08/09/24
Hello again! Now that I am over a month in to the trip and have gotten comfortable with this style of travel, I felt ready to come back on here and provide an update. This might get long, but a LOT has happened in this first six weeks that I feel I should share. In this post I will try to focus mainly on my thoughts, feelings, and realizations that I have had during the journey, rather than the locations themselves. I have been journaling every day, so I have only included topics that have been recurrent in my writing or that I have been thinking about often. In some sections I go a bit deeper with my ideas that I feel needed a bit more explanation. Feel free to skip around or just read a section or two at a time. I could likely discuss each of these ideas in great length, but I have kept it short for the sake of this post (and my time). This is by no means an exhaustive list, but it includes some of the ideas that have stuck out in my mind.
I will make a separate post in the near future detailing the actual route that I have taken up to this point, along with more pictures from each location.
Freedom
I had an entirely new life to get used to when I landed in London. Very shortly after landing, I realized what I was truly in for. Leading up to the trip, I had pushed away many of the anxious thoughts and intricate planning in order to reduce the discomfort and stave off any second thoughts. Now that I stood in a busy train station in the heart of London, entirely on my own and with nothing but the bag on my back, I realized I may have underestimated my plans a little bit. Nonetheless, I knew I was committed. I knew that it was the first day of a very long journey and that I would figure it all out along the way.
Within the first two days, I realized just how much freedom and independence I have out here. Over the past two years, I knew I was working towards providing myself this opportunity to freely explore the world, but I did not realize what that actually meant until I got out here. I had considered myself an independent person for much of my life, but once I stood alone in London and the reality of my situation hit me, I realized that this level of independence is one that I had never before experienced. I also realized that I had never been so free to just live life. However I want to live it. Not only can I do whatever I want, see whatever I want, and talk to whomever I want, but I can also be whoever I want.
Connections
One of the amazing things about traveling solo is that you are entirely detached from all past judgements, opinions, and ideas about who you are. Every person I will meet on this trip is, as of now, a stranger. They have no preconceived notions about who I am. All they will know is the person who is in front of them at that moment. I have been introverted all my life, and had dealt with social anxiety for many years. While I had largely overcome this issue before this trip, I still noticed myself feeling overly concerned with other people’s opinions during this first month. People who I do not know and people who, in reality, pay no attention to me at all. It is a common problem, and one that often keeps people from speaking their mind or acting in a certain way. This is something that I sought to overcome throughout this trip. Within the first week, I thought often about how I am literally in a foreign country with people I will never see again after this moment. Yet, I still found myself limiting some of what I say and do out of fear of upsetting others or not “fitting in.”
I noticed a shift somewhere in my second week. I was speaking with someone I had met at my hostel in Edinburgh, Scotland when I realized that the inhibited aspect of my personality is something that I was continuing to carry on into this new life, when I would be better off leaving that part of me behind. It no longer serves me. This brand new chapter of mine gives me the opportunity to ditch those parts of myself that I know must be left behind in order to grow into the person that I want to be. Changing any aspect of your character does not happen instantaneously, but since this realization, I have become much more aware of the moments when I am acting (or not acting) out of the unjustified fear of what others may think. I have developed a greater ability to act in accordance with my true self. This is something I will be continuing to work on throughout the trip.
Something else that I have learned quickly is that making friends and initiating conversation is actually quite easy. People everywhere crave connection. It is in our nature. But people everywhere also deal with that same fear of judgement and rejection. So I have learned that I often must be the one to say ‘hi’ first. Once the ice is broken, it is easy to connect and converse. My experience with this has largely been at hostels, where travelers from all over tend to congregate in common areas, but often stick to themselves until spoken to. The idea holds true everywhere though. Waiting in line at a grocery store, sitting on a train, walking down the street. It is easy to withhold a statement out of fear of embarrassment or upsetting someone, or to silently hope that the other person speaks to you first. But the only thing that this will get you is a missed opportunity. A missed opportunity to make someone’s day, to learn something new, or to make a connection. If you like somebody’s outfit or find someone attractive or want a recommendation for where to eat, just say something. Be direct and honest. For someone who is naturally introverted, this is something that I will need to continue practicing and improving on, but it is encouraging to see how much easier it has become after just a few weeks.
