You can’t tell, but I have been desperately trying to write this post for weeks.
“A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”
German novelist Thomas Mann wrote that back in 1903. (Of course, he said it in German, so this is one of several slight translation variants.) Originally, it was tongue in cheek, but even the author himself began to quote it more seriously later.
I’m in Budapest, waiting to take an ill-advised overnight bus tonight. It’s stinking hot and I feel rather ill. I was planning to spend all day at the thermal baths today – but it sounds like they’re pretty heated (you know, thermal) and I just have this idea in my head that if I went, it would feel like soup.
I’d be a little beef chunk in the goulash.
This is part of why it’s been so hard to write actually. Somehow, I always end up back here, complaining about being trapped in this particular body again. But okay, that’s where I’m at. It has been really, really hot, and this is the very first place I’ve stayed with air-conditioning. And even that’s only in the dorm rooms, and I’m all checked out. So, my lot now is to share a fan in the common room with a couple who have also set up camp here for the day. Actually, I’m surprised by how many people don’t venture out, how many people stay in this odd, almost living room. We should be out there living, really. What’s the point in travelling otherwise?
But I’ve been on the road for almost two months now, and so I know too, that sometimes you just need a day. And yeah, it’s really hot and I’m not feeling well, so venturing out just feels like a recipe for either vomiting or fainting. Can’t tell which is closer to the surface. I’m sure I’m not actually sick, I just haven’t had the best sleep quality lately, and I have zero heat tolerance. Is it getting worse or if it’s a case of being out of practice? Or did I just forget what it’s really like? I skipped summer last year, jumped hemispheres to go from winter to winter. Bliss I think on fondly.
It’s stolen days from me. One day in Vienna I’m sure I’m going to pass out before I make it back to my bed – I don’t, I make it, but even once I manage to cool down a bit that evening, I can’t seem to manage a clear thought. It’s no good the whole of the next day either, though I still manage to venture out fuzzy headed. I carry two water bottles, most cities have places to refill too, and I have body wipes and an electric hand fan. I stop in the shade when I can. Sit for a while after entering art galleries or museums to try and give myself a chance to reset. But it’s an uphill battle and I feel like I never really win.
I don’t want to seem ungrateful. I know I’m lucky to be here. But it’s disappointing to feel like I can’t make the most of my time here, too, and it’s hard for it not to creep into my writing when it is such a large part of each day right now.
So, yeah, I’m staying in the hostel to write this, instead of going to test out how accurate my soup analogy is.
I’ve been moving at a pretty fast pace for the last few weeks, so though I’ve tried to write something every day, there’s mostly just a lot of little scraps and half started pieces. Even when I have managed to slow a little, there have been more pressing concerns. For one, my nursing registration renewal was due, and various related clearances – I may be away, but it’s important that I have that job to come back to. Then there’s been onward trip planning and bookings to be made (I do a couple weeks at a time; whatever seems reasonable and manageable).
Undoubtedly though, the most time consuming has been the ‘delightful’ situation of my French rental account not being properly closed out when I left. In a complete breach of contract, I didn’t get a single response from the property manager for an entire month, and a colleague from one of the schools where I worked even tried to go into their office but go no reply either. Apparently, she went on holiday with no cover. Which feels completely insane to me as an Australian. That said, I’m not convinced it’s cultural, while the French are very protective of their holidays (which is good and fine), I just think it might not be a very good company. I had three different property managers in the seven or so months, and getting anything done has been an absolute nightmare.
For example, I had been emailing them for about 6 weeks before I was finally able to move into the property the day before my work contract started (they have multiple empty rooms at any given time, and the place I moved into only had one tenant in the 4-bedroom flat – could not believe how difficult it was to get them to take my money!). For another, within my first four or five days there I reported that the air conditioner leaked water. During the almost eight months that I lived there, I emailed repeatedly to remind them that it still hadn’t been addressed and was assured at different times that they were “getting a quote” or something akin to that – but it hadn’t been fixed by the time I left. They did have someone come to fix the internet though, during which they managed to damage the living room air conditioner as well so… a reversal of progress. I have at last received contact from the property manager, and have some of the paperwork, but not my actual deposit, which I am assured I will receive back in entirety. We will see…
Since I last posted, I packed up my things in Toulon, flew to Edinburgh, then on to Ireland, Wales, England. Back to France, on to the south of Germany, and then a short hope across the border into Austria, over to Slovakia, and now Hungary. It’s mostly been short hops – a few hours in a bus or train, so it doesn’t feel like I’m always moving on, and my transit days actually aren’t ever a full day, so I always end up with a bit extra time than I planned which is nice.
