Traveling is an art, an art not many people know exists and even fewer are able to answer. It tests the strength of your feet (blisters will happen no many how comfortable you think your shoes are), it tests your patience and nerves and relationships. Seeing new places presents new challenges, and those can span from trying to understand a map to trying not to be approached by strangers to trying to scream at your friend because they keep asking 'are you sure'; but with the stress there is good: food (gelato, crepes, ales, delicacies, everything ever), natural wonders of the world, meeting amazing strangers, and creating beautiful memories for yourself and with your friends. There are a few moments that everyone who travels experiences, especially when you backpack for more than a week:
1. You struggle in the airport
Even though you packed the bare minimum, the weight of your backpack seems to scream there's too much in your life.
2. You fear and love your backpack
It holds your life, your secrets, your memories and most of all, your clothes. When walking with it in public you fear that you'll knock people in the face with it - but even if you did, so be it.
3. You miss privacy
No matter how comfortable a hostel bed is or how friendly people in the room are, you wish you could have your room back and your freedom to walk around half naked.
4. No matter how much you try, your clothes will always smell strange.
Trash bags, perfumes, anything, it doesn't do the entire job - your clothes smell like backpack and regrets and you have to accept it.
5. Struggling with the language barriers
When going to a country that speaks a different language you want to seem kind and cordial and speak their tongue, but at the same time, you don't want to seem like a doofus. What will win, your manners or your pride?
6. Second guessing steps
Having google maps or just a map, every stop can be second guessed by yourself or by a friend. Sometimes this is good, most times it is not.
7. Homesickness
You miss home but you love pretending that each new city is your future home, so in these moments it's bittersweet.
8. Searching for wifi
If your heart is where home is, then home must have wifi because every restaurant you stop in you check to see if you'll be able to update Snapchat or Insta - because you need to prove you're alive, and you need to prove you're living.
9. You fall in public
There is shame in tripping, but there is even more shame in fighting the fall. Maybe it was because of the terrain or the weather or your state of *insert fake cough* mind, but you've fallen, and unlike the Life Alert commercials, you were able to get up and laugh about it.
10. You learn to laugh with yourself
Whether it's because you walked in the wrong direction for 40 minutes or because you made an extremely corny pun, traveling makes you appreciate yourself all the more, and with that comes joy.
11. Goodbye is hard and simple
But it becomes so much more magical.
