Traveling Alone, You Never Know Who You Might Meet

When I was about 15 years old, I took part in a two week audio-visual children's workshop with a friend of mine from school called Wangari.
There were of course loads of other kids from different schools, different backgrounds but unfortunately I really did not get to know any of them.
From the moment I knew Wangari would be there as well, that sealed the deal for me. I had no use for other people, I already had a friend.
So I just skipped that whole awkward phase of trying to get to know other people. I would just be silent and passive in group sessions, then the moment I was with Wangari, I'd say all the things I had been thinking and wishing I could tell someone.

Fast forward...
A few weeks ago, I was in Warsaw all on my own. No Wangari to be my company. What to do?! I looked up a couple of free and cheap touristy things to do...perhaps learn something about the history of the city and see all the important sites. At the hostel where I stayed, I came across a flier of a walking tour of the market square in the city centre...these are traditionally the oldest and most beautiful parts of Polish cities so I thought that would be a great way to spend a few hours. The other great thing about these tourist activities is that you get to meet other foreigners as well, because locals would generally not be attending tours of their own home ground, now would they?

So there we were, me on my own, a couple of groups of people, and a few other lone travelers...of course I went up to one of the lone travelers and made friends.
(You would be amazed the boost of confidence it gives when you know the likelihood of ever meeting these people again is one in seven billion, heh heh)
Besides jokes are always funnier when you can laugh with someone else...beats saying them in your head and then smiling suspiciously, so I had to find a companion!

After the walking tour, we had lunch then visited a museum.

Roderick(the other lone tourist) and I had this conversation about traveling alone. Sometimes you just want to be alone with your thoughts but apart from that, you really never know who you might meet. Sometimes you meet people, and are with them for the shortest of times, perhaps just a day, but you just connect on a whole other level and it feels like you have known them for years and years.
You might find they awaken an interest within you that lay latent, or they suggest a solution that seems perfect for something you have been struggling with for a while...or perhaps they just give you that one day of company amidst a week of solitary travel...
Whatever the case, your paths cross for only an instant, but in the long run this instant comes to mean a lot.
More often than not, since the setting within which you meet is 'on the road', it is unlikely that your paths shall ever cross again, but at least you had the time you did have. Swap Facebook user-names and keep on moving.

You know what, we really are all the same, regardless of who we are, where we are from, what we do for a living, what our dreams and ambitions are, we really are all just the same.
Traveling alone really puts that into perspective.

De Paris avec Amour

I really am my mother's daughter, you know?!
:)

Okay, lets get into the story.
Paris, the city of wine and cheese and love.
I got to go to Paris, with my lovely Aunt M... ;-)
Paris was a dream come true. I had read so much about this city, French culture, tourist attractions, the language...I was like a highly caffeinated monkey...buzzing around wanting to touch everything and go everywhere. It was a lovely weekend...every meal in Paris is a feast too!



So while spending time with my aunt, we happened to mention an incident that took place a few years back where my mum had missed a flight because of how she interpreted the time of the flight. It was an early morning flight, something like thirty minutes past midnight(say on Monday morning), but she interpreted it as a late night flight on the Monday night...get it?  This 24-hour clock, heh heh!
It is one of those little things that just never occurs to you and then when you realize, you can't imagine how you could have missed it.



Fast forward, say, 5 years later, here comes Kathleen, my mother's daughter. While booking my trip to Paris, in my head I knew I wanted to arrive Friday afternoon and leave Sunday evening. So when I saw a trip that had a return at 0630hrs on Sunday, I quickly took it, "Good price, how lucky," I thought. In my head, that 6.30 was automatically pm and for the other 100 times I looked at my ticket to double check the time, it never occurred to me to think otherwise.
"Departure at 6.30pm," I kept telling myself.


When Aunt M. asked if I had checked and doubled checked the time, told her I had even triple checked it. So we checked out of our hotel early enough, took a shuttle to the airport. Our terminals we totally different so the shuttle dropped her off first and we had a somewhat sentimental goodbye, wondering what soil we would be standing on when our paths once again crossed. Little did we know...ha ha!


I got to my terminal and as I checked departures, I noticed there was none headed in my direction at 6.30pm. The butterflies began, but I kept telling myself to relax, I was two hours early, whatever was amiss could be fixed. Tried to check in at the self-check in kiosk, but the machine kept telling me that boarding time for my flight had already passed. I could not understand how, since I was two hours early.
At the counter of my airline the lady took one look at my ticket and then looked up at me and said, "...Miss, why are you coming to the airport at 4.00pm? This flight left at 6.30am!"
I would have burst into tears right there and then, but I still had some strength in me. So I asked the lady if I could be put on a different flight to my destination and she dropped the second bomb-shell, "Sorry miss, your ticket is non-transferable. You will need to purchase another one."
PANIC!!!!!!! I kept going though, kept my cool and asked her when the next flight to Poznan was...she checked and said that the next flight with a free seat was in two days time. Keep in mind I had to be at work at 9.00am the next day. There was the third bombshell...and if you thought that misfortune only comes in threes, there was a fourth...the only seats available on that flight were first class tickets, about 3 times the cost of a normal ticket and I could not buy a single trip because I was not an EU citizen, I had to buy a round trip(technical something with immigration laws.)
 
