Let me start by saying that I love to travel and discover places with my friends. I especially love to visit them in different countries and cultures when they know their way around and we can circumvent all those tourist traps. But there is that certain something about traveling alone that I only discovered this year after my first two semesters of studying in a master’s programme had passed.
When summer started this year, I felt pretty drained and empty. The semester had been quite rough, and a fulltime internship was waiting for me abroad. I was on my way to stay with my parents for two weeks before the internship would start, but I realised that I needed a break from it all. To be away from the place of my studies, away from my hometown (where I love to be, but where you can easily get sucked into the same dynamics and routines of your childhood and teenage years), but also away from the place where I would be living and working the next couple of months. In other words, I wanted to get away from it all; just to take a deep breath in between, before life would carry on in its fast track.
I realised then that I had never really traveled alone. Not really at least. Sure, I traveled with friends and family, traveled to visit people in their countries or did an exchange or an internship during which I was traveling to meet new people, but I never just packed my bags and went to wherever my heart (with my wallet’s blessing) would take me.
It has its challenges of course. Navigating through an unknown city with a big suitcase and a dead cellphone battery on the search for the hostel is not the easiest task. It made me realise that traveling is a lot easier when you don’t need to bring your life packed (well, more like crammed in a “you need to sit on it to close it” kind of way) in a suitcase along with you. But once that part was over and I could leave my suitcase safely behind stored in the hostel (pushed into the tiny space between the bed and window), I was off to explore the city.
I did not have to think of any other person when I started exploring. I could walk as far and as long as I wanted, could sit in that café for a ridiculous amount of time to watch the people rushing past and eat what I wanted, when I wanted. I also met a lot of interesting people I would not necessarily have had the chance to talk to if I would have had my friends around me. Be it during the game night the hostel organised or while joining the free walking tours through the city. People traveling alone seem to find one another when the urge to talk to another human being becomes a bit too heavy. Though, I must admit, I have immensely enjoyed the peace that comes with exploring new places by yourself without having the need to fill the space between you and another person with conversations. Somehow it got me out of my head and made all the overanalysed thoughts, problems and fears of my daily life seem very far away and removed.
This was probably the aspect I have enjoyed the most. Traveling with friends or family can be wonderful, but it also means that your everyday world tags along. That bit of familiarity your travel companions provide also include reminders of what awaits when you get back to normality. Being alone in a foreign country and an unknown place gave me the chance to get lost in the city and to see where my feet would take me.
Three and a half months later, on my way back to Helsinki, I did the same again. I booked a hostel for three nights and kept the challenges that were awaiting me in Finland far away from my mind. I found new friends who I will never see again (as we never exchanged contact information) and made new memories that won’t be shared in a way they would have been had I been with friends. But most of all, I did something for myself, found the time to take a break and find my breath again when nothing around me seemed to stop moving. And I am certain that I will book the next hostel somewhere else in the not so distant future.