Is this a post about my weekend in Glasgow in July or is it a post about traveller’s guilt? I don’t know.
I went to Glasgow in July and although I did do some things, mostly I sat in my lovely flat, reading books and eating toast and lying in the bath. I don’t feel guilty about it but I suspect ten years ago I would have. If you go somewhere you have to make the most of it, right? You have to go out early and come back late and pack so much into a day that you can’t really register it. That’s how it works. Do all the things, see all the things.
In Helsinki in 2008, my first holiday on my own, I spent two or three days, maybe four, seeing everything southern Finland had to offer. I saw Helsinki. I went to Turku and Tampere. I experienced my first Baltic winter. I started my first travel blog, because using the computers at the station was a lot cheaper than phoning home. And after a few days, I was kind of done. Not with Helsinki – I love Helsinki, it’s a jewel. But I’d never been alone in a foreign country and I’d done a lot and I wanted to stop. Well, to pause. But “make the most of it!!” was already so deeply ingrained in me that it was almost traumatic. There was a battle between two parts of my brain all day. I read Watchmen and then in the end I went outside and got on the first tram that came along, heading away from the main station for once. I don’t remember where it went. I just knew that some part of my brain needed me to hop on a tram.
Ten years on, I don’t have that guilt. I can slow down. In Kyiv I came home for long lunches over an episode or two of Voyager and a flick through the guidebook. In Cyprus we played in the pool for a couple of hours in the middle of every day. In Iceland, I spent an entire afternoon catching up on my diary and trying to get a good photo of the sun and clouds over the mountains opposite the campsite. Actually, the mere act of being on a campsite makes me feel like I’m doing something. Experiencing something.
So I had no qualms about doing absolutely nothing in Glasgow. And it wasn’t absolutely nothing anyway. I killed time on the Friday waiting to get into the apartment by searching the city centre for a tape runner and meeting some cows at Pollok Country Park. I saw some comedy. “Met” a nemesis. Met a friend. Found Glasgow Cathedral and discovered the Necropolis. Went to Loch Lomond in the rain. That was plenty to be getting on with.
And it was a nice flat. I did a post on the subject back in the summer. It was a pleasure to just sprawl there, with a packet of cookies and a book and my very own front door key.
And I forgot the important bit. In the three weeks leading up to that trip I did three overnight trips to London and hiked the Laugavegur Trail. Life was a bit “I just have to survive the next couple of days and then there’s another thing” which isn’t bad, not at all – but you can see why I enjoyed my chance to sprawl all on my own with a book in a strange city.
As I write this, I’m trying to make plans to do a similar thing this coming weekend. If I succeeded, there might be a blog on the subject this time next week. Or then again, it is, or will be, or was, a weekend off. Maybe there won’t be many words in that.
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