BLOG 33: The Anticipation of Travel

The Anticipation of Travel

"I met a lot of people in Europe. I even encountered myself.” James Baldwin Legendary American novelist, writer, playwright, poet, essayist and civil rights activist

My father travelled almost 5000 miles to settle in England. My Mother also. Travel is a fact of life in our family - we are not lily-livered about travel. Between us we’ve done all the continents, some of us have worked in other countries as well as enjoyed the pleasure of being a leisure tourist. As a unit we really believe that you cannot know yourself until you have put a few miles between you and all that is familiar. A great deal of my attitude to living in the UK comes from the fact I have not only seen that green grass is not as green as you thought when you are in the other field, but that you also are not what you thought.

Okay, travel brings with it airport queues, late and missed departures, struggles with odd languages (DON’T remind me of working in Sweden… you try getting your tongue around “vad tid är frukost?” (what time is breakfast?) when you have a massive hangover!), misconceptions with culture (in both Canada and the USA it is normal for a complete stranger to join your restaurant table!) and strange insects (don’t remind me about opening a book in Dubai to find a gang of Zoraptera (a kind of book lice) munching through the pages). Travel by its very nature an exercise in pushing you out of your comfort zone. I’ve already mentioned my first trip to California in an earlier blog. To be 5300 miles from home, without money or documents is not something I would of actively pursued as a happenstance, however in retrospect I am so glad it happened. It released in me a resilience and practicality I had no idea I possessed, and instead of picking up the phone to get Ma and Pa to sort me out – I did. That trip taught me that NOTHING can go so wrong that you can’t fix it. (Except in the case of Zoraptera… I let them finish the book as they were obviously more into it than I!)

I’m not a stranger to travel, being on the road for work since my early twenties meant planes, trains and automobiles were a fact of life. As was waking up in climates and scenery VERY different from home – it would be interesting to calculate the percentile of my life to date that has been spent in this manor. I’m no mathematician but I think it would be alarmingly high.

In a couple of days time, I am off on a brief jaunt to Spain to catch up with a girlfriend I have not seen a couple of years. It’s just a three day/two night jaunt. We are meeting up in the capital of Catalonia….Barcelona… and I’m booked into a top rated hotel in the Gothic district which is very cosmopolitan. Nothing too taxing here for an experienced traveller like me. Right now as a write a thunder storm brings cold needles of rain on my city and we shiver in an unseasonable 59°f – yet the sun shines and it is 79°f in Barca right now! I’ll leave London City Airport at breakfast and be unpacked and ready for lunch in Barcelona an hour before my favourite restaurant there opens! After all THIS is why I live in Europe. 47 countries, 230 languages, 5 different climates/terrains, and a shed load of completely different cultures and religions all a short-haul flight away.

So, as a child of parents who in relocating continents know all about adapting to a different culture, as an adult who has not only holidayed abroad but worked overseas, and as an ex travel-industry employee… I must a dab hand at travel by now.

You’d think!

I am my usual pre travel neurotic mess. Everytime I leave the UK... I go into a crazy, illogical neurotic meltdown!

My first bout of neurosis is … can I get to the airport?

YES. I did say I am flying from London City. Like about 10 minutes travel on the fabulous new DLR link! I stand in my back garden and I can see Canary Wharf’s iconic tower and I am well aware that London City Airport is the back yard of Canary Wharf. But do you think this is a comfort? NO.

Monday found me doing a trial run to the airport with a stop watch. If that isn’t bad enough I stalked around the terminal timing the queues at the BA check in desk. Of course it wasn’t long before airport security was notified about the crazed looking woman with no luggage and a stop watch and notepad. I must say they do make a delicious cup of tea in the LCY interrogation room… so glad our police have dropped their shoot to kill policy on suspected terrorists though!

You’d think that’d be the end of my concerns with getting to the airport… but no.

Appeased that the DLR link really does get to London City in 10 minutes, and that BA’s queue management is more than adequate, I am now obsessing about getting to the DLR station itself.

Yes, this tiny 3 mile journey has me very concerned. Should I just jump on a bus… but what if it gets stuck in traffic? So I have tested every bus route… 51 is direct, but the 96 has a route with less traffic, but…what about the 99… it does go around the houses but it is more regular? Should I just book a cab? But what if I get one of those drivers who don’t go the fastest route…or keep letting people out at junctions? Maybe I should just blag a lift… I have two people currently agreed to drop me off. And yet I regularly make the journey to this town, and I know it takes 15-20 minutes by public transport or 5-10 minutes by car… why now because I have a plane the other end, am I fretting about a journey I have been doing since I was 13?! For the love of mike- it is JUST THREE MILES!

Having lined up two possible chauffeurs, provisionally booked one taxi, timed the DLR and the BA queue, I have now found something else to fret about.

Packing.

Now to put this perspective, I used to be a member of a touring dance company back in the day. This meant one night Malta, next night Spain, next night Denmark, next night Italy and so on and so on. You can’t follow the kind of punishing schedules we had to… and not know how to pack. After I retired from the troupe, I worked in Publishing and Travel where again it was suitcase at the ready… business trips were all about cramming in as many places as you could between trains, planes and automobiles. So it is fair to say, I KNOW how to pack.