Loneliness
Loneliness is often something that is attributed to solo-travel, and for good reason. To set off on your own is to leave behind all of your friends, family, and people who you have built your life around. As you may assume, it gets lonely at times. It is certainly a requirement for someone considering solo-travel to be comfortable in their own company. Despite me meeting this requirement, I noticed that I was putting a lot of pressure on myself to meet others during my first few weeks. This pressure has forced me to get out of my comfort zone more often, helping me meet some great people and having some very memorable times. Though it has also led to a lot of discomfort during the periods when interacting with people was more difficult. As discussed in the previous section, meeting new people is not too difficult when you learn to put yourself out there, but this alone does not promise constant company. Something I have learned that I had not considered before the trip is that people you meet when traveling are all headed in different directions. When the majority of people who I meet are also staying in hostels and traveling from place to place, it is understandable that even after a great night with a group of people, everybody must continue on their own path. Contact information is exchanged, but there is typically a mutual understanding that the likelihood of our paths crossing again is low. So the cycle repeats and fresh ice must be broken with new souls.
With that comes periods of isolation. In the beginning, the (somewhat romanticized) idea that I would always be able to find a travel companion led to some uncomfortable thoughts and feelings of loneliness during these periods. Over time however, I have become much more comfortable being on my own, even throughout multiple days in a city. Many aspects of travel, such as going to restaurants and eating meals on my own, have never bothered me. It is going to places where seemingly everybody else has a group or partner that is harder to get accustomed to. In other words, it is not the times when I am physically isolated from people that I feel lonely, but rather the times that I am surrounded by others. Even still, I have begun to embrace this. It has become much easier over the weeks to either accept my situation and have a good time on my own anyway, leave and find something else to do, or challenge myself to join in with a group (which has led to some hilarious and interesting interactions).
Overall, the periods of loneliness have become less frequent and less prolonged the further into the journey I get. I know that I will continue to miss my friends and family back in the US, and there will always be times that I wish I had a partner or group to adventure with. But as with most challenges, there is always a silver lining. During these periods, I am more inclined to call home, more inclined to reflect on my own life and thought patterns, and more inclined to embrace the discomfort by breaking the ice with a soon-to-be friend.
Slow travel // Mindfulness
The idea of “slow travel” is something I had not heard of until I began planning this trip, and it is something that I have only recently realized is crucial when taking a trip this long. During the first couple of weeks, I felt pressured to see everything and do everything in each city that I went to. This is one of the main reasons I have not updated this site until now. I felt that there was so much to see and do in each city that I always had to be up and moving. Before this trip, this is how traveling typically was for me. I would go to a new place with an itinerary for what I wanted to do there, and usually these planned activities would take up most of the time. Now, I am traveling for almost a year, so this way of living is not sustainable. Not only for my budget, but also for my mentality. The idea of slow travel involves taking more time in each location and experiencing it for what it is, rather than rushing around just trying to check off all of the major landmarks before moving on to the next place.
As someone who always likes to be doing something, it took me a while to adjust to a slower pace. For the first two to three weeks, I probably averaged over 10 miles of walking each day. The only times I would sit down would be to google the city I was in and make sure I wasn’t missing out on any of the “main attractions.” Eventually, that caught up to me and I realized that I may actually be missing out on a more authentic experience in these new countries by rushing around all the time. I accepted that it would be okay for me to chill out a little bit. It is okay for me to sit in a café and watch the world go by for a few hours or to find a comfortable spot in a park and take a nap. Once I accepted this new way of traveling, a lot of the stress that I felt at the beginning vanished. I realized that there are truly no wrong turns. I can wander around a city all day without a map and just see where I end up (and more often then not, I end up finding something quite interesting). I can book a train to a random village in Austria for a few days just to see what it’s like there, and there is no problem with that. Which I did do and had quite an interesting time 😄 (I think I may be the first person from Indiana to ever step foot in Eggelsberg, Austria).
