How I Enjoyed 50+ Hours of Disconnected, Cramped, Uncomfortable Solitude
“Travel isn’t always pretty. It isn’t always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that’s okay. The journey changes you; it should change you. It leaves marks on your memory, on your consciousness, on your heart, and on your body. You take something with you. Hopefully, you leave something good behind.”
— Anthony Bourdain
Ever since Anthony Bourdain’s suicide, I haven’t been able to bring myself to watch any of his shows. He’s the man that first inspired me to see the world and to pursue a purposeful and fulfilling life. His shows and writing re-instilled in me a sense of childlike curiosity about life that had been mostly missing since I was actually a child. Although I never met him, the fact that he’s gone still hurts every time I think about it.
In the past 3 weeks I’ve been traveling through the frigid Balkans — (Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia, Macedonia, Bulgaria, and Romania) — spending a total of 50+ hours on buses between destinations, without phone service or WiFi. I’ll post some pictures from the trip at the end of the article, but the content I’m about to share actually has very little to do with the destinations I visited.
You see, with so much time to think while stuck on long, WiFi-less bus rides, I created a game for myself to pass the time, and it ended up being the most interesting part of the trip.
The game goes like this:
For every week I’ve spent in a place besides my hometown of Albuquerque, I had to remember one thing about that place as vividly and with as many details as I could. A cafe I liked, a person I met, a street I walked on, an experience I had… whatever it was, I wanted to explore it in my memory as if I was truly there in the present, instead of on an uncomfortable bus.
To give you an idea of what I mean by remembering vividly, I’ll describe one of my memories from Houston.
My go-to cafe in Houston was a little spot called Coco and Crepes. It was a short drive from my apartment and always had free parking available, which are important factors in overcrowded H-Town.
As I thought about Coco and Crepes, I imagined myself walking through the entrance, as I did so many times in early 2018. I pictured the small table by the door where they kept the cream and sugar for coffee, and the 2-seat table by the window where the employees would eat when they were on their breaks. I pictured the order counter, with cups and drip coffees to the left of it and all of the tempting gelato options to the right. I tried to recall the exact amount I’d pay for my usual order, a small black coffee. Then I imagined myself walking with my coffee to the high top table where I usually sat, and taking my laptop out. I realized that I was picturing myself with a laptop bag that I didn’t buy until after leaving Houston, so I thought harder until I remembered what bag I was actually using at that time. I thought about some of the projects I worked on in that particular cafe. And then I imagined myself packing up my things and walking outside to my car to drive back home.
That was 1 memory in Houston, 1 week complete.
I repeated that process for everywhere I’ve traveled and lived since 2013. The places where I only spent a week were usually pretty easy, like Seoul, Tokyo, Mexico, England, and so on. I ended up changing the rules and coming up with one vivid memory for every day in those places because, well, 50 hours is a long time.
It turns out that it was still pretty easy for most of the places, although all the tequila I drank in Mexico made things a bit more challenging there.
A couple of places were far more difficult, though. Namely, Houston and Rome, where I’ve spent a combined ~80 weeks or so. But digging deeper into my memory was worth the effort, as I surprised myself with the details that came to mind when I focused in.
I transported myself back to a wooden bench in Piazza Cavour, my favorite place in Rome. I saw the little kids kicking a soccer ball around and the old Italian grandpas and grandmas walking their little dogs. I tried to remember the location of the bakery nearby that always smelled incredible walking past it.
After Piazza Cavour, I thought about this girl named Camilla. She was an older student in the engineering sciences program at the university I was attending during my Erasmus (study abroad) year. Camilla had long, light brown hair, a bright smile, and the most intoxicating accent I’ve ever heard. I couldn’t help but have a crush on her, even after I found out that she had a boyfriend. (Not that she would have been interested in a naive American boy multiple years younger than her anyway, but I digress.) I can still recall the hour or two that she helped me prepare for our upcoming thermodynamics exam, in which I tried desperately to focus on the actual material rather than how much I liked her accent. This was 5 years ago, but in my mind for those few minutes it felt like just yesterday.
On and on I went, rediscovering more people and places that left their indelible mark on my consciousness.
Ultimately, I found this game to be far more enthralling than any media I could have been consuming had I been able to get online. I was essentially telling myself the story of my own life during the past 5 years, and realizing that it’s a damn good story when I condense it down to those most vivid memories.
I’ve changed an astonishing amount in that time period, and travel has been the catalyst for that change more than anything else. I’ve seen incredibly beautiful places, and also a few very poor and undeveloped places. I’ve experienced highs of gratitude, confidence, compassion, and excitement. I’ve experienced lows of self-doubt, discomfort, and desperate loneliness.
