Pre-read: I’ve traveled with (probably) everybody who is likely to read this. So, don’t be offended, and don’t be self-conscious (if you make it through this rambling post) when we travel together again. I like traveling with you, or else I wouldn’t do it.
Korčula is probably one of the most expensive cities in Croatia. There isn’t a ’single room’ to be had in Korčula, or a reasonable backpacker’s hostel either. Now, if you sleep in a double bed, you pay for both the left-hand side of the bed and the right-hand side of the bed. Is that because solitary travelers are undesirable as guests? Maybe solo flyers are 70% more likely to be psychopathic killers than those traveling in groups (if you exclude all-male groups in crew cuts and khakis, that is). So it’s not surprising that many solo travelers just get priced out of the market by hosting policies. A traveling companion is also a portable character reference: there is at least one person in the world who is not afraid to be stabbed to death (or snored to death) by you in a humid closet-cum-’grande suite’ before morning. A fellow traveler can innoculate you against homesickness. Your compadre also comes in handy when you’ve swum a half-mile from shore, leaving your passport, camera and all your cash in your pants pocket hanging from a tree limb in a cove where four young people are demolishing a case of Ožujsko and talking in loud voices. (But trust me, the water is so unbelievably ultramarine blue that you’re capable of forgetting this for some time.) With your companion you can play travel Scrabble in English without having to pretend that half of the s’s are š’s. Okay, and if the temperature ever dips below 90 (and you and your traveling companion feel a certain way about each other, and haven’t recently had a ‘discussion’ about whether Croatia has more miles of coastline than square miles), there’s the cuddling.
And so, BUT: here’s the main rambling reason why you should travel (sometimes) alone: it’s an opportunity to be someone different. I don’t mean like the woman who came back from a semester in London and three years later still had traces of West End in her accent. Instead, it’s more like, standing in line with a bunch of Italians when you jostle and push and mutter and tap people on the shoulder and puff up and then later buy those same people beers and talk in earnest about sports and the ideal shade and suppleness of a ripe tomato. Or you can offer a woman, with grandchild in tow for the day, to carry her charge, stroller and all, up three flights of stairs. Without a hint of self-consciousness, as if it were a natural thing for you to offer to do, instead of a creepy thing. You can work on that deep-belly laugh, accompanied sometimes by tears, the lack of which you suspect is limiting you in your career.
Or you can take other risks, too. Ever since George and I saw the guy hitchhiking from Kenai to Soldotna with his guitar on his back, I always wanted to travel with a large-ish musical instrument. Now, listen– I’m not trying to make myself (at almost 40) into a person who walks into the center of a square filled with tourists, throws down his hat, and announces that those capable of movement should form as tight a circle as possible, No, but I am trying to get past something that somebody said to me long ago when I told him I was learning to play the guitar: ‘Cool–just promise me you won’t play in public until you’re good.’ Well, I’m not good (and having performed in public enough to know the difference between people moving toward you and people moving away from you)–but here’s the thing: if I saw the Youtube video of the guy playing ‘Owner of a Lonely Heart’ on solo violin during open mic, and I said to myself, ‘he’s good’–I should be that good; then at what point would I just give up on being a producer of sound and just consume the musical sounds of some 0.001% of people capable of making musical sound? We live in a country where, if somebody asks you whether you like sports, and you’re over 30, then you typically interpret the question as ‘do you like watching sports?’ On vacation I eat, sleep; I’m entertained; and I go crazy because there is an American Idol Simon in my head that I have to kill in order to produce musical noise.
Do you invent your vacation while you’re on it? This is nice, and it’s a bit easier than inventing your own work environment. (Fewer corroborating witnesses required, eh?) Here’s what I mean: the caffeine high at the bistro/cafe while I’m writing this (judge by length and rambliness of post) may expand to fill the entire day: the sounds of the people and their language and their babies are stored in raw form. But the subsequent 7km asphalt hike to the beautiful water is zipped, compressed into a neuron.Time-memory compression is a unique gift to the solo traveler. The opposite is what I call the ‘VCR’ effect (which name dates to the time I first noticed it): 1. Imagine taking a video of your most exciting day ever; 2. edit it down to 10 minutes that you find really exciting; 3; Watch the video–with another person pressing pause and relating all the intervening events wherever there is a gap or cut. I’m too selfish sometimes about what I store in flash memory–and I want to retain creative license when I go to edit. You and your traveling companion unwittingly remind each other of your identities: suppose you’re waiting for the check; if you’re by yourself you could be anybody because you haven’t opened your mouth yet; but if you’re killing the time, by talking about how long it’s taking for the check to arrive then you’re an impatient, ugly American tourist who can’t relax. Sometimes you become what you talk about.