And in that moment I ceased to be the mature, responsible young lady that had been looking after herself all alone in a foreign land and I was once again my mummy's little girl, I could not stop the tears. In between sobs I thanked the lady, dragged my suitcase to a nearby bench, took out a pack of napkins and just sat there and cried for a few minutes wishing I was at home with mum, wondering what would become of me...

SUSPENSE!!!!
Did Kathleen ever get home?
Or was she forever stranded in Paris, lost and alone in the most beautiful city in Europe(2nd most beautiful I think...)
Part 2 coming soon.

Notre Dame Cathedral

Our breakfast joint!

Eiffel Tower!!!!!

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People would rather help you than hurt you.

Traveling is a bit scary. Well, very if you sit down and really analyze all the things that could go wrong. New place, perhaps foreign language, everyone a stranger...all the things that could go wrong, just think about it!

A lot of times, we expect the worst, fail to realize that people would rather help us than hurt us and that our fears are probably the extremes! They are the exception to all the other good things that may come of it.

I spent a few hours in Wroclaw, a Polish city. I was just passing by on my way to another city, but since there was some time between the train I had arrived on and the bus I intended to catch, I decided to explore the city center a bit. Now, since I only had a few hours, I decided to not bother buying tram tickets.

I was going to risk it and just take one tram to the center, walk around, perhaps buy a fridge magnet for my mum's fridge then move on with my travels. At the tram station, I stood there for a while trying to decipher the timetable, but that was getting me nowhere. The fact that it was in Polish did not help.

I turned to a tiny little lady standing next to me and asked what tram went to the center.

She was very kind to me, I don't even remember her name unfortunately and I regret not asking her to stop and take a picture with me, but not only did she tell me what tram to take, she insisted to come along with me since she was heading in the same direction.

Then as we waited, she asked if I had a ticket, and if my complexion would allow me to turn pink and blush I would have, so I feigned surprise, acting like it had been my intention all along to buy one, but she stopped me, went into her purse and gave me two tickets. One for the trip into the city and one to come back. At this point I would probably have turned even pinker...

Here I was, plotting and planning how I was going to evade paying for a ticket, then this sweet lady comes and gives me two out of her purse, how mortifying! I declined and headed to the machine but she insisted, said she knew what it was like to be foreign and was happy to help, and finally I accepted.

We had a nice chat on the way to the center, then when we got there, she pointed me in the direction of where I was headed before heading to work, and that was it! Gone forever. All she had to do was show me what tram to take, but she still went that extra mile.

On another occasion, my friends and I got lost in a very rural-like neighbourhood. The thing about rural places, if there are only older people around, it is unlikely they can speak English. We had no choice since people were scarce and hopelessly asked an old lady if she spoke English, which of course she did not. However, she did not just walk off and leave us stranded, she took out her cell and called her daughter, then explained to her daughter that we looked like we needed some help but she could not communicate. She then gave me her phone and had me talk to her daughter.

Now, in the end, that did not come to anything either, because the girl on the line did not understand our predicament, but I was still extremely touched!

I have about a dozen other similar stories...truth is, at the end of the day, people would rather help you than hurt you.

Of course I do not mean to suggest that it is 100 percent safe, I am now just more willing to believe in the kindness of people than perhaps I was before.

Why I kept ticket stubs from the cities I went to...

I kept ticket stubs!!

Imagine that...I kept ticket stubs from every single city!

Well, except Paris, Aunt M was baby-sitting me then, so she had the subway tickets...(Should have asked for them...forgot.)

Why did I keep them?

I knew a few weeks or months later I'd be sitting here writing this blog post, and I'd need them for all the pictures...

More likely is the fact that...I am just wildly sentimental!

If I could I would have kept everything, and believe me I tried, as you shall come to see with time.

Thing is, I knew it was coming to an end, sooner or later. Right from the beginning, I knew it would end, it was always coming. So I held on to the ticket stubs...my little way of immortalizing the experience.

Some people collect postcards from their travels, some collect sand, some collect the seeds of plants and trees and take them home and try to grow them, some buy fridge magnets and others tshirts as souvenirs...

I always wondered what my thing was, well, I have just discovered it.

I keep ticket stubs. Be it train, tram, subway, plane, boat...I just kept them all, almost.

This was for my trip coming home.

From a Polish city named Lodz(Pronounced Wudge) Heh heh!

Don't ask me how.

From Wroclaw, Poland.(pronounced Vrodswov, I think)

POZNAN, Poland!!(My home away from home)

From Warsaw(Polish capital)

PolskiBus...ideal intercity travel companion!

Berlin, Germany.

My trip from home to Poland...kept even these ones!

France to Warsaw(This one has a whole other story behind it!)

The travel wallet I got the day I bought my ticket at Emirates offices.

Trip from Poznan to Paris.

Prague, Czech Republic.

The Beginning

I just came home from an amazing trip, I spent 7 weeks in Poland. I also got to briefly visit 3 other European countries...France, Germany and Czech Republic.
Nothing in my so far...19 years 6 months and 12 days in this life has made a greater impact than the time I spent away.

I got back home, and everything I thought matters most, I came to realise does not. It is the most beautiful feeling in the world!

So this blog is about taking you through my journey. The people I met, the things I learnt, the things I did.

This blog is also for me, first because it is a great way to index all my memories, and I hope it shall one day be a portal to further travels.

Let us take a trip!