the wandering bean: my European adventure

Last year I was lucky enough to get a career break from work for six months (I didn’t actually go back, but that’s a story for another time). I decided I needed a break from being an adult, and I had the money saved to do it. I suppose it was a bit like a gap year, but a few years later than everyone else. Many adventures were had during my six lazy months, but my main one was almost a month spent in Europe travelling from country to country by train. Travelling is something I’ve always wanted to do, and at the age of 26 I thought it was about time I actually did.

It was important to me that I saw as much as I could, for as cheaply as possible. So I decided to spend a little bit of time in a lot of places, which turned out to be a very good decision. Travelling by myself meant that I was creating my own adventures, and I found a couple of days in each place to be plenty. I saw a lot of beautiful and interesting things, and I learnt a lot about myself.

If you’ve never travelled on your own before you can’t really know how you’re going to cope, and for me that was terrifying. Leaving the UK, I had no idea if I would embrace the adventure, socialise with other people, and enjoy the experience, or would I panic and hide away? The only way I could find out was to actually do the thing. Being in Europe meant that if it came to it I was only ever a few hours away from home on a plane. I made sure I had enough credit to get myself home if I needed to. The only way I could overcome anxiety and do it was to think “what’s the worst that could happen?”. Of course, my anxious mind immediately with with “well you could DIE”, so I had to add the word “realistically” into the question.

Of course, realistically I could have died, but then I could die falling down the stairs in my own home so I wasn’t going to let that stop me. And I’m glad I took the risk, and yes, I would do it all again. One day I will do it again but better. It’s true, there really is such a thing as the travel bug, and I caught it. Visiting 11 cities in under a month was incredible.