I remember this moment vividly as if it was only yesterday.
Lets start with a little back story, a young, bright eyed, naïve 22
year old, setting off on this magnificent European adventure with a girl I was
soon to learn I did not know well enough.
Traveling, in a pair, with a friend I had not spent enough time with
proved to be more challenging than I had expected. As these things often are.
You have all of these romantic ideas of how you will both get along and it will
be fun and easy. For the most part it generally is, with a few terse moments.
However, the terse moments began to outweigh the fun times. I was
quickly realizing that perhaps choosing an only child to travel with when I was
used to spending my holidays with siblings and cousins, and no real space to
myself, was maybe a bad idea.
With a 14-week trip planned and only six weeks in, I was beginning
to loose patience. But terrified of the prospect of heading off solo for the
remainder of my trip.
It all came crumbling down one grey rainy day in Amsterdam. I had
had enough. Tired of feeling like the bad guy whenever I tried to get her to
compromise or to maybe consider doing something I wanted to do. Building up all
my courage to talk to her and let her know that when the bus came to get us the
next day that I wasn’t going to be joining her.
It was awful, I felt awful, there were tears and yelling. It felt
like a messy break up. An uncomfortable 24 hours followed, then I saw her off
at the bus stop, went back to my friends house and thought it was all going to
be wonderful from here.
But oh boy was I wrong…
Off I went on the bus a couple of days later, it was fine while I
was on the bus. It was when the bus got to that I began to freak out.
Off I get, struggling to find a cab to take me to my hostel, seeing
as I a; didn’t know where it was and b; didn’t speak German (except for gutten
tag and ja).
Every emotion was building up, I was feeling stressed, worried,
scared and overwhelmed. Finally making it to the hostel, checking in and heading
out to find something to eat. That’s when it all came tumbling down.
Walking out the front door, with instructions on places to find
dinner, then proceeded to get lost and a little teary…
The little teary turned in to one of those amazingly, attractive, noisy
cries, which are best kept for the private of your bedroom or shower. However,
I was currently sitting on the steps of Berlin Hauptbahnhof Station.
And I cried, boy did I cry.
All I could think about was that I
knew no one, no one in this country, no one in this time zone, no one on this
continent. That if something happened to me no one could help me, that no one
could console me.
I’ve never felt so alone and
isolated, so out of my comfort zone. Strangers kept on coming up to me asking
me questions in German, which were followed by me crying louder or very unattractively
sniffing then blowing my nose.
I was alone, in all sense of the
word. The first time in my entire life that that thought made me feel really
truly vulnerable. This traumatic ordeal lasted all of an hour. But it felt like
forever.
Eventually I ran out of tears, it
began to get cold and I didn’t have a jacket and I got really hungry. Dusting
myself off, heading back to my hostel all red and puffy in the face.
Walking in to my dorm room, that
was empty when I left, to the sound of girls laughing. Upon opening my door the
girls in the room that I had yet to meet looked up at me, saw my face, came
running and gave me the hug I desperately needed.
Five years on, this one girl is
still in my life, although she lives in London, that night I made a friend for
life. So although I was thrown miles out of my comfort zone, I learnt a lot,
about my resilience, about my ability to do a good ugly cry and about the
kindness of strangers.
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