Traveling slowly also allows me to be more present and enjoy each moment as it comes. Knowing that there isn’t anything that I have to do makes it much easier to simply live in the moment. Which, at the end of the day, is all that there is. After about two weeks, I came to the conclusion that this should be my main focus. I worked hard to allow myself to have this life, so the only way that I could “fail” in my mind is if I spend all my time overthinking or stressing about the past or future. If I am able to bring my full attention and awareness into each moment, then I will have succeeded. No matter what the journey does or does not bring. This should be the goal for everyone, no matter what our life looks like. When we forget to live mindfully, we end up missing out on much of what life has to offer. This is something that I have struggled with for many years, though my hope is that with my current lifestyle I will be able to tune in to the present moment more often.
The Nomadic Lifestyle
It did not take as long as I would have thought to get used to this nomadic lifestyle. By the fourth day, I felt mostly adjusted and now, over a month in, it feels like my normal life. I was worried going into this trip that I would not be able to have much structure to my days. When living in Indiana, I knew that I was at my best when I had a productive daily routine. It is not easy to create any sort of routine when living out of a backpack and moving from place to place every few days. Yet I knew that ten months of traveling would not be sustainable if I was unable to find some sort of structure to my days. Turns out, I just had to give it some time. By the third week, I sort of fell into a natural rhythm with my days. Aside from travel days, where I would need to catch an early train or flight, many of my days are organized quite similarly. I start by waking up, getting ready, and walking to a nearby café for breakfast and coffee. There, I usually plan out a few things to do during the day that are specific to the city I am in. Whether that be site-seeing, going on a tour, attending a show, or whatever else may sound interesting that is nearby. By late afternoon I will go back to the hostel to relax for a little bit, plan for my next location, look through my photos, write in my journal, or chat with some other people in the common areas. If I meet a group of people or if the hostel is putting on an event that night then I will likely have some drinks and hang out (many hostels hold karaoke nights, beer pong tournaments, DJ nights, and other social events to make it easy to meet others). If not, I will often just grab dinner and call it an early night. This is a very flexible routine that often doesn’t hold true to form, but it has been nice having an idea of what to expect each day, no matter what country I am in.
Work/life balance
Out here, I don’t have any “real” responsibilities. My only real concerns involve maintaining my budget, figuring out which city I will go to next, where I will stay, and what I am going to do once I am there. I did not like this at first. During multiple days of this first month, I dealt with an underlying feeling that I should be doing something more. I believe this stems largely from the culture I was brought up in. American culture stresses work over all else. Maximum productivity and a strong work ethic are heavily valued and success is often perceived by how much money you make. I have never fully agreed with this capitalistic philosophy, but having always been a part of it, I was unable to shake that feeling. However, after a couple of weeks living with this much freedom, I realized that the entire Western way of life (i.e. work 40+ hours a week until your 60 and then start living life how you actually want to live it) is far from the only option. There is no such thing as a work/life balance. It’s all just life. The idea that we are only alive to work, make money, and attain power or material possessions is a very unconscious, shallow way of looking at life. Yet this idea has taken hostage the majority of Western societies. There is a better way. For instance, Indigenous cultures believe that we are like the rest of Nature: here to experience, feel, be beautiful and strange, not needing to achieve any level of wealth or power to be successful. This is why we feel most alive when we are tapped into the present moment. When we lose track of time doing the things we love or when we surround ourselves with nature. This is how life is meant to be lived.
