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Travelling need not be pleasurable?

22:11 / 18.04.03

I would ask your advice on a matter that has been bothering me for the last few weeks.

About three weeks back, after months of saving, I went on my excuse for a gap year. This was supposed to involve working on an olive farm in Lesvos for a couple of weeks, then spending a couple of months leisurely drifting back across the continent.
So I unwisely took advantage of a drinks offer at a club the night before leaving, and caught the plane with quite frankly, a demon of a hangover. Touched down in Athens, and caught the boat to this remote island. Against the odds (still hungover, no sleep), I made it to the farm. They had gone on holiday.
I now tacked depression onto my list of ailments, and decided to escape back to Athens.
So, on saturday morning, I made my way onto the Acropolis. This was somewhere I had wanted to visit since I was teething, being something of a ruins whore. And i didn't give a fuck. I drifted through the monuments, and the museum, not caring about anything. Not in a carefree fashion, understand, but in a deeply unpleasant "I cannot feel a connection to anything. At all". This trip had turned into a kind of once-in-a-lifetime event, but certainly not how I had planned. Suddenly realised that for all my aloofness and distant behaviour, I desperately needed people, and had sadly let my social skills go to pasture.

So, disgusted with myself, and seeing no reason to stay (influenced by my now shaky mental state from sleep deprivation), I flew home that day, and I've been here ever since.

Thankfully, this thread is not intended as some whining confessional. I do (please trust me!) have a constructive purpose in mind.

Its fairly obvious to me that I can't don a backpack, head out to distant parts, and immediately start having a whale of a time. Indeed that notion seems silly now I look back on it. The thing is, I feel discomfort in my comfort, back home; a mixture of boredom and frustration.
So, do you think, in light of my previous experience, I should go backpacking again, and grit my teeth against the inevitable shittiness of the first few days, in light of certain benefits, such as gradually regaining those forlorn social skills? Else, I shall settle back into Southampton, get a job to tide me by, and put all my savings into university expenses in Glasgow.

22:33 / 18.04.03

Hmm. Interesting question. On reading the title of this post I was immediately struck with a phrase from my vast lexicon of proverbs, old wives' tales and folk remedies: "It is better to travel hopefully than to arrive".

I suppose I tend to veer between anarchic and anally retentive when travelling ie. I fill the pockets of my (metaphorical) cagoule with mosquito repellant, Immodium, dictionaries and key cards of useful phrases like "Have you any accommodation for tonight" and "will work for food". So perhaps if I'd made it all the way to Lesvos and found it "shut" I would have pitched up for a couple of days and see what turned up...

Is it a help or a hinderance to be befuddled by alcohol and sleep deprivation. Not necessarily as long as you go with the flow and don't panic.

I've always been wary of going to Greece however because of the Greek alphabet. My "symbol to noise ratio" has never worked too well. Ditto Japan.

Don't give up. Research an itinerary, be prepared to go off at a tangent, wherever you end up take time to sit and think what it has to offer and if you don't like it, plan your next move, and please don't spend the next year in Southampton!

Andrew C*** passing himself of as Haus

03:43 / 19.04.03

Well just how hard are you?

Your experience was shit, but it does sound like you didn't go through any good times - Hell, you didn't stick around long enough to actually go through any!

If you don't want to do it then don't. If you want to but you're scared, fuck, what have you got to lose?

Our Lady of The Two Towers

08:38 / 19.04.03

How are you normally with travelling? I tended to find on family holidays a sense of extreme dislocation on the first day, fading over the second and feeling settled in and cool by the third or fourth, with a similar effect when returning home.

Maybe you need to stop walking around thinking "this is supposed to be amazing! What's wrong with me?" and see what happens.

15:35 / 19.04.03

To be honest, i wasnt overly impressed with the Acropolis, and i went when not hungover. A load of scaffolding, was about the extent of it.
Im going out to Skiathos (a wee island) for the summer to work, so hope its not too atrocious! xx

15:57 / 19.04.03

Go! Go now! LEAVE!!!

You will inevitably find ANOTHER traveller, just as cynical, lonely and misanthropic. And when you do, it will be

GLORIOUS.

Also, for the flight (and all other down times), bring a copy of Mark Twain's "Innocent's Abroad."

Because he traveled the world and loved hating every minute of it.

16:31 / 19.04.03

The actual business of travelling from A to B is seldom much fun I find but, as Flowers said, usually doesn't take long to begin to commune in some way with a new location, once arrived there. The sense of dislocation can feel very uncomfortable but it does bring a definite buzz with it.

I am used to feeling like there's a party going on somewhere and everybody else knows about it but nobody's inviting me. I just try to discount that as personal white noise to be endured on the grounds that when I do happen across a good time, it can indeed be glorious. I'm shit at making friends on the road, so I tend not to bother. A lot of the fun, for me, is being happy inside my own head and freed from the usual social obligations.

When I was a youngster, travelling alone, it did all seem much scarier and I often had to accept that just about anybody else would be doing more stuff, having more fun, meeting more interesting people. I'm glad that I persevered with my substandard world travelling though, because it was the only kind available to me and I look back on the places and people and times with great fondness now through my rose-tinted telescope. Much of it I couldn't do now with such ease as I did when young, unattached and unencumbered by the responsibilities of middle age.

I think Knodger's right too about the need to be there and see how it plays out. And if all you achieve is checking another world heritage site off your list, several chapters read of a good book, some prime tanning time under your belt, cheap but potent local alcohol consumed, that still has to be more fun than the mundane and predictable, comforting as that can be.

But if you really don't want to, there is absolutely no reason why you "should". Find something else to do that you would prefer to spend the time on. I've had great times in lots of places round the world but I've had shit times too. I've only been to the northern mainland part of Greece, round Mount Athos and Thessaloniki, and it wasn't for me, for lots of reasons, so I've never felt the need to shoot back there.

14:24 / 26.04.03

"It may be hell but at least you've suffered"
Can't for the life of me remember where this came from but it seemed kind of appropriate.