Selfie Game Strong: Dre Goes To Europe
In my 8-bed unisex dorm room at my hostel in Amsterdam, I met quite a cast of characters.
I chatted with a guy from Finland who helped me with my bed sheets, told me about Finnish and its lack of smalltalk (so intense and ironic considering the smallness of our talk in that moment), and did yoga for an hour in the morning despite chitchatting from the rest of the suite.
I awkwardly avoided a strange dude from Sweden who came all the way to Amsterdam and yet barely left his bed. And I played Kings with a cute young guy from Saskatchewan and the pair of American girls, Kendall and Cameron, whom he'd befriended at the hostel and who had been traveling together for some time.
This pre gaming was to celebrate Kendall's birthday. When I asked how old she was turning, she shuddered at the question.
"What, are you 30 or something?"
"Ugh, NO! Of course not!" She replied. I simultaneously grimaced and grinned. She was sweet.
Kendall was freaking out because she was turning that terrifying age of…23!
I assured her that she was only now entering her best years, that her mid 20s will be much better than her early 20s, and that it feels amazing to not be associated with college anymore.
Still, particularly as someone who works at a college, I could empathize. They graduated from Ohio State, and thus likely had the kind of Big 10 college experience that graduates long for years after finishing.
We drank together for a little while, and then at a certain point Saskatchewan and Cameron went to go "find cups." Those cups must have been exTREMEly difficult to locate, because they were gone long enough for Kendall and me to get to chatting.
She started to ask me about traveling alone. She was astounded that I would do such a thing, especially as a woman. This was not the first time I'd gotten this reaction. I met a ton of people--mostly guys, who I generally find to be more approachable--and I consistently got the same reaction.
"Why are you traveling alone?"
The short answer to this is…why not? And that's generally what I told them. "Can't a girl just be on her own?"
But for this, my official post-vacation post for a blog not known for "short answers," I shall lay out my reasons for the decision, the perks of the decision, and its challenges.
I began this trip having come off of spending nearly two weeks with 47 students and Israeli soldiers ages 18-21. In this particular context, however, it is more appropriate to refer to them as what they are: CHILDREN. Even with older Birthright groups, it's astounding how quick they are to become totally helpless.
It's understandable; they are slaves to an exhaustive itinerary over which they have zero control, and basically have to ask permission to do everything and need advice on everything from how much money to take out at a time to literally what to wear each day. You sort of have to treat them like children, and so they digress into children…except that they drink heavily, and think they're being really sneaky about it.
And then they tend to get pretty slutty. No judgment, we've all been there.
Even after the trip when I spent the weekend in Israel I did not have total solitude, as I was crashing on the couches of friends. This was lovely, and they are lovely, but I am someone who every so often just needs time to not talk to anyone. And so, the prospect of traveling alone in Amsterdam for four days (I stayed with a friend during the Berlin section) sounded like absolute bliss. And it WAS absolute bliss.
I didn't really plan that extensively for the trip. This became particularly evident when I arrived in Amsterdam having packed only shorts, tank tops, and dresses in the 50 degree, windy, rainy weather.
I knew I wanted to…partake in certain vices. I knew I wanted to rent a bike at some point. And I knew I wanted to see tulips, the Van Gogh museum, and the Anne Frank House. But beyond that, I just sort of spread my wings and went where the wind took me.
I unfortunately missed tulip season by a week, so instead I opted for windmills. On day one of my trip, I saw an ad in the lobby of the hostel for a 6 hour excursion in the countryside to see windmills, and so I went. It also turned out to be a trip to a cheese factory and a wooden shoe factory! It was mostly old people on the trip with me as we bussed to Zans Schaas and Volendam and then boated to Marken. I was happy to chill with old people, but I couldn't help but feel disappointed in my generation, who tend to write off these kinds of experiences as "too touristy" and instead opt to party as much as possible.
I WAS a tourist. Why would I not want to do touristy things? (Says the former Disney employee.)
Plus, when you do touristy things, you are able to see so much of a place in such a short amount of time, which can help peak your interest in things you can explore further on your own time, which is what I did after my bike tour in Berlin. (By the way, I highly recommend Fat Tire Bike Tours! http://berlin.fattirebiketours.com/)
I bought wooden shoes. And I got lost biking for 2 hours just to buy cheese. And I didn't have to explain my choices to ANYONE, or justify why I wanted to, say, visit Electric Ladyland, the Museum of Fluorescent Art (whose curator was basically The Dude).
