I’ve spent the last three weeks on three quite different trips, combined into one long European sojourn. First was a family holiday in Paris; then came a digital-humanities conference in Utrecht; and I spent the third on a solitary ramble through the Low Countries: Haarlem and Amsterdam in the Netherlands; Antwerp and Ghent in Belgium.
In those three weeks I stayed at four AirBnBs, delivered a paper, drank a lot of Trappist beers and Dutch genever, browsed museum shops and vintage stores and bookshops, and wrote a few thousand of words of ideas and observations.
Some of that was spontaneous. Some was planned: like the accommodations and the paper, obviously. But also the writing. Because frankly, I knew there’d be times I would feel isolated; except for work, I’d not travelled alone before.
The main reason I wrote was to work out some ideas on the road, where new daily routines provoke new thoughts. And they did. I learned things about myself, and about my work; I decided which projects need my energy and attention, and which ones to wind down.
Travel is a chance to step back from ordinary life, to reflect on how much of your life is purposeful or accidental. You return with new eyes.
So drawing inspiration from Monica Sommerville — specifically her series on life in Germany – here are some things I learned in the last three weeks of nonstop travel. They’re not just about travelling solo, but also about doing it right when you’re in company.
- Wander. Embrace serendipity. Know where you’re headed, but not how you’ll get there. Stand at crossroads and choose the one that looks more interesting. Window shop, and go into stores you normally wouldn’t.
- Plan. Save cafes or museums or stores you want to see to a Google Map, and note their hours first. But embrace analog sources, too; random bloggers (ahem) are less reliable than reputable, edited sources. Surly TripAdvisor reviews are worthless compared to curated books like the Monocle travel guides, or City Secrets. For something edgy yet middlebrow, opt for anything by Lonely Planet.
- Solitude can be lovely. If you’re with others, take an afternoon or two on your own. You can spontaneously get off a train somewhere that interests you, see and eat and drink what you want without negotiating with others. If you feel like it, you can spend three hours in a museum of printing or in a used bookshop. You can skip the art museum, and go to flea markets and vintage stores instead.
- Solitude can be lonely. So do as the Dutch do, when you’re alone, and embrace gezelligheid: a convivial way of appreciating the company of strangers. Start conversations with people eating at the next table. Do communal things in public: watch films or join a walking tour. Ask bookstore clerks to recommend a good place for coffee.
- Do abnormal things. Read your novel in a bar. Rent a Vespa for the afternoon. Stride fearlessly into fancy boutiques. And again, talk to strangers, more than usual. Look: you’re not from around here – so for all they know, that’s just who you are. You just might find you do it more. Especially the reading-in-bars thing.
- Do normal things. See how normal people live where you are. Ride public transit, not a tour bus. Take a supermarket safari (a term from the wonderful book How to be a Better Tourist). Marvel at 20 kinds of crème fraiche, and learn to weigh and label your vegetables before bringing them to the till. In Dubai, I vividly remember seeing songbirds at the deli counter — feathers and all: and that was 16 years ago. Supermarket shopping is also a great way to save money: local products like Belgian chocolate or Dutch cheese are much cheaper there.
- Travel light. Bring, and buy, as little as possible. Plan to do laundry, and wash your unmentionables in the bathroom sink. Buy postcards not posters, and take photos of the books you can order when you get home. (Places like Book Depository stock foreign editions, and the shipping is free.) Take and replace old things: your much-loved threadbare socks deserve a nice holiday before you replace them with an exotic foreign model.
- Travel heavy. Before you set off each day, pack essentials in a backpack: your notebook and current novel, a refillable water bottle and travel mug, a sunhat and umbrella, some Tylenol and bandaids, a rechargeable battery pack. And a packed lunch and snacks that you bought at the supermarket yesterday. (But change it up: I ate the same gouda-and-jam sandwich for a week.)
- Read. Mostly books, not your phone. Use your phone to orient yourself and take photos, and that’s it. Read your novel after lunch on a park bench. Give your brain a holiday, too: I devoured a 900-page spy thriller in two days, while my intended reading (Umberto Eco’s beautiful, difficult novel The Name of the Rose) sat unread.
- Write. Whether or not this is normal for you, write your reflections and intentions in a journal. Whether they’re complete sentences or bulleted lists, these are impressions that crystallize when your trip is done. Write about big ideas and small details, about the present and the future and the past.
- Connect with where you are. Stay in AirBnBs or local hotels, not the Best Western. Buy a local SIM card, if your phone is unlocked. For €10 I got a Dutch phone number – but more importantly, I got 1GB of data without any roaming charges. (First, turn off cellular data for your unnecessary apps.)
- Connect with where you aren’t. Post photos to social media so people know you’re alive. (I use Instagram and sometimes even their evil parent company.) And use messaging services like WhatsApp. But delete the e-mail and Facebook apps from your phone. I mean, do that in general – but especially while you’re on holiday.
- Save. Decide what you won’t buy, and plan ahead. For me it’s lunch; I’d rather graze on figs and nuts than sit down to a three-course meal. And I’d much rather pay for beer than for water. (Unless there’s a legit public-health reason, stop buying bottled water, people. Just stop it.)
- Splurge. Take a first-class railway for a leg of your journey. Buy that unique backpack, that tiny bluetooth speaker, a box of fancy truffles. Savour things right away: wear your new jacket out of the store, and nibble your chocolates on a park bench.
So there you go: 14 opinionated ways to travel, based on my long and varied trip. They led to my most memorable moments: writing in a rainy cafe with an espresso and a purring cat beneath a skylight; marvelling at “Bookz & Booze,” a shop in Ghent that pairs books with bottles of alcohol; reading a novel on a park bench, eating Belgian chocolate and my daily bread.
And where to, next? Santiago, Istanbul, Edinburgh, and Jaipur are top of my list now, but I’m suggestible. No matter where I travel, it’s bound to be memorable.
