Thoughts on travelling alone
Here I am, sitting on the 4th deck of the âMega Andreaâ ferry of the âCorsica Sardiniaâ lines.
Crossing from Bastia to Livorno, I am squatting the blue, carpeted floor like many other passengers of the 9-deck big boat. Across me is lying a couple, the guy sleeping and the girl reading a book. A Swiss-German fair-blond-headed family of five are playing with their some legos. A French family of five next to me are half sleeping, half reading. The music is loud and very entertaining⊠âDo what you want with my bodyâ, Lady Gaga; âIâm addicted to youâ, Shakira⊠and other dancing songs, one after the other, making the spirits rise on this Saturday morning. Yet nobody is dancing. Or seems to pay any attention to the touching, velvet-like sounding voice of Michael BublĂ©. The two TV screens are showing French and Italian programmes respectively. A few staff members mingle among the passers-by, dressed in their white uniforms with a âtĂȘte de Maureâ on the back and both the âBienvenue, Benvenutiâ signs written on them. They look more Italian than French, with their black, long hair and black eyes.
The last time I travelled alone was five years ago. I had travelled to Alicante and Valencia, Spain. The plan was to go with a friend, but she somehow found out last minute that her flight had never been booked after all. I spent two days in Valencia with a fellow ex-âSWYâer from Peru, and then three days in Alicante alone. It was a summer, beach holiday, and I remember walking to the city center, the promenade, and back, watching the locals celebrating some traditional processions, dressed in costumes from medieval times. I had not felt much at ease and even completely safe, being alone.
Indeed, all my solo trips have been out of necessity. The first one was to Palma de Mallorca, during a cold December, around eight years ago. It was snowy in Luxembourg and suddenly I found myself at a mild, enjoyable temperature of 15 degrees in Palma. It had been just a few months after having moved in with my boyfriend at the time, and the first crisis signs in our relationship were there. I had to get away and change environment. He wouldnât travel with me or at all, anyway, except for two times, that I urged him to travel to Vienna and my birth place, Katerini. My solo trip back then was quite solitary and morose. I had not tried to meet new people in Palma. It was maybe also not so easy to do so, as I was staying off the city center, on the beachfront of a deserted beach, beat by the fierce winter winds.
The second trip was around a year afterwards, to Sardinia, right after I had finished my studies in Mons. My friends could not join me, and definitely not my boyfriend at the time (yes, still the same that wouldnât travel at all). We were just breaking up, or actually had already broken up, anyway. I needed to take distance from him, time to reflect and distract myself from his presence. It did not scare me in particular that I had no plan, where to go and what to do on the Italian island. I was staying at a hostel and managed to find other girls, traveling alone or in a group, to talk and hang out with. It did not feel too lonely like this.
So why did I decide to travel alone now for the fourth time, to Firenze? Necessity again it seems. My husband could not join me on this trip unfortunately, even if he would have loved to. I didnât think of asking any of the girls neither. It was a last minute decision anyway. I have some free time too, since I am not working in an office, other than freelancing at the moment. I can freelance from everywhere really. And Livorno, the Tuscan port town of Italy, is so close to Corsica, where I spent last week with my husband. It would have been a pity not to sail this narrow crossing in the Mediterranean, even though it is still around 4 hours away. A change of environment is always good, and it is a good opportunity to travel to beautiful Florence during the summer. Thinking about it, last time I was there was more than ten years ago, with my father, in winter!
Yes, traveling alone is challenging. And when alone, I do prefer to travel in order to attend some sort of organized activity, like a language school, a conference or an international exchange programme as a student. Then I can be with a group of people, with whom I can interact and share new, enriching experiences.
But it depends largely on your mindset towards this experience, like any other. If you are positive and open to new experiences in general, this is another opportunity to travel and see the world. Even if alone at first, you donât know if, where and when you might meet new people, if they will be interesting and if you may even become friends. A brief trip alone now and then in this sense, is good to build relationships with strangers and test existing ones with your partner and also yourself. It makes you get to know yourself better, test your limits, and evaluate perhaps your current situation. It makes you take control of your everyday life, become more organized, and more responsible too, as you and only have to watch out for your safety or plan your dayâs activities. Nobody else will show you the way to where you want to go. It is you that needs to take initiatives. Trust yourself. Or ask a stranger. This makes you therefore more independent and self-confident. So what if you have to take your lunch or dinner alone, in restaurants dominated by couples or families. You have the right to enjoy a good glass of wine alone too! Lastly, you become definitely more observant of life around you and mindful of the present moment.
I donât have a particular plan in Florence for the next two days. But I am sure it will be fine and I will find interesting things to do. In a city swarmed about by thousands other tourists from all over the world, there are many others like me, guys and girls, travelling alone. I will just continue observing life. Continue living the moment. In the words of Hans Christian Andersen, âTo travel is to liveâ.
