Have you ever thought about why you go on every trip you take? What makes you pick that specific place? What makes you choose those things you'll see?
About a year ago I was in Columbus, Ohio for a multi-day work training and one evening, at the advice of friend back home, I ventured to German Village not only to satisfy my love for German food, but to wander around the small, eclectic shops that were there. I'd been a ferocious reader since a young child, so I had my Uber driver drop me off at the Book Loft, a place highly recommended by that same friend. I always have a list of books I want to read on my iPhone, as well as a stack of books to be read at home but I knew I was looking for something different from my normal fiction. As I meandered through the maze of the 32 rooms, I found myself in the travel section. It had only been in the last few years that I'd started to read books about other's travels. Perhaps part of that reading inspired me to write this blog about my own travels. As I glanced through the various titles looking for something that sparked my interest, I found Eat, Pray, Love Made Me Do It. Intrigued, as of course, I read Eat, Pray Love years ago not long after I started my solo travels, and saw the movie a few years later. I hadn't thought much about it since then, but thought it would be fun to read how others were inspired by Elizabeth Gilbert's story.
Like many of the books I pick up along the way, it sat on my bookshelf in my stack of books to read for months. Even though I have carried a book with me nearly everywhere I go for years; I've been more attached to my iPhone as opposed to reading than I would like to admit in the last several years. Despite my best efforts, I've only intermittently stuck to the habit of reading before I fall asleep at night instead of scrolling endlessly through Facebook. But, all this time at home over the past 10 and a half weeks has pushed me to get back into reading more consistently again. After all, one can only spend so much time on Facebook (i.e. Facebook burnout). Reading at the pace of a book a week for the last several weeks, next up on my stack was Eat, Pray, Love Made Me Do It. It has been my "book of the week" and while this won't be a book review, I will say that reading through the short stories of how one's story of their journey inspired others made me think about my own.
Before the world came to a standstill a few months ago, I was planning a much-needed solo adventure in Europe later this year. One that felt long overdue after a few years of group trips and tours. My last completely solo venture, aside from a few days tacked on after those larger group trips was a 12-day journey around Switzerland, Austria and Germany back in the summer of 2014. Somehow, nearly six years had gone by since I'd trekked around Europe lugging my suitcase from city to city taking trains to cross countries admiring the amazingly beautiful landscape from my window that looked too pretty to be real, not knowing a soul and exploring places without a care in the world. It was beyond time to plan an adventure from start to finish for several days on my own. Me, myself and I. The kind of adventure that several of my friends jokingly called my "Eat, Pray and Love" adventures.
While I continued to read through the compilations of short stories by those whose lives were changed or inspired by the original Eat, Pray, Love memoir, I began to reflect how each of my journeys have led me to another journey. How the few stories I've already written about in this blog were linked. That the purpose of those journeys was not only to see and explore a new place, but often times was planned because something else led me there.
Ironically, many of those links led me back to the trip I am currently reliving through my scrapbooking, that one to Switzerland, Austria and Germany. With each trip I scrapbook, often years after returning from the trip, I spend time looking at the many photos vividly remembering the details of my experiences in those far-flung places around the world.
From the moment my jet lagged-self stepped off the train and made my way to my hotel in the pedestrian district in Zurich on that rainy late July morning, I almost instantly knew that I would fall in love with Switzerland almost much as I love New Zealand. Ironically, it was my pen pal from New Zealand, who I introduced to you in my blog about my love for that country that led me to plan a trip to Switzerland as she would be there at the same time for her brother in-laws wedding. It was on that same trip I encountered the group of 70'ish footballers I wrote about in my blog about dining solo. It was on the last day of that trip which ended with five days in Munich, I took a tour of the Dachau Concentration camp that ultimately led me to return to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. a few months later when I started my year of playing a tourist in my own city, the blog I wrote just a few weeks ago.
It was the trip that led me to take the "vacation from the vacation" to an all-inclusive resort in Mexico a mere three weeks to the day after I landed back in the U.S. from Europe. Nope, I haven't written about that one, yet, but I will. Ironically it was also that trip where my iPhone died an early death a mere three days into my trip forcing me to rely on actual paper maps, my good sense of direction and the friendliness of locals to make my way around like I did before I had an iPhone and Google Maps on my first solo adventure in London all those years before.
So, while I thought my next post would be part two of my journey of playing tourist in my own city (and I will get to that eventually), I told myself when I started this blog that I'd follow this journey of blogging by writing what felt like needed to come next. And since I'm sitting here dreaming, hoping and crossing every finger and toe that my next European solo journey will happen when I want it to later this year, it only felt fitting to write about the last solo journey I took through Europe back in the summer of 2014. So stay tuned, because we're headed to Switzerland next! Yes, there's obviously more to come!
"Travel is optimism in motion." - Andrew McCarthy
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