What no one told me about traveling

A traveller's secret

No one ever talks about what it can do to you, seeing all these different people living all their different, unique, yet meaningless lives.

The small moments are what I travel for. Not to see the Sydney Opera House, the Empire State Building, or La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. Sure, I will probably go see the sights - because I’m there and because some of the sights are pretty and magnificent and breath taking. But I do not want to see them just for the selfie.

I travel not for the big sights, but for the big moments with the random people you happen to meet along the way. You will meet them, they are everywhere, and they will talk to you if you welcome the world into your comfort zone. These people inhabit the places you visit, the places you photograph, the places you day-dream of when you are back home in your safe, own, cosy bed, and the world seems miles and hours and worlds away - in a good way. These people are walking beside you on your way to explore, armed with your camera and sunglasses and good walking shoes for walking the city.

Most of the time, these people will inspire me. Most of them have taught me something about the city I am visiting, or the country I knew nothing about. Most of them have told me about their life, their family… 

Taking in the fresh, crispy Australian winter-air, which tastes like Norwegian early autumn, a dark-haired woman spoke to us in charming, latino-accent English. “Aren’t you cold?” she asked, and we answered that no, we were good. We then added the random, yet informative detail that we were from Norway. This piece of information mostly seems to explain everything to people here who are asking us if we are not freezing. It has happened a lot already. This lady was from Chile, and her family was still there, yet she had been living here in Australia, in Melbourne, for 41 years. She missed her family everyday. Yet she had three children in Australia, but I guess they didn’t live in the same city as her. She visited Chile a couple of months ago, and missed the country, “but Australia is a better country” she said.

To me, meeting people like this warm good-hearted woman is why I travel.

Most meetings inspire me, make me feel less alone when I am wandering the streets of some city, and country, where I know no one. But every once in a while, all these people whom I do not know, will make me sad. Empty, like the empty streets in the evening here in the part of Melbourne where my sister has lived for half a year now. Inside of me, like in the streets, are still the trees and beautiful houses and the sky that changes its colours and cloudy formations. But without the people, laughter and life, the street is sometimes just a street – even to me who usually get excited and extremely happy by the sight of any sunset, a laughing child or even rain drops pondering on my window.

Sometimes a street is just a street, and a new city is just a random city that I do not feel curious about, or fascinated by. And this lack of excitement (usually following an overload of different new experiences) makes me sad, and empty. All the things you are supposed to feel while travelling, all the curiosity and the wish to see and taste and smell and photograph EVERY new meal, street, strange outfit and unexpected temporary friend, can sometimes disappear. 

Sometimes I don’t feel anything, even though I’m supposed to feel in contact with this world that I am finally diving into. This world, the one that I have been longing to explore, imagining all the overwhelming feelings and new impressions, suddenly just looks like some big, confusing place where I don’t belong, and where no one loves me. So I feel unloved, unhappy, unsatisfied, or just empty – like a nothing, like an observer, observing a strange world that I thought I wanted to be a part of.

No one ever said I would feel like this, ever. They all told me about the excitement, but never about the hopelessly heavy disappointment flowing over me on days when I am not as adventurous as I wanted to be. Suddenly I’m none of the things I hoped I was. 

Today I’m not an adventurer. I am not spontaneous. I do not appreciate random talks with random people, and I do not want to talk to anyone, except maybe my mom. But she is asleep anyway, as it is night time on the other side of the world. 

Today I will not be fascinated by any new coffee shop I discover, even though I usually always feel a rush of adrenaline running through my veins in the sight of a special, cute, cool café as I turn the corner of a new street. Today this does not excite me. It only exhausts me. I am exhausted, and sometimes travelling exhausts me. I think it happens to other travellers as well. But we don’t say it out loud. 

Most of the time I am adventurous, so that is what I choose to be. On days like this, like today, I am just empty. So I keep quiet about it. No one ever told me about this empty feeling that travelling can bring. I don’t really tell people about this feeling either. 

Maybe this is a travellers biggest secret. Most days we love travelling. On the days when we don’t, on the days when travellers almost hate travelling, the traveller will have nothing but emptiness inside. But he or she will not tell you about this empty feeling. After all, we love travelling more than anything. Most days.