People may argue that in order to live, you have to work. Nobody can deny that it takes money to buy food and shelter. But our “career” does not have to define our entire lives, nor should it overtake such a large portion of our weeks. There are so many alternative ways to live that do not require us to spend our most precious resource of all -time- on passionless tasks that bring no meaning to ourselves or to the world. The hard part is accepting that to do this often requires taking an unconventional path. It takes surpassing the judgement, jealousy, excuses, self-doubt, and anxiety that arise when considering going against the grain. At the end of the day, sticking to what is comfortable is always going to be the easier option. This is not to say that everybody should pack up and take a trip around the world or move to some off-grid farm for the rest of their days. My point here is that if you do not enjoy what you are spending your (limited) time on- if you are not diving fully into what you are passionate about- then you are likely only living a fraction of the life that you could be living.
The example that I am currently living is extreme. And with the uncertainty of my plans after this trip, I do still feel the pressure to conform to the conventional life. But I know, after just one month of simply living, that I will not be going back. If I do, it will be for a brief period and in service of a greater plan. Until I discover (or create) something long-term that makes my soul happy, I am very content living my life one day at a time, entirely on my own terms.
Overcoming Obstacles
Maneuvering around foreign countries on my own is not always easy. Things come up that challenge my expectations and days do not always go as planned. There have already been multiple instances where my mentality has been tested. I have been forced to hitchhike to reach my airbnb (well, at least attempt to hitchhike), missed multiple trains due to delays, and had my phone stolen out of my pocket. I have realized through all of these (and the various other mishaps I didn’t mention), that I am surprisingly prepared for this. None of these obstacles have had a great effect on my mental. As soon as I became aware of the fact that whatever happened is out of my control, I let it go and figure out how to adapt. Ruminating on events that have already happened, letting emotions take over, or worrying about something that we have no control over does nothing but prevent us from moving forward and thinking rationally about the next step. Even when I had my phone pickpocketed in Brussels, I never had a moment of panic or let myself get upset. I knew that it would work out. It was not a life or death scenario. Life goes on. The adventure just becomes a bit more interesting. The mishaps are what make the best stories and the challenges are what provide us the opportunity to grow. If everything always went according to plan, the good times would not be as rewarding. You cannot have the highs without the lows.
A lot of my mindset when dealing with tough circumstances is shaped by Stoic philosophy. While there are many facets to the philosophy, the main idea can be well understood through the Christian serenity prayer: “grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference”. I will stop myself now before I get into my thoughts on religion (that would be a very long post), but living by these words have proved extremely beneficial for my life and have completely changed how I perceive the world. Having the ability to simply accept a situation and let go is such a crucial skill to develop. Otherwise, our minds become cluttered with past experiences that prevent us from living in the moment and creating a beautiful future. The second part is equally as important. If it is possible for us to change the outcome of something but we are afraid to take that action, we end up living with regret, which again prevents us from living happily and mindfully. The final line is perhaps the most important- and also the most difficult to implement. Many people believe they can change things that, in reality, are out of their control. So they sacrifice time, brain power, and peace of mind on something that, no matter how hard they try, they will not be able to change. Adopting this mindset has given me much more confidence in my life and in my travels, since I know that a slight bump in the road will not derail my entire journey.
Final Thoughts
There are many more thoughts that I would like to include, but as I write more, more continue to come into mind. I will never get this posted if I continue adding things, so I will cut it off here for now. Going into the trip, I was unsure how much time and energy I would want to spend on maintaining the website and my Instagram page. Now that I am over a month in, I have discovered a balance that I feel I can proceed with at this point without imposing on my actual adventures. I will continue to post on Instagram every week or so, to share some photos and update everyone on my location, but I will likely not be updating the website too regularly. When I do add to the site, I want the quality to be high, so until I am in a more stationary position, it will be difficult to find the time (and wifi connection) to put together a post that I am happy with. I will continue to record my thoughts each day in my journal and take pictures everywhere I go, so when I am in the position to share them on here, I will have plenty of content to work with.
Anyway, thanks for reading! I can’t wait to discover what other twists and turns this ride has in store for me. It is wild to consider that I am still in the beginning stages of the journey, but I am so excited to venture on. Till next time,
– Ryan
