I just got back from a short trip to Europe. We had never traveled together before and were not sure how we would blend – were we planners or go-with-the-flow-ers? Stressees or managers of the unexpected delays/flight cancellations/wrongly boarded express trains that don’t go to the airport?
The traveling involved driving, many flights, and public transport in four different countries, so there were multiple opportunities for problems!
I grew up traveling – my parents took my brother and I on planes, in trains and cars, to places where we did & did not speak the languages, as soon as my brother was able to manage his travel sickness. My father likes to be places well ahead of schedule. He even had time once to return home to get a forgotten suit bag, and still make the flight. I then spent 15 years living with a man who liked to be clearing security as the plane was boarding. I learned to find a middle ground between these extremes.
So, a new city, with new friends. Do we wake up in time for the free, mediocre hostel breakfast & get out and about, or do we sleep in, let the jetlag dominate & potentially find the best Porto custard tart & caffe con leite in town? Do we read the guidebooks and decide which special dishes we must try, which museums or towers we must climb, or do we follow our noses down the first street that appeals?
I am a geek. I love to research the things for which towns are known and try to experience them myself, but I also love to walk aimlessly, turning down streets that call to me, because of the way the light falls on the tiles & the laundry flaps in the breeze. The people I was traveling with had more of an “anti-tourist” vibe – “I don’t want to be recognized as a tourist or do things that are identifiably touristy.” I am, at this point in my life, totally happy to embrace some of the tacky tourist attractions, and was happy to play this angle. But, I see myself as a traveler: a backpacker, a seeker of new experiences and new and interesting interactions with people whose language I don’t speak and whose culture is new to me.
I drove the tourist experience. Each day, I would say – I would like to try this dish, or climb this monument, or take this tourist ride. My companions embraced this, and when viewing the city from a thousand feet up, or chomping down on the city-famous sandwich (francesinha) or fish (bacahlao), would thank me for taking the time to do the research and prompting us to go for the tourist experience.
Until life got in the way, I was always more of a planner than a fly by the seat of my pants kind of person. I make decisions quickly and I generally avoid second-guessing them. I planned my science A-levels in high school (I knew I’d go back and study the humanities, but not organic chemistry). I planned my kids (age, rough birth month – to avoid being heavily pregnant in the St Louis summers) and was incredibly lucky that my body complied. I planned my vacations. I planned my weeks: yoga classes, date nights.
Then my kids got sick & needed surgeries. I found I struggled to be a full-time academic, mother, wife and friend. The markets crashed and I could not sell my mid-western home. And, then my biggest life-plan of being married until death do us part did not work out.
As I spent these days traveling with new friends, learning how to navigate the balance between our proclivities – do we head to a specifically chosen restaurant or wander until we find something we all like the look of – I realized the way we travel is a metaphor for the way we choose to live. One must find the right balance between making some goals – so you have something to aim & work for – and leaving the space for detours. Our detours were good and bad; pleasant and -un: a canceled flight, a non-existent room our first night in Europe, and an amazing restaurant found after rejecting 5 or 6 others. But when approached with grace, joy and good humor, they felt exactly right.
Copyright Tamsin Astor, 2015. YogaBrained.com