To be honest, I’m struggling a bit with this end of the alphabet. My first idea for W was Working Holidays but I don’t know anything about them except that simultaneously travelling and earning money seems a good thing. What else begins with W? And so we come to Worries.
I think I’ve covered a good number of subjects you might have worries about – safety, money, loneliness, packing, practicalities, so really, this is “miscellaneous stuff I haven’t mentioned yet or which doesn’t fit anywhere in particular”.
What if I change my mind? What if I hate the place or the weather or the trip?
Then come home. If you have a bad feeling or you’re not enjoying it, cancel it and come home. That might mean buying a new flight to replace one you’d already booked but Captain Awkward sometimes says “sometimes the cheapest way to pay for something is with money” – ie what it costs you in money might be better for you than what it costs you in time or effort or misery. You can then regroup, think about what you’ve learned and maybe try it again later when you’re in a better frame of mind or a better place in life.
What if I’ve forgotten something important?
If you mean that you’ve forgotten to pack something, you can probably buy a replacement pretty much anywhere in the world. Yes, money. Money can be replaced, whereas you can’t do that trip without a pair of sturdy shoes, for example. You might need to sacrifice a couple of nights out, downgrade your hostel or something like that further down the line. You might need to put in your emergency credit card and then do some overtime at work when you get home to pay it off. But if you don’t buy that replacement, you’ve wasted the cost of the trip.
On the other hand, travelling is a great opportunity to figure out what you don’t need. I have a house full of stuff but when you’re travelling with nothing but hand luggage, you do tend to realise how little you actually need to go about your life. I forgot my tablet when I went to Iceland last February, despite making a bag for the purpose and sewing a tablet pocket into it. Obviously, I got on fine without it. I’d still rather have had it but yeah, turned out I didn’t need it.
If you’ve forgotten something like “Oh, I hadn’t realised it’s Mum’s big birthday while I’m away!” then do your best to make up for it. Phone home on the day, order a present online which will arrive even though you’re not there and maybe make a special day of it when you get home.
I’m worried I won’t know how to [do a thing]
People are surprisingly helpful. “How to do a thing” might range from “I don’t know Icelandic pool etiquette” to “I don’t know how to work the washing machine at the hostel” but you can always figure it out, at least well enough to get by or you can google it. Someone else will show you how to use the washing machine, even if you don’t speak the same language, or someone else will try to help, even if you both end up scratching your heads over it. I couldn’t figure out how to use the air machine in Iceland this summer when my tyre pressure was low and a local woman washing her car came over to help. What we were both missing was that the hose was broken which meant it physically couldn’t clip onto my tyre but we both gave it a go. Similarly, I had no idea where my seat was on the Trans-Siberian Express in 2019, or how to turn it into a bed, or how to turn it back into a seat when I disembarked. The friendly Russian woman opposite demonstrated, pointed and generally got her point across with barely a word in common. A smile goes a long way and people generally recognise the tone of a “thank you”, even if they don’t know the word.
I’m worried that I won’t know local laws and will do something stupid
That’s a very valid worry. There are plenty of countries with laws that would never even occur to us in the UK. This is where research comes in. Do some reading. Read the experiences of people who’ve been there. If in doubt, don’t do it. Definitely keep your distance from drugs – that’s the one that still somehow seems to catch people out. The other one is about crossing roads. In the UK, we call it “crossing the road” and kids are taught to look, listen and cross only if it’s safe. In plenty of other countries, including the US, it’s called “jaywalking” unless it’s at a proper crossing and it’s illegal. That flabbergasts me a bit, that you can’t just step into the road whenever it’s clear. Check laws about alcohol, appropriate clothing and public displays of affection – those are the ones that trip people up in countries with religion-influenced rules.
Whatever your worry, chances are it can be sorted one way or another, whether it’s something you have to figure out ahead of time, thus eliminating it from the things to worry about when you arrive, or something you can figure out when you get there.
Having said all that, worrying isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It means you’ve thought about things and their consequences. Really, it’s a sign that you’re doing this properly. You’ve identified a problem – and once you’ve identified a problem, you can start to figure out the answer. It means there’s something you haven’t solved yet. That’s no problem, you just need to use your creative brain or ask for help, whether that’s just Google or whether it’s someone who’s already done the thing. I’m a pretty firm believer that you can solve everything, even if the solution means drastically changing your plans. And sometimes, you will have to change your plans and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. If nothing else, sometimes a last-minute change of plan can become a good story.
For example, I had a problem that I couldn’t find a solution to. I’m off somewhere in January and was worrying about how to get there, since all flights from western Europe come in between 1am and 5am. It’s a big no-no for me to arrive in a new place where I can’t even read the alphabet in the dead of night. How do I do this? There has to be a way of not arriving in the dark. How can I get round it?
The answer, several weeks later, turned out to be a short weekend elsewhere to get on an early flight and booking all my flights separately as there was no airline able to book the right series of flights on one booking. That’s forced me to go hand luggage only, because otherwise my luggage is going to cause me trouble in Amsterdam, but it’s no bad thing to do a trip like that with only what I can carry. But there you go – insoluble problem fixed by an awkward work-around and that work-around will become a blog post in its own right later on.
I don’t think there’s any problem that you can’t get round somehow. You can go around it, over it, punch straight through it or even put it aside to do some other time. Do you have a bucket list item in a country you literally can’t go to at the moment? Ok, worry about it for a while, try to figure it out – and then realise the solution to this one is to go there another year. I know we’re collectively starting to realise “it’ll still be there in a year or two” isn’t necessarily true but broadly, if a problem truly is insurmountable, trying again later is an option 99% of the time.
And so worrying can result in problem-solving and that makes worrying, really, a positive thing!