I have the capsule wardrobe thing covered. Any experienced traveller knows these are the rules:

. Safari dress

. Floral dress

• Floppy hat

• Gladiator/flat sandals

• Tote bag for beach, shopping and sightseeing

• Clutch bag for evenings and more formal day events

• Sunglasses

• High heeled shoes or sandals for evening – 1 pair in a neutral shade such as pewter or bronze work well

• Lightweight flip flops for beach (not essential)

• Lightweight, neutral cardi for cool evenings

• 2 sets of swimwear with 2 sarongs

• 1 pair of linen trousers (wide leg to be on trend)

• 1 or 2 smart, embroidered vest tops

• 3 or 4 cotton tops for the beach and general day wear

• 1 pair of cropped trousers and 1 skirt for day and beach wear

. Underwear/sleep wear

. Mini versions of lotions potions and cosmetics.

• A couple of sets of jewellery – 1 for the safari look and 1 for the floral look

And yet….

I know that this packing list is fine if going away for a long period… so all i have to do is scale it down appropriately to this trip. But suddenly I have no idea how to pack for 2 nights. Despite the fact that I have been on more weekend jaunts than practically anyone I know I have forgotten HOW I scale down the above and travel with cabin baggage only.

It’s not the clothes…. It’s the shoes. I have looked at my friend and I’s proposed Barcelona schedule 100 times… and thought… how many pairs of shoes??? Please it is two nights… how many feet do I have? But I find my self thinking… black pumps to travel in (having tested out London City Airport departures the floor is not heel friendly)… then straight to hotel… change. Maybe a nice pair of kitten heel sling backs for lunch. In evening… we’re probably going out to dinner then clubbing… shoes are under the table for dinner but clubbing brings shoe problems… Elephant (the one that looks like a movie-scene) is super trendy and is full of fashionistas but Razzmatazz (where Jack Johnson used to play) might be the mother of all clubs but dress code is low key. Saturday is probably a pumps day… La Sagrada Familia, (well everything Gaudi from Park Guell to his various houses,) Las Ramblas...and a lot more other things… especially as I may have do the stadium tour again… but shoes for the evening… okay no clubbing BUT. Oh then there is Sunday… that’s a Mediterranean day… defo flip flops…but the old Olympic village has a cute port…but if we go on a boat..shall I pack deck shoes?

I have one tiny bag, half full with my scaled down clothes but every time I pop in my shoe allowance…. EXCESS.

Which leads onto the next bout of neurosis… what if Barcelona has suddenly changed?

Now even I know this is nonsense, but the feeling is so real. Barcelona must be the European city I have been to the most (well… apart from Paris, but I don’t like that city so I won’t pretend to know it). Barcelona and I have been having a love affair for a few decades now. My last trip to Barca though was so memorable (for a load of reasons I blush on behalf of those involved to mention here) that it has been a little while since I was last there. Now Barca is a city founded in the 3^rd century BC… it’s been around a while… WHAT ON EARTH do I think could have happened to it that will catch me by surprise?? Maybe it is because my friend (that I am meeting there) has never been there before that has brought this panic on… but believe me I am convinced that not only all the clubs will be different, but that Gaudi’s famous buildings would have fallen down, there will be NO tapas and that the port would have dissolved into the sea taking the golden Mediterranean beaches with them. I am convinced she will look at me and say “WHY are we HERE???”… and it’ll all be my fault! (Apart from the fact that Barcelona was HER idea…. But that is being neurotic for you!)

Whilst we are on the subject of illogical neurosis… I am also convinced that planes are unnatural to the sky.

YES...neurotic or WHAT! At one stage in my illustrious travels I qualified for top tier membership in one airlines frequent flyer programme – so we are not talking about a sufferer of pteromechanophobia (fear of flying). It’s just that I get confused about the science behind flying. I know that the engines do not keep a plane in the air; I know that engine failure will not make a plane plummet to the earth. I know that the media sensationalise airline crashes (and the high casualty rate per incident), in comparison to the scant attention given the massive number of car crashes that happen every day. I know airline security are busier with folk like me lurking in airports than with terrorists who plot to blow up planes… cause there really are not that many terrorists out there. But I am convinced that by putting myself in this unnatural flying bird in a couple of days means… I will never live to tell the tale.

The fact that I have completed many many thousands of thousands of miles in unnatural flying birds without anything more than a late arrival doesn't help to convince me that making this trip is a sensible option! So in between waking up with the sweats that Barcelona has morphed into Raskol Papua New Guinea (the best place to go if urban deprivation, rape, robbery and murder are your thing) I alternate with dreams of exploding planes.

And YET.

If I had to list my favourite activities – international travel is right up there.

I am sooo looking forward to being in Barca with one of my favourite girlfriends, sipping sangria, feeling the warmth of the Spanish sun, enjoying the amazing culture, confusing the locals with my appalling Spanish and having time out from the hum-drum that is a life lived in just one country.

Why can’t I just wish myself Bon Voyage?

To be honest, the anticipation of international travel seems to (rather than excite me) send me into a tizzy of merry mental emotions, rendering me incapable of doing of doing things I have done a zillion times before! I just wish I could calm down about packing a few bits of clothes, getting to the airport on time, arriving in one piece, enjoying the destination and getting back whole! I know it is crap and illogical, but EVERY trip I have ever been on brings out the same old neurosis… this short jaunt to Barcelona is no different than any other. I am very good on the here and now BUT so bad at anticipating the future!

In the landscape of time, there are few locations less comfortable than that of one who waits for event to arrive at some moment in the future. I think the philosopher Robert Grundin said something like that once. How true Bob… especially in my case….How bloody true!

Tienen un gran viaje Jax!