My Experience Travelling.

I wanted to get away as far as I could for as long as I could. I didn’t mind where, so I searched until I found the best sounding alternative. I know this has started off like the excerpt of a thrilling novel, but for me, life had become the opposite. You see, I had seen life as a mundane entity, and I started internally seeing myself as the Narrator from Fight Club (minus the insomnia, underground fighting, sociopathic cult and terrorism etc.) and whereas the Narrator found escape through starting the Fight Club, I wanted to find my escape through… travelling (which, as I type this out sounds ironically mundane in comparison). I have a degree in Music Journalism, and quite an important aspect of that- or any journalism I suppose- is communication. You have to be somewhat good at communication to succeed in that field of work and I’m not calling myself successful, but communication is one of my strengths. I value the transaction of communication between one person to another as such an integral part of personal development and I try to get better at it by building rapports with as many people as I can in as little time as possible. Like a little internal challenge I set for myself to make my life a bit more interesting.

So, I decided to stop working after the Christmas break (I worked in a school) and to start working in hostels in Central Europe: Vienna and Ljubljana (thus far). Not that I *really* like hostels, or anything- don’t get me wrong, I think they are great, but I really wanted to stretch out my communication skills on people other than the children I’ve been having to teach. There’s only so many conversations about Minecraft and Fortnite that a grown man can handle before the words ‘creeper’ and ‘floss’ begin to ‘spawn’ a migraine. One thing I didn’t anticipate to come from working in a hostel, however, is both extremely obvious (and left me feeling quite stupid) and extremely bittersweet: it’s that people who you talk to and genuinely have a connection to end up leaving after a couple of days. How I didn’t foresee this being a thing I would have to deal with, I have no idea. Looking back, it seems so naive and I like to humour myself by thinking that I was like an Annie Wilkes figure off of Misery, not having any plans to let the guests leave. Like previously mentioned, it is an extremely bittersweet feeling. After a while, it becomes a mental exercise to not try and view each conversation with guests as nothing more than a meaningless exchange of vocal vibrations and air, but to think of it as an experience instead. Without social media, it would be even harder too. I have been here for over a week and must have spoken close to 100 people and, without the exchanging of social media usernames, it would be so difficult to keep track of most of their names (even though for them they can remember your name with ease because you’re only one of a few people they talk to). It’s like going to the barbers and asking for the usual, expecting the barber to remember what the fuck they did to your hair before, after seeing hundreds of people in between then and now.

It has also put into perspective how disconnected the UK is from the rest of Europe. I’m thinking of writing a separate piece for this whole topic because it covers so much ground, but I noticed a whole different level of inclusivity from those in mainland Europe. A huge factor in me choosing Austria as a place to visit is that I wanted to improve on my German as a language, and I’ve not had to exercise it as much as I would have liked to because everybody speaks English. Not that this is a bad thing by any means, it’s helped me out of many situations in which I need to communicate with somebody- but it has highlighted a deeper sense of isolationism from myself and the country that I am from. I have spoken to people who don't have English as a first language who bounce from one language to another effortlessly, because they were taught from an early age how to, whereas I can’t even speak a language other than English because it’s not compulsory or even prioritised in British education. And even then I come from Burnley so it could be convincingly argued that I can’t even speak English fluently. I believe (and will go into more in another post) that this subconsciously perpetuates an underlying sense of colonialism and self importance among British people, which is something I actively try to distance myself from. If anything, working abroad and hearing other people’s life experiences has helped me realise that the UK is by no means the worst country to live, and I do recognise and appreciate all the opportunities and privileges that coming from the UK has given me. But that contrast only emphasises what I knew to be wrong with the UK to begin with and what made me want to leave in the first place.