One of the things about this type of travel, being solo and staying in lots of hostels means you meet a lot of people. Sometimes, outside of hostels, someone will talk to me and be surprised that I am a female solo traveller. And that, in turn, surprises me. In my travel bubble, it can feel like the world is practically made of women travelling solo. I forget that it’s just my slice of it – high exposure. You probably underestimate how many solo travellers there are – but now, I overestimate.
An interesting thing to me has been a kind of time elitism among travellers. Most dorm room conversations are the same – where are you from, where have you been, where are you going, how long are you travelling, how long are you here? I don’t mind them, but the time questions can be a bit loaded. Generally, I fare okay in these conversations because I am lucky enough to be travelling for such an extended time, but the undertone of them can still make me feel a bit odd. It can feel like it’s a competition, and the winner is whoever is travelling the longest or staying the longest. Realising someone is trying to kind of deflate you, or that you have inadvertently deflated them is a bit uncomfortable.
It’s the sort of thing you might have already heard. “There’s no point in going to ________ if you don’t stay for ____ days.” People rarely agree on what the exact number is for each different city. And I don’t think it’s completely unfounded – I’ve always been a bit wary of trying to fit in so much, see so much that you actually don’t see anywhere. But my views have shifted the longer I’ve been travelling.
I have spoken with people on regular holidays, people who work online jobs and work wherever they chose to be, and retirees spending their savings while completely at their leisure. And what I’ve learnt from these conversations is that you have to make it be enough.
Yes, okay, if you change cities every day you’ll leave yourself completely exhausted. But you also can’t move everywhere.
You probably don’t want or need a whole week in every city. And if you are doing more than one place, you don’t need to do everything in every place. Like I don’t need to go inside every church at this point. I don’t even go into every art gallery anymore. There are things that appear in every city, and honestly? They aren’t necessarily all that different from each other. Europe is a continent that is highly interwoven, lots of shared history, easy overland movement of various population groups. The architecture often overlaps, and things are set up in very similar ways. There are cities where I feel myself clearly ‘in Europe’, more than in that particular city. The difference, for example, between being in Florence, which feels quintessentially European, and being in Venice, which feels quintessentially Venetian. (Which is not to say that Florence isn’t beautiful and lovely.)
So I make choices. I prioritise the things that are unique and specific to an area, but even more so, stuff that’s specific to me. I don’t allocate so much time to places where I know I’m content just to do the tourist hits.
I spent three days in Salzburg, but honestly at this point, I could have done it as a day trip from Munich and got just as much out of it – a self-guided walking tour of the city in the morning, a mega schnitzel for lunch, and the marionette show in the evening, late train back to Munich. Instead, I split things up, went a little slower, and went up to the fortress even though I suspected it was probably not going to really hit at this point (I was correct). I did get to see part of the Gaisberg car race, but it was difficult to see and wasn’t really for me. I didn’t lose anything for having those extra days, but I also didn’t gain that much from them either.
But in Wales, I make a point of going to Hay-on-Wye. I actually spend longer there than I do in Cardiff. Hay-on-Wye is a book town. It’s tiny but they have almost thirty different bookshops. Early in the summer, they host the Hay Festival, a book and writing festival. I paid my most expensive nights’ accommodation for the whole trip just to go to the first day of this festival. Each individual talk session cost around forty dollars, but I went to two. And I had the best time. It’s not a place on everyone’s list – but I am a book person, and it’s been on my radar, my wish list, since I was a teenager. It didn’t matter that I couldn’t stay for the whole thing (it’s two weeks long!) or go to all the sessions. Getting to be there at all was amazing.
Meanwhile my Cardiff plans were foiled with a football (or was it rugby?) match making the prices for the dates I wanted to stay skyrocket! I end up getting the earliest bus from Hay-on-Wye and spending the day in Cardiff, going to their art gallery and natural history museum, then through a park, down the wall of animals, and looked at the beautiful Cardiff Castle. Then I was off to Bath before there was even a thought of darkness. I’d gotten to spend an evening in Cardiff earlier when I saw the Millennium Centre, their Ferris wheel and port. All up I got maybe 24 hours in Cardiff if I was lucky. It wasn’t as much time as I wanted. But I made it enough. I saw the key things I wanted to see and really enjoyed the art gallery and natural history museum (they’re in one building so it was quite manageable actually for a morning).
