Staying in hostels is like a perpetual first day of college. You tried to figure out
who was cool and who wasn’t, but, if you were even a little bit social, you
gave everyone an equal chance all the same. Everyone was a potential friend,
and it was only after days or weeks or even school years that you learned who
could be trusted and who was going to flunk out, flake, fuck off, or never be
heard from again.
Traveling alone and staying in hostels is so much like that
– figuring out who you can trust and who not to, but being open all the same.
But the stakes seem so much lower. After all, if you make a mistake, say
something stupid, you or he or she or they will be gone in the next night, or
the one after that. You will never have to look that person, or group of people, in the
eye in English 101 next semester. Your interactions in these places are
fleeting and temporary and, often, follow a very similar pattern.
“Where you from?”
“How long you been here?”
“How long you traveling”
“Where to next?”
Names often come last, and only if the answers to the above
are satisfying.
This isn’t to say the experiences aren’t valuable. There are
interesting people, smart people, people whose lives you can’t even quite
imagine, waiting to tell you their story. There is an open-minded and handsome
young man from Dubai, who is excited at pathetic attempts to speak Arabic.
There are Germans and Italians and French, all usually traveling in groups. There
are the invariable shades of Aussie and English girls and boys, and one can’t
help but fall a bit in love with their accents, in the same way they enjoys
yours. There are one or two potential true friends, who leave too suddenly, and
whose itinerates you wish you could match better. Just like in college, there
are people with whom there is unexpected common ground.
But mostly, when one is traveling alone there is only the road, that endless stretch
of potential adventures. The question of what you
are doing and why you are here has a million answers, but it only the answer
that you can give yourself that matters. The ability to leave a place, and people, is a great freedom, but it comes with the cost of starting over at a new place, answering the same questions, and sussing out the same people again and again. It is the perpetual process of making new friends.
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