Travel mishaps that left me challenged, laughing, and wanting more!
This is one of a 4-part series of articles that share little travel stories sparked by common travel emotions. Also read about feeling interested, mindful, and strong.
I know I’m in my challenged state when my vision narrows and my brain turns my outside world into a fuzzy blurriness. My body slowly moves like I’m going through heavy water, and butterflies emerge from their slumber and slip into my belly, tickling my insides and lathering up my stomach acid. This state of challenge can be uncomfortable and scary, especially in a foreign or unfamiliar place.
My reaction is quite helpful! My focused vision helps me to narrow in on the problem at hand. My heavy body slows me down so I don’t react too quickly out of fear. My butterflies signal that this is important to me. And the stomach-lurching? Nope, nothing useful there - it’s just nasty!
Knowing this - I have slowly learned to trust myself faced with travel mishaps and sticky situations. I’m certainly not always composed and pragmatic - like when I hung up on the 911 service operator in Scotland because I didn’t know how to answer her questions. She wasn’t asking the questions I was expecting. Not one of my finest moments!
And even though feeling challenged is uncomfortable, I am a firm believer in the power of nudging outside your comfort zone. Not WAY outside, just beyond what feels easy. Be open to the invitation to feel challenged rather than panicked.
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The following little travel stories are times when I felt particularly challenged. Sharing, to be honest, feels vulnerable. I choose to be authentic and transparent about travel, including my personal travel mishaps and misadventures. Being an adventurer is not a piece of cake, yet the challenges have me hooked!
My Travel Mishaps: Bus Blunder
Crete
One of my first travel experiences navigating public transportation was in Greece with my boyfriend (now husband). We had successfully island-hopped around the Peloponnese and found our way to Crete - a large island with fields of olive tree-lined hills that reached the clear waters of the Mediterranean. It was the first location outside of Athens where we needed to take a bus as many of the islands were small and walkable and didn’t have transit.
In the pre-cell phone era, we were solely equipped with our handy, green Michelin guidebook. Referring to a short paragraph in the book, we decided to take the bus to the archaeological site of Agia Triada. The site is perched on the top of an inland crest above the seaside town of Galini, where we were staying. After meandering the dry, rocky area until closing time, we returned to the bus stop to catch the bus back to our seaside town.
We waited and waited and waited. Then the rain started - or should I say the heavens opened. Now we were soaked and stranded! We propped two cane beach mats up like a Viking shield wall against the driving rain.
To pass the time we sang every song known to humankind starting with radio hits and eventually disintegrating into Christmas carols. We kept this up for several hours until a car stopped and the sympathetic driver let us know that there wasn’t another bus until the following day! He kindly offered us, two drenched Canadians with hoarse voices, a lift back to our guest house.
Note to rain-soaked self: off-season bus schedules may be reduced! Thank God for the internet now. Get yourself an e-sim card from Airalo to take advantage of apps like Rome-to-Rio to figure out transportation schedules.
“Many times the wrong train took me to the right place.”
Paulo Coelho
My Travel Mishaps: Train Station Struggle
German and Dutch trains are clean with an uncompromising level of punctuality. There is order and detail in the schedules which took my husband and I only a few times to figure out. After we distinguished between weekdays and weekends, arrivals and departures - we were feeling pretty damn proud of our navigation skills.
The thing about travel and public transportation, in particular, is that the feeling of invincibility can’t be trusted!
Do you know that faceless voice that rumbles through the train cars with important instructions? Not the soft voice that reminds you to watch your luggage or wear a mask, but the one with authority and important information. The recorded announcements on the trains in the Netherlands remind you that Europeans are incredibly multilingual. The request to store luggage in the proper place is repeated in Dutch, Flemish, English, French, and German. As the train crosses the border, sometimes the languages shift but usually include English. But when the live, booming voice of the train staff makes an urgent announcement - it is not likely to be in English.
At least it wasn’t for us.
Heading from Amsterdam to Belgium via Antwerp, the voice interrupted our scenic ride with an announcement laden with a sense of emergency. I waited for a second voice to repeat the announcement in English but it didn’t come. You know when you have a teensy bit of language from high school or Duolingo, just enough to pick out a word and then you fill in the blanks yourself? I couldn’t even grasp a familiar sound!
