“To my mind, the greatest reward and luxury of travel is to be able to experience everyday things as if for the first time, to be in a position in which almost nothing is so familiar it is taken for granted.”

Bill Bryson

Tonight, as the wind picks up again in Edinburgh my head and heart are wander lusting – it’s always Italy they end up.

Image above from here.

Krakow, Prague and Berlin are each in their own right hands down awesome cities.  Krakow has an old worldly charm that I’ve rarely experienced and the best potato dumplings, Prague has the most beautiful, ornate buildings and quaint cobbled squares and Berlin is full of arty, bohemian-looking people wearing cool hats and going to poetry readings (I imagine).

And all three places live and breathe their history.

Krakow is only 40 miles from the ruins of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the biggest of the Nazi concentration camps.  And the city of Krakow itself has experienced its own share of brutality.  These chairs represent a memorial to the victims of the Holocaust.  The Jewish quarter was first set up and then later ransacked by the Nazis in the early 40s.  The Jewish people were deported to concentration camps and the Nazis then robbed them of anything that was remotely valuable.  In the end, all that was left was the furniture.

Prague Christmas market (above).  They even had a donkey in a makeshift stable…

It wasn’t until I read (in the fabulous book I wrote about here) that 70% of what used to be Berlin was destroyed during WWII that I realised why the place looks so modern.  It had to start again.

It’s also a city that was divided by concrete for 28 years.  I still find it difficult to believe that this ugly barrier with its even uglier message came down only 22 years ago.  The regime and the brutality with which it was enforced reads like the stuff of medieval times.

On the less informative but perhaps more light hearted side, here are some of the other highlights of my trip:

• Taking a sleeper train.  This is not quite the romantic, trilby hats and neatly packed overnight cases fantasy realised that I had hoped for.  It’s better categorised, I think, as an absolutely hellish night’s sleep, followed by a day of feeling unwashed and knackered and drinking too much coffee to try and compensate.
• Taking a second train, during the daytime (much more palatable) and crocheting while looking out the window at Christmas card-style Czech villages.
• Eating so many potato dumplings in Krakow that I actually looked pregnant.  It’s probably just as well I was only there for three days…
• Going to the cinema in Berlin.  I love the experience of doing something completely normal in foreign surroundings.  I also love watching adverts in languages I don’t understand.
• Ordering something from a menu without knowing what it was.  It turned out to be a pig’s knee(!), with cabbage and mustard.  I nearly fainted when it arrived but it did actually taste pretty lovely.
• Drinking mulled wine and visiting Christmas markets every single day.  Mulled wine is definitely good for my soul.

This week it’s been back to work, doing holiday laundry and catching up on The Killing.  I’ve also picked up my Italian books again, after a six month long siesta.  This weekend I plan to make Christmas presents, drink more mulled wine with friends and begin my annual mince pie binge (at my peak I can go up to five a day…).

What’s going on in your world?

This week has been all about trying to stay warm in the face of increasingly chilly weather (bitter out there, innit?).  The cold snap and the bizarrely fierce winds have forced me off of my bike and back on to the bus so I’ve also been able to finish a couple of books.  I skipped my way through One Day by David Nicholls at the start of the week (I found this really rather corny if I’m honest, despite enjoying the film in the Summer), and I also finished The Consolations of Philosophy by Alain de Botton.  I won’t pretend that I understood the whole thing, but it was fun at the time…

The week has also seen me crocheting like a crazy person.  My boyfriend has taken to rolling his eyes and reaching for the nearest phone/computer/book whenever I mention the ‘C’ word, but I don’t care - I FREAKING LOVE CROCHETING!  I haven’t been this excited about a new hobby since I discovered bread making.  If anyone has ever tried, and failed (like me, several times) to knit, let me tell you now: try crochet instead!  It’s easy, it’s satisfying and you can produce just as much in the way of pretty woolly things with one hook as you could with two pins.  And it took me a total of two hours to learn, thanks due both to YouTube and my Mum.  My first project is a patchwork quilt, and so far I’ve finished around 25 of my planned 64 ‘patches’.  The best thing about creating individual squares is that I can carry my project around with me wherever I go: on the bus, in the coffee shop, on the train…yes, I’m that person.  I’m even taking a few balls of wool on holiday with me tomorrow.  Let’s face it, if the weather carries on down this track there will be no time to lose in getting another cosy wool blanket on my bed!

