100 Days on the Road

As I sit here on a train from Berlin to Budapest shoved into a couchette like a sardine who’s too large for its can I contemplate the last 100 days. Traveling is about expecting the unexpected. Sometimes you get 5 star treatment, other times someone will piss on your tent and you will be just fine with it. Life is a bit that way you see, some days everything seems to work just fine. You leave home and the car has a full tank of gas, the traffic lights all turn green as you approach them, the elevator is at the first floor and the steak you order for lunch is perfectly seasoned and cooked to perfection. Other days you wake up late, rush only to find out the car needs gas, traffic is a mess, you barely have time for lunch and the toilet paper in the office bathroom is wet. I am sure you can relate to both scenarios.

Traveling is a lot like that. You have to be willing to take the bad with the good and move on. Here are some of the things this trip has taught me, some of them may be useful to you.

Don’t take for grated the comforts of home. Being able to control the temperature of your room is a lot more important than you would otherwise think. Your bed is the only clean bed, period. You lose your ability to control the noise levels during the hours of the night as soon as you leave your house.

People you don’t know have a very different sense of humor, you are gonna have to tolerate it. Some people will seem like assholes, others pretentious, if you don’t accept that that’s who they are, you’ll be constantly annoyed.

Routine is usually bad at home and while traveling the world. Spontaneity, is priceless.

You will have to defend yourself, but don’t push too hard. Sometimes the person on the other end is not as selfish as you think they are. On the same note, people are selfish, just accept that and learn to deal with it.

Reading maps and navigating a city becomes easier as time goes by. Eventually they start to make sense.

Missing home has nothing to do with the things you owned. It has to do with the connections you no longer have with people you enjoy. Having a place to call home is overrated, having friends nearby is highly underrated.

Traveling is usually more tiresome than not traveling. You will have a lot less free time that you imagined you would. You will read a lot less books than you imagine while away.

Baggage is annoying, both literal baggage and figurative baggage. Carrying as little as possible makes things a lot simpler. Being attached to little is hard but gives you much more flexibility. Learning to live with very limited stuff will make you look deep inside yourself and realize what’s important.

Simple things like doing the laundry, going to the supermarket and finding a good restaurant become small projects. Everything is more difficult in a new place. Searching for a place to eat and avoiding being taken advantage of takes real effort.

You will make mistakes, you will be taken advantage of. The important part is realizing it quickly and making sure to spot it in the future. Move on!

The grass continues to be greener on the other side. Sometimes I look at people in their nice air-conditioned cars driving by me and wish I could be them. A couple months ago I was, and I wanted to backpack around the world. Go figure!

Decision making is an art, practice and make perfect. Dwelling on futile aspects of a decision becomes really stressful. Listen to your gut instinct, quickly analyze the facts and decide. This is a very valuable skill to have.

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