I went to a live sex show by myself, and I went to a peep show by myself. Is this weird? Maybe. But I was in Amsterdam! When in Amsterdam, do as the…prostitutes do? Being alone should not be a reason to not do things.
There are certain things you don't do as a woman traveling by yourself. Yes, I went to the Red Light District; no, I did not party alone at a bar til 2am. First of all, that doesn't even sound fun. But more importantly, it sounds like the beginning of a Law & Order SVU episode.
I experienced a lot of things in Amsterdam, but not so much the night life. I would love to go back with a group of friends, or perhaps a lover, and be able to check that out.
I won't sugar coat it, and I didn't for Kendall: it can get lonely sometimes. Most of the time I love being by myself, and that me-time is really sacred for me. When I don't have it, I get ornery.
But every so often, mostly at night when people are going out partying, it's natural to start to wonder what it would be like to experience a place with friends. When you find yourself in your hostel while others are out, it's easy to hop on the wi-fi and sort of seek out that interaction from people who are familiar to you. Loneliness, as it turns out, is a symptom of being alone even when you're in an amazing place doing amazing things.
But that's part of it. You learn to be lonely.
You experience yourself in that moment, what kind of thoughts you're being plagued with. And you try to understand those thoughts, to understand how you could possibly be feeling anything but amazing in this amazing city. And when you start to dissect that, often with the help of a glass of wine and a journal, it becomes really empowering. You meet a version of yourself that you might never have met before, and you get to the core of who you really are and how you cope with things. It's special. Embrace the loneliness. Write about it. Look back on it years from now and think about how much you cherish that time.
I haven't done a ton of traveling with friends, but when I have, I don't recall encountering a whole lot of new people. If you cast your characters before the trip, then those are the characters that will appear in the play that is your vacation.
But one of the most interesting things I found traveling alone in Europe was just how many people approached me to talk, and how many long conversations I engaged in with complete strangers who I will never see again.
While taking selfies in the park, I suddenly found myself in a conversation about philosophy with a stranger who was teasing me about the selfies and asked to join me.
(I wish I could say we hooked up, but I never heard from him again. Alas; selfie game not strong.)
I had a coffee with an old man working for the tourism bureau who had offered to take my picture and then asked to survey me about my experience in Holland. He enjoyed the conversation so much that when I asked where a good coffee place was, he insisted on treating me.
My bike tour in Berlin included people from English speaking countries around the world, and I got to know an awesome chick from Canada and a darling older couple from Britain, who as it turned out had been at the same biergarten as me the night before.
Granted, part of this is that I'm a naturally chatty person. I chitchat with everyone from the nurse taking my blood to the mechanic I pass on dog walks to the bank teller. And many times it was I who started the chitchat, particularly at coffee shops. Feeling lonely at a coffee shop? Find a table of people and ask them for a light.
9 times out of 10 they'll invite you to sit with them, especially if they're a group of young guys and you're a lone young girl. That sounds a lot creepier than it turned out to have been. But really, I found guys to be much less intimidating and much less insular.
I met people from Holland, Germany, Canada, US, England, Australia, Scotland, Finland, Serbia, Israel, Brazil, Ecuador, Poland, Sweden...it was incredible. I felt like such a citizen of the world. And I'm not so sure it would have been the same had I been traveling with a partner.
Kendall thanked me profusely. She was so relieved to hear me share my experience, my reasoning, and my attitude toward travel. She told me she'd been having fun on this trip (they had already been to Berlin, Barcelona, Prague, a few other places), but that traveling with Cameron had been more focused on partying than she'd necessarily planned. Cameron was going home after this, and Kendall's boyfriend was going to be meeting up with her in two weeks. She wanted to spend those two weeks alone in Scotland, to unwind and reflect and "work on her writing."
She told me that all her friends and family thought she was crazy to want to do that. I told her they will be the best 2 weeks of her life. Git it girl.
I'm not saying everyone will like traveling alone. I'm just saying that everyone should try it at least once. Whether it's for you or not, you will not regret it, and you will learn more about yourself than you ever could have imagined.
Several people have asked if I had a summer romance. My genuine answer is that I had an incredible summer romance…with myself.
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