I also found time to fit in a film this week.  My Week With Marilyn was surprising affecting – has anyone else seen it?  It made me realise that excess amounts of fame have been burning holes in societies and individual levels of self-confidence (the levels of self-confidence of the stars themselves included) alike since way before the X Factor came along.  The most touching thing about the film for me was the way Michelle Williams brought out Monroe’s striking naivety.  I’ll admit to knowing precious little about the woman herself, but the film to me portrayed someone who had an almost non-existent grasp on the position she held and the power she was unconsciously wielding as a result.  Williams was fantastic.  And on a much more vacuous note, she looked pretty damned gorgeous in all those pencil skirts and skinny belts.

So now we find ourselves in December.  And I feel fully justified in talking about Christmas as a result.  Whether you hit the high street with the masses or if, like me, you give only one or two gifts and make as much as you can yourself, the season of giving is well and truly upon us.  So if, by chance, you missed my list of DIY gifts, find it here.  Let me know if you try anything and, more importantly, what the result is!

Tomorrow morning my boyfriend and I are off on our travels again.  This time, our destinations are Krakow, Prague and Berlin, all in one week, all on the cheap.  I’m hoping for glittering Winter sun, lots of cake and coffee (or kaffee und kuchen as my half-German other half reliably informs me) and maybe even some authentic festive markets.  Is my fledgling Polish up to the test?  Definitely, shamefully, not.  Let the frantic gesturing, raised eyebrows and manic smiling begin…

What have you been up to this week?

Image above from here.

This post is a little late in coming (as in, like, I’ve been home for a month, what the heck have I been doing late) but I remember in the hazily distant days of early June promising you guys some of my thoughts on travelling alone.  Well, without further ado, delay or pause…

Let me make one thing absolutely clear: travelling alone was wonderful, but it was definitely not the most fun I’ve ever had in my life.  It made me feel more independent, it toughened me up a bit and it’s given me a new perspective on the things I think I’m capable of (short answer: a lot more than I previously thought).  What it certainly didn’t do, however, was have me giggling every thirty seconds about its own ridiculous amazingness.

And honestly?  Neither did I expect it to have such an effect.  Because the truth is, travelling – whether alone or in company – is a never-ending series of ups and downs.  ”Holy hell the world is about to implode” disasters, interspersed with “I’ve never felt so alive in my life” periods of elation.

Let me illustrate.  On the very first day of my Italy trip I had a shamefully public breakdown at the airport in Edinburgh before I left.  There were tears, there was a shortage of breath, there were gasps of “Oh my God I can’t do this”.  Then, once my boyfriend had persuaded me that I could do this, and I was on the plane, there was a serene sense of calm, and several reassuring repetitions of “Oh my God I AM doing this”.  Then, as soon as I stepped off the plane in Milan, I got myself stuck in a toilet cubicle in the airport.  Cue second panic attack of the day, lots more bursts of “OH MY GOD HE WAS LYING I REALLY CAN’T DO THIS”, followed by a very red face on my part (when I eventually managed to bust myself out after banging on the door and wailing for help, I realised that the bathroom was full of people waiting quietly in line.  All from my flight, of course, which meant I then had to stand next to them for 15 minutes while we waited for our luggage).  But by the end of the day, I was drinking wine and eating pizza at a table outside a little backstreet trattoria, watching the Italians go about their Thursday evening business and feeling happier than I had in a long time.  I opened up my travel journal and wrote “I am proud of myself” in big letters on the first page.  I felt like I was sitting on top of the world.

So I’m not going to don any rose-tinted spectacles and recount my experiences in Italy as the best time of my life.  Because the truth is that at times it was bloody difficult.  In addition to panic attacks and locking myself in bathrooms, I got lost innumerable times in Venice, I had an unnerving encounter with a strange man in Milan, I got on a bus going in the wrong direction in Florence and I got eaten alive by bed bugs in Rome.  All of that was before I missed my flight back to the UK and had to pay £200 extra just to get home to my own bed and a hot shower.

But regardless of all of that, I’m still inordinately glad that I went.  In case you’re sitting there wondering why after reading the last paragraph, here are a few lessons I learned along the way:

Solo travel is normal! Before I went to Italy, several people I told about my trip expressed reservations about my ambition to go away alone.  In fact, a couple went a lot further than that, making it pretty clear that they thought I was barking mad.  Well, I can now tell you (and them) that travelling alone is a completely normal thing to do, and that every second person you meet in a hostel is probably doing, or will have done at some point, the same thing.  The moral of the story?  Trust your own instincts and take any advice offered by naysayers with a hefty dose of salt.

Sometimes?  Things are your fault. One of the most refreshing things I discovered while travelling alone was that there’s absolutely no one else around to argue with.  And the result?  You don’t have any arguments!  If things go wrong, it’s your fault, end of.  No “You should have done X!”, “Why didn’t you suggest Y?”, “Who’s stupid bloody idea was this?” Solo travel encourages the taking of responsibilities and the acceptance of fault.  Both good things.