Antwerp, Belgium
I looked around and made eye contact with another traveller. He was laden down with a massive backpack and had dishevelled hair and clothes that looked like he’d been on the road for a while. He looked as confused as my husband and I - obviously it wasn’t in his language either. But we smiled and formed a connection that even if it didn’t solve any problems, we didn’t feel so alone.
The passengers all began to shift, move, and gather their belongings and luggage. As we pulled into the next train station, the booming voice came on again and everyone started getting off the train.
Ok, no biggie. Something is up, we’ll have to get on another train.
As we disembarked Train Voice (now named because he had become an important character in my story) rattled off a series of numbers. My heart leapt in murky recognition. Was it a different platform? A different train car? An estimate of how many minutes we would have to wait?
Like sheep, we followed the bulk of the people, trailing far enough behind so that we could see what everyone was doing. The train left and another one began to pull into the station. It, however, was on the track that was the furthest away. Some people started running. There was no time to find someone who would speak English to help us. We ran.
We ran more from herd instincts than understanding. Our backpacking friend also ran. We smiled and encouraged each other, even though none of us knew if where we were going was where we needed to go to get our journey back on track.
Dripping with sweat, we launched ourselves on board the new train with seconds to spare before it began to pull out of the station again. My heart and blood pressure wildly wondered what direction we were headed. My head kept saying that it didn’t matter, we would go…wherever…and if it wasn’t right, we’d just regroup and start again.
Thankfully it turned out to be the right direction. I breathed deeply and we shared a sheepish chuckle with our new backpacking friend.
Evora, Portugal
More Travel Mishaps: Strike Three - You're Out!
A recent train misadventure occurred in Portugal. Again, a country with a transportation system that is fairly easy to navigate and lots of people who speak English to help out. It was at the end of our month-long stay in Lisbon and we were feeling pretty confident about moving around by metro, bus, tram, and train. In hindsight, what we didn’t do was stay informed about local news and missed all information about the rotating train strike.
Blissfully ignorant, we stood on the train platform, assured of our knowledge of how to read the schedule and digital updates. We were calm as two cool cats as we waited in exactly the right place at exactly the right time.
No train.
Online bus tickets saved the day!
We walked back to inspect the digital update and our train number had vanished from the screen. Instead of asking someone, which would have been a logical thing to do, we figured we had goofed up and somehow missed our train. Confident that we couldn’t miss two trains in one day, we solved the problem after a flurry of phone searches and secured a couple of bus tickets to our destination of Evora. From there we’d simply take our pre-booked train back home.
After a day of exploring this charming, white-washed town, we made it to the train station in lots of time for our return journey. It was at this point that we finally learned about the train strike, one that rotates from route to route. No trains in or out of Evora all day! The manager of the train station was amazingly kind and refunded us our train ticket costs. Then, even as the challenged feelings of focused vision and fuzzy brain descended on me, I was on my phone again to secure what ended up being the last two bus seats on a late-night route back to Lisbon. Phew!
If it wasn’t for the train strike, we wouldn’t have met the friendly train manager, helped out a stranded student at the Evora train station desperate to get home or found a fantastic tapas bar to watch a World Cup match with a room full of beer drinking University students as we waited for our late night bus ride.
“Travel isn’t always pretty. It isn’t always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that’s okay. The journey changes you; it should change you. It leaves marks on your memory, on your consciousness, on your heart, and on your body. You take something with you. Hopefully, you leave something good behind.”
Travel mishaps like these - solvable and recoverable - keep me on my toes. Author Anthony Doerr writes, “Leave home, leave the country, leave the familiar. Only then can routine experience - buying bread, eating vegetables, even saying hello - become new all over again.” (Four Seasons in Rome, 2007) Even when you are prepared and have figured out the schedules, the fares, and the transportation system quirks, there just might be something that throws it all for a loop.
Travel mishaps and the predictable occurrence of being challenged have grown my trust in my ability to problem-solve and recover. And crazy but true, the ups and downs of being challenged, figuring it out, and then having to figure it out again are what I love about travel and taking public transportation, particularly!
