I am , again, participating in the Indie Challenge hosted by Bootsnall. Just like last year, I’d be posting an article a day, based on the question / challenge of that day.

>>you can join the challenge by clicking here

Nov 3
What Has Travel Taught You?

QUESTION 1:
What has long-term travel taught you?
QUESTION 2:
What do you hope to learn from a long-term or RTW trip?

I’ve answered this question in my book “Exploring Europe Together” but it does refer to short-term travel.

Chapter 19

Lessons Travel Has Taught Me

I strongly believe that every single trip you take will leave a mark on you. And after years of traveling, you’d most likely have a list of things which you have learned while being away from home. Sometimes life decides to give us some free lessons, too.

I am fairly certainly it is not easy to sum of what traveling has taught me. As you could read in the book, my first independent traveling experience was at 19. Between 20 and 30 I have taken several trips with made me question a lot of things and made me do stuff I wouldn’t think I was capable of. After 30, I became aware of how nice it is to travel with someone who shares the very same ideas as you do.

I learned to reevaluate my priorities in life. Fresh out of my stinky former marriage and divorce, I learned to get rid of debt and be really financially independent. I learned how to save money to afford travel. The latest fashion in clothes certainly doesn’t matter to me. A plane ticket to Athens is what I would do with that money. I am glad I didn’t fall for ex’s idea of getting a car – of course with the help of a loan – and instead stuck to my beliefs.

I learned to appreciate what I have. And be extremely happy that I can afford travel. I get quite a lot of questions about how I can afford to travel and sometimes I do feel bad that people might think we have a lot of money. No, we don’t. We just learned how to manage them properly.

The public transportation is always the best solution. Unless you are in Bucharest early in the morning and you trust the lady at the hotel rather than trying to figure out a way to get the damn express bus. I hate buses more than taxis, though, but I have learned to make peace with them unless I am on my own turf – meaning Romania.

I learned not to be a control freak. When traveling you really cannot control *everything*. And stating the obvious, here, the weather is the one thing you cannot even dream to try to control. I really made peace with that in London and decided to go with the “look at the bright side” rather than lose control and have a nervous breakdown. Yeah the net wasn’t working at the hotel, but the room was nice, it was cheap and it was close to the tube.

Packing is an art. I only needed one trip dragging around 2 laptop backpacks and a checked bag (that’s the total amount of bags for 2 adults) that I promptly decided never to choose a checked bag in my life. With each trip I am getting better at packing – especially when it comes to flying – and also learned that 3 days’ worth of cloths is enough to get you through at least two weeks. Switching to the tablet has made my life so much easier than dragging the netbook (or even worse, the laptop) around.

You cannot please everyone in the group. And I am dead serious even if the “group” is just a “couple”. There will be something which won’t be to everyone’s liking. All you can do is try not to get mad and work it out.

I learned to try new things. How could I have known I love to see cities / places from above if I haven’t climbed to the top of Clock Tower in Sighisoara in 2000? How could I have known I have a thing for castles if I wouldn’t have fallen in love with Vajdahunyad Castle in 2007? As for new foods, I am still working on that. But suffice to say, what I tried proved to be a good idea. Cornetto anyone?

Each place is unique. You really cannot fall in love with every city and you cannot compare them, either. But we all do this. I love Athens and I am not a fan of Rome, but I do know each has its unique awesomeness.

I learned not to wait for the perfect moment to travel. I had made this mistake once, fighting for a trip to Greece because my ex never seemed happy to even attempt to try to make it there. However, in recent years, I prefer to just pay for those damn plane tickets and book that room …and we’ll go from there. The savings account will help us with the rest of the expenses.

Life needs to be enjoyed. I learned the hard way that a fucked up relationship managed to fuck up my entire life. You want to be happy and do what makes you happy; you don’t want to fight for every trip abroad and settle into visiting his parents every freaking summer. Get out of that rut and start living.
Some words in the local language score big points. Trying to speak the local language is enough to get the people to see you with different eyes and not consider you yet another one of those tourists who only speaks English.

I learned that I don’t need much crap to have enough to live. I have no idea whom I take this from because mom – just like my late grandma – is extremely good at keeping everything and never getting rid of anything. I and Alex, however, are totally different. We only need a laptop (each), a camera (each?), some clothes and shoes, and we are good to go. In fact, I just need something to help me make money – so in my case it’s the laptop – and I can go anywhere I can find a decent internet connection.

The more I travel, the less TV I watch at home. I have no idea why but that’s exactly what has happened. And when we travel we sometimes just let it idle on a music channel or check out the local news – if I understand the language. I believe that the TV is nowadays good for brain washing purposes only so I can live without it.

I learned to slow down. Or, in other words, I understood that I love to slow down when I travel. London was an exception being our first trip together as a couple, but after that we started slowing down and enjoying everything. We’d rather stay 2 weeks in a place with no plans made from home, then run like mad people during a long weekend escape. And even if it comes down to staying just a weekend, we’d still take things slowly.

It is perfectly fine to make mistakes. And yes, I am biting my tongue right now. I am a perfectionist so this was a hard one to learn. Still, although I made some mistakes while traveling, I didn’t let them damper our fun or put strain on the relationship. The Roman soldier photo thing in Rome still bugs me to this day though.

Research is your best friend. And by this I do not mean to have an itinerary done for every second you are in a place. What I want to say is that it serves you well to know which areas to avoid in a city and where you can find cheap, good food, for example. I recommend Anthony Bourdain’s The Layover as a show to start looking for info.

Most places abroad are safer than home. We stayed in a “shady” area both in Athens and in Rome…but for whatever reason I felt safer than in the market at the end of the pedestrian street I live in Romania.

Travel is addictive. And again, I am stating the obvious. But once you get bitten by the travel bug, you won’t be able to stop traveling.

I hate guidebooks. I hate even those that I wrote, at some point in my travel writing years. I might be good at giving advice but I suck at following any. I cannot follow a proper diet either and that’s I prefer to eat healthy and stay over my healthy weight by 2-5 kg, depending on the month.

People will help. Even if you are stranger and even if you look like a tourist. They will be nice and help even if you don’t ask for help.

Since I’ve never traveled long-term, when I’d finally manage to do that – we hope to be expats for at least 3 months in another European country in the near future – I hope to learn:

• how to cope with paying rent (we don’t pay rent at home) and pay the rest of the bills at home
• how to live in a country where neither English nor Romanian are national languages
• how to really blend in with the locals
• how to perfectly combine my work and the time needed to see the city / visit the near-by cities