The trip through the Balkans that I just finished had an interesting mix of good and bad. These are some of the poorest and least developed countries in Europe, and my travel through them wasn’t comfortable or easy. At the same time, I got to see a few memorable snow-covered landscapes and to explore some cities that I never expected or imagined I’d visit in my lifetime. I feel extremely fortunate to have the opportunity to travel, even if the places themselves haven’t been the most comfortable or welcoming.
These days, everybody seems to preach about “living in the moment” and “being present.” I think this is a good state of being to strive for, but it’s always been far easier said then done for me. I spend most of my time analyzing the past and preparing for the future, with the uncommon times where that isn’t true predominantly being when I play basketball, lift weights, and write.
I think there’s much to be learned from analyzing the past and many mistakes to be avoided by planning ahead, but spending too much time doing either isn’t healthy. I want to gain more control over my mind and — however cliche it may be — I want to be more present.
Somewhat counter-intuitively, the memory game I played to pass the time on buses seemed to help me to be more present for much of the time I spent exploring on this trip. It’s as if all of my travel memories were crushed together tightly in a suitcase that I’ve been living out of, and playing this game was equivalent to coming home after a long trip, washing all those wrinkly and dirty clothes, and then putting them away in a well-organized wardrobe.
Anybody who’s taken a long trip knows that no matter how great of a time you have, living out of a suitcase gets old. That feeling of getting home and having your own bed (and toilet) again is the closest thing I can think of to describe how my mind felt after playing this game.
As for the bigger picture impact of this trip through the Balkans and my time-passing game, I’ll condense everything down into the two biggest points.
Greater Perspective
Travel is one of the best perspective enhancers there is in life. For this particular trip, the prevailing shift in my perspective is a greater appreciation for just how lucky I am.
I always like to emphasize to people that I’m not rich (yet), and that traveling as much as I do requires sacrifices and discipline. But that’s just part of the story, and the other part is that I was born in America in a middle-class family, I’m naturally book smart, and I have a lot of willpower, among countless other factors that have made traveling as much as I have possible. I didn’t do anything to earn those lucky circumstances, they are just the cards I was dealt at birth.
While I am already certain that Free Will is an Illusion, that doesn’t translate into gratitude in my daily life nearly enough. But as I walked around in the various cities I visited — my feet numb and my eyes watering from the cold — the feeling that emerged most often was gratitude for being able to live the life I’m living thanks mostly to pure lucky circumstances. That’s a feeling I hope to be able to draw on anytime I’m suffering in the future by returning to my game of vivid imagery from travels past.
Realizing How Social Media Still Makes Me Insecure
This point isn’t as positive as the first, but it’s nonetheless important. This trip was the first time in 2 years that I went without having consistent phone service for 3+ weeks.
I’ve done a lot in the past couple years to change how I used social media, and I think it’s been quite effective. I’m constantly learning and drawing inspiration from the people I follow on Twitter, and I rarely see politics or things that cause negative emotions like outrage for little to no benefit. I mostly use Instagram to post my travel photography, and only occasionally fall into the time sink of scrolling through my feed and watching stories for more than a couple minutes per day. Yet still, being unable to use those apps on bus rides had an undeniably positive effect on me mentally. I was less in my head than usual, less concerned about unimportant problems, and simply lighter after bus rides.
This journey through the Balkans — like all of my travels in the past — has changed me. It’s left a mark on my memory, my consciousness, my heart, and my body. I’ve taken with me a greater perspective and a better understanding of how social media impacts my mental state.
But what’s far more important to me is that I feel I’ve left something good behind. This part has not been true of all of my trips in the past, but it was on this one.
The good I’ve left behind is the positive impressions I’ve made and the friendships I’ve formed with a few people along the way. I was able to share my perspective on life in a way that I believe benefited the people I talked to, and that left me with a great feeling. At the same time, I enjoyed meeting new people with far different life stories than mine or most of the people I’ve met before.
I quite often feel like I come across as a know-it-all and my way of socializing rubs some people the wrong way. But it was that same way of socializing that helped me instantly connect with the people that I met on this trip and to really enjoy my conversations with them. That inspires me to keep creating these experiences for myself through travel and to keep going down this path I’m on, even if it doesn’t always seem like the path that maximizes my happiness.
And so, I return to Croatia for my final month here with a renewed dedication to self-development so that I can continue traveling and growing, and to leave something good behind everywhere I go.
