Living There
There is something about travelling alone and sitting in the airport in between the thousands of anonymous fellow travellers, eating your banana, staring blankly at the screens telling you about your delayed flight. The boredom in my eyes, the boredom in theirs, it connects us without having to say a single word to each other.
There is something about traveling alone that really makes me tick. Don’t get me wrong, traveling together can be fun too, but if I can choose, I choose the solitary kind.
A couple of chairs from me sits a buddhist monk wearing a bright orange curtain. I wonder if he’s annoyed too, or if an hour or two more in this cold, unpersonal airport is all the same to him. I can’t help but think his orange outfit must be a little nippy.
I’m at the very far side of Schiphol, the out most corner of the Amsterdam airport at gate B36. It’s 21.20 now and my flight has been delayed with at least an hour, leaving me and my bananas to spend some extra time together. A woman shouts something in a microphone about some dude delaying the flight. There’s a tall blonde girl next to me picking her nose. She spots me spotting her and decides to ignore me and to continue her quest for nasal gold. I decide to ignore her ignoring me and to instead focus on my banana. That too I love about traveling: the crap food. No delicious pasta or tasty risotto, but chocolate and cola, burgers and crisps. And a banana. Because potassium is good.
I’m not sure what it is I like so much about leaving alone. Maybe it’s a transitional thing, just me and my backpack preparing ourselves to leave the daily routine for a little adventure into the unknown, or maybe it’s because I have those silly horizontal mechanical stairs all for myself, I don’t know, but I love it. I feel completely alone, but not in a sad way, quite the opposite: in a very happy, powerful way. I usually try not to have external factors influence my state of happiness too much, but knowing I’ll be in another country in a couple of hours after a trip in a mighty flying machine gets my juices flowing like a tennis ball does to a labrador.
It’s a funny thing. My flight’s delayed and I feel great. Some big planes cruise by and I’m out of both inspiration and bananas. Time to log off. See you in Barcelona!
Stay adventurous!
Jesper from This is Travel Viking
Reference link : http://thisistravelviking.com/2015/05/15/why-i-love-travelling-alone-thisistravelviking/
