Cultural Things

Learning about new cultures and behaviors has proved more interesting and rewarding than I could ever describe, but that doesn’t need I mean to agree or conform to all those behaviors. 

Throughout the last two years my patience has been tested on many levels. I’ve often been frustrated by disrespectful behaviors, by people who don’t wait an extra second to hold a door open, by cars that seem to enjoy trying to run over pedestrians…

By people who feign ignorance and decide to ignore the basic rules of civilization, like waiting in a line or purposely ignoring you on the street while walking straight into you – 

I grew up in a small town (population – approximately 1,500 people) and that small town had its faults. I never really appreciated or liked much about small town life, but now that I think back to it, everyone waved as they passed each other going for a jog, doors were held open, neighbors greeted each other, cars stopped for pedestrians. There was a type of friendliness that I just don’t see everywhere.

Appreciating the things I never appreciated before…

Traveling the world and being away from the town and more importantly the country I grew up in has provided with a brand new perspective on life.

I will try harder in the future to value and treasure all those awesome things I’ve taken for granted about my own culture.

Writing and Travel

Writing about travel is not as easy as I once thought. I’ve already run out of synonyms for the words “beautiful” and “breathtaking”, but the truth is I never fully grasped just how many beautiful and breathtaking places there are in this world.

Ireland

Granada, Spain

Republic of Mauritius

Lucerne, Switzerland

German Alps

Town of Polperro in Cornwall, UK

Escapism and Travel

Travel won’t abolish real life or the problems that come along with it, but it may be able to help you develop new solutions and ways to approach all those problems. 

Back in Jersey City overlooking the downtown Manhattan skyline

In some ways I still feel clueless as to what’s next for me. Life moved at a ridicoulously fast pace and in the last twelve months I went on a rapid tour of 16+ countries.

I can’t guarantee that everything will be easy as I get used to life back in the United States and adjust to a more normal pace of life, with a lot less travel (for now). But I know one thing for sure –

Travel has made me a better person. I’ve gained a new, more well-rounded perspective of the world that I never could have achieved without it. And I am confident that it will help me move forward, on to the next phase of my life, whatever happens next….