In Munich, I give myself five days – I want to do the sights, but I also need a down day in which to follow up on tedious necessities, and also squeeze in a phone call. (There’s a well-timed storm day that helps with this.) But I extend for two more days when I realise I am in prime hiking location. It’s not something everyone necessarily wants to do, but my big walking days are almost all of my trip favourites.
I’ve also learnt that if you’re really motivated, you can fit a lot into a day. There is actually more time than you think if you already know what things you want to do. I often surprise myself. It’s much easier solo on this front – I don’t linger on things I’m not interested in, and I don’t feel guilty about it. I don’t spend as long eating and it doesn’t take me as long to get places as it does in a pair or a group. Of course, that means there’s less conversation and the memories are only mine. But it means I can make a day be enough when it needs to be.
I don’t think it’s true that you need a long time in a city, any city. Heck, you could do London in a day if that’s what you had. Now, I wouldn’t recommend it if you have any other choice, but to say it’s pointless? Nah. See Big Ben, the Thames, the London Eye, and the outside of Westminster (not more than five minutes walking between), go to a museum of your choice by red double-decker bus, and a show in the evening. That’s a good day. It would be worthwhile. Did you see all of London? Well, no. But I spent a week there and I didn’t see it all either. I’ve been to Paris like six (?) times, had multiple weeks there and I still haven’t seen it all. And I even repeated some favourites instead of chasing something else. Because it’s better to do YOUR trip, than some knock-off of what someone else thinks you should do.
That’s what I’ve realised and what I’ve learnt to do through the people I’ve met. The people having the best time are the people who let their available time be enough. Someone who’s got a week while someone else only has two days doesn’t necessarily have a better time when they’re just ticking stuff off a standard tourist checklist. Especially when doing more than one country where the checklists don’t change all that much.
In a way, by oversaturating myself, I have cured myself of my unreasonable desire to see absolutely everything. When I started, I looked at the list of museum and sites I could access for free with my teaching pass, and thought I would try them all – why not? Except the Paris Academy alone has more than forty different museums and sites you can access for free. And the truth is, they’re not actually all meaningful to me – I’d rather go back to the Musee d’Orsay for the millionth time. (Did you know even if you go as little as two weeks apart, things will have already changed, different parts of the collection rotated through, stuff loaned out, stuff loaned in, paintings grouped with different ones to change the interpretation. It’s a kind of magic. And yet so much of it is familiar and I’ll be able to identify a handful of missing pieces that have been loaned out or rotated aside for now.)
It’s also cured me of the idea that I want to travel forever. It was a dream of a younger me, to live a nomadic life, making money online and going wherever I wanted on a whim. That’s another part of this time elitism, this airy “oh, I live like this, all the time.” It’s a dream that many want to be envied for, and I did once. There are so many ways you can make a life of travel work and people do. When I was younger, I didn’t have the skills and the resources. But recently I’ve actually turned to face that old dream and realised, yeah, l could do it. I could make it work, I know how. I just don’t want to. Bit of an identity crisis really, but I am recovered.
I’ve had the opportunity to live this life for a while, and it’s fun. I’m glad I got to try on this self. But it’s fun because I know it’s not forever. I’m lucky to get to travel like this, lucky to get to leave and explore – but I’m even more lucky to have people worth coming back to.
But before that, I do what I can, and I let it be enough. I spend the time I have available to me, and I don’t lament all the things I’m missing like I used to. Half the time, it doesn’t even feel like missing anything, because I am too focused on the other things I’m actually excited for. And, like today, when I find I have a bit extra time, even if it’s for a frustrating reason, I do stuff that makes me feel more myself, focus on my well-being – catch up on journalling, read in a park, try to write. I could find some other niche museum to go to, or a few more interesting buildings to look at, but sometimes you have to save that energy and that brain space for the things you really care about.
So there we are. Something of an update. I haven’t decided exactly what I’m going to write about moving forward. I don’t think I’ll do a play-by-play of each of the places I’ve been. That might be a bit of a bore. But maybe I’ll try to highlight some of my favourite days and the things I’ve been really eager for. I still haven’t booked my flight, perhaps another month still of running around, I haven’t completely decided. But I’m on the homeward half at least!