There is Power in the Now. It sounds ridiculously basic, but travelling on my own taught me to stop fretting about what’s ahead, and focus simply on putting one foot in front of another.  Instead of freaking myself out of my mind at the prospect of getting from airport to hostel, or city A to city B, I learned to simply focus on one step at a time.  Collecting my baggage; finding the bus stop; paying for my ticket; getting hold of a map… Put one foot in front of the other and repeat until you get somewhere.  Don’t worry about anything else.

Not every friend need be a friend for life. It might seem a little harsh, but you don’t have to become best friends for life with the people you meet when you’re travelling.  Smile, say hello, perhaps have dinner, but don’t worry if it doesn’t go any further than that.  Part of the travel experience is the meeting of new people, not necessarily the befriending of those people for life.  I’m glad I know that now.

You can do things when you really have to. Travelling alone will force situations upon you that you have no option but to deal with.  If you don’t know which train to get on, you’re going to have to find someone to ask, and ask them, even if, as in my case, your language skills are verging on the non-existent and you need to pull off some pretty involved gesturing to make yourself understood.  Unless you’re comfortable with the idea of ending up halfway across the continent, you’ve got no choice.  And having no choice means you’ll do it.  And doing it means you’ll have achieved something.

Image above from We Heart It.

My Rough Guide to Italy describes the country as possibly the greatest in the world.  In fact, most guide books seem to rate that tiny peninsula that sticks, thigh high boot-like out into the Mediterranean sea, as one of the most deeply fascinating places on earth.  And let’s be honest - it’s definitely a contender.  Repository of some of the world’s most famous works of art, teller of some of mankind’s most enrapturing historical tales and religious heartland of one billion Catholics, Italy has some pretty solid credentials.

Well, I didn’t go to Italy because of the history – wondrous as it undoubtedly is.  Neither did I go for the art, although thanks to this fantastic book and my art-mad sister I did pretty well on that front throughout my three weeks.  I’m also a borderline atheist, so I certainly didn’t go for religious reasons (I use the word ‘borderline’ as while atheism is almost certainly the correct way to describe most of my views, I’m still not 100% comfortable using it).  No, I chose Italy for two very simple reasons: language and food.  Sort of like Elizabeth Gilbert in Eat, Pray, Love in a way, minus the horrific divorce, the manic depression and the quest for spiritual enlightenment.

So while I was plenty happy gazing at Milan’s magnificent Duomo, gallery hopping in Florence and circling Pisa’s leaning tower to find the jauntiest angle for a photo, I was always at my Italian happiest when I was either eating or speaking the language.  Very often I would speak the language in order to facilitate eating, as I got to grips with ordering in cafes and shops (this made me ridiculously happy, just for the record).  And because I had set out with only two modest hopes – improve my language skills and find some mind-boggling pizza – I came home not only with a cavalcade of happy memories, but also a set of well and truly exceeded aspirations.

Because that’s the thing about Italy.  People expect a lot of it.  And often, from snippets of conversation I’ve overheard in bars and discussions I’ve had with people in hostels, it fails to meet a lot of those expectations, the holders of which then return home disappointed and perhaps a little bitter.  Because while Italy is the home of some of the world’s most awe-inspiring architecture, beautiful paintings and iconic landscapes, it is also a modern, twenty-first century country.  A country trying to make its way in the world, and a country that, in so doing, is having to grapple seriously with all the attendant problems, flaws and hang-ups that such a status entails.

And that’s to ignore the fact that Italy is one of the most heavily touristed places on earth.  Fifteen thousand people visit the Sistine Chapel in Rome every single day.  Fifteen thousand!  Italy is most definitely not the place to go if you want to have a completely unique travel experience – I certainly know that my own personal itinerary was a carbon copy of a bunch of other travellers I met along the way.  Neither is Italy the place to go if you can’t abide erratic road traffic regulation, knock-off Louis Vuitton handbags and invasion of your personal space by over-friendly restauranteurs…

Nevertheless, to me, Italy is wonderful, and I spent three incredibly enjoyable weeks there.  I ate some of the most sublime food (and surprised myself by trying both octopus and tripe), I looked at some of the most wonderful buildings and I enjoyed myself in the most complete of ways.  I’ve got another post to come on my thoughts on travelling alone (which I could most probably sum up here with the word AWESOME), and a post on Italian food (again, AWESOME) but for now, I would just like to thank Italy for making my stay such an enjoyable one.  Arrivederci wonderful, wonderful country, I’ll be back.