To travel with people, or alone?
I don’t fuckin’ know.
If it were up to me, I’d get a big ol’ group of like 7 other people together and have a SuperAdventure™, but ain’t nobody got time for that. Thus, solo it is. My first thought was “Aw man, no one to share the experience with and shit.” But there’s also the possibility that I’ll prefer travelling alone for such a long period of time. For shorter one or two week stints, I’d assume people would be super awesome, since you won’t really have time to get sick of them. Or maybe you would, I don’t know your life. For a 3 month excursion, though, sticking with people for the entirety of that trip will likely get kind of annoying, no matter whom it is. Even married people need their alone time, right?
And then there’s this idea of freedom that solitude brings. What if you want to spend another 6 hours in this museum, but your bud is bored and hungry? Or perhaps you’ll see a sweet deal on a plane ticket to Hungary and wanna go there, spur of the moment, but your comrade wants to stick to the plan and go to Italy. Take the other person out of the equation and this problem goes away. I suppose it has extra relevance to me since I’m basing my trip so much around the idea of ‘no plans, fukkit, go where I want FREEDOM.’ That’s why I got the goddamn 1000 dollar train ticket that lets me travel basically anywhere in Europe for three months. And I’m a sheltered piece of shit college grad from Whogivesashit, America, so this trip is kind of the first time I’m gonna do my own thing for longer than a weekend, and doing that thing alone has a certain charm to it. Let’s call it a Rite of Passage for dramatic effect, shall we?
On the other side of the £1 coin, though, people are great. I love me some people, especially the ones whom I’ve decided are the good ones. We can make the memories together, and ain’t that the best? I think it is. And if I get blackout drunk in Salzburg, maybe I won’t die because I got me a buddy around. That’s probably a plus.
There’s some white girl quote out there that goes something like “An experience means nothing without someone to share it with,” and while I don’t entirely agree with that philosophy, I think there’s something to it.
Another point about being alone, I’mma gets (Word wanted gets instead of get; I’ll go with it) lonely probs. That’s what being alone does to people, see, especially when you’re 6000 miles away from anyone you know, surrounded by an entire continent of new things. But will that be a wholly bad thing? Having no one around that I’m familiar with might trick me into meeting new people through… [eyes squint, muscles tense, brow sweats, butthole clenches] social interaction.
What a disgusting thought.
But then I might meet some new lifelong friends that I wouldn’t’ve if I had been discussing our recent train ride though the Alps with my travel companion. EUROPE2017 is all about discovering new things, and people are a part of that, even if they end up being cunts.
In the end, I guess it doesn’t really matter — at least for me, on this trip. With a friend or sans companion, either one would be good and bad in their own ways, so I don’t see a clear winner, which I think is nice, ‘cause that’s easy and it makes me content.
This Fucker's Done Europe (well really just parts of the UK, Dublin, and Paris) 
Just remember that traveling alone makes it hard to reflect on whatever it is that you’re seeing.
p.s. Google Maps is perfect for traveling in Europe. Put in two destinations and it’ll tell you the way to the train station, what train and platform, what transfers, distance between platforms for the transfer, and so on and so on.
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I don’t know, I think one can reflect on stuff without another person to talk to just as easily as with a person. There may be different reflections happening, and you might not come to the same conclusion, but, continuing the theme of the post, I wouldn’t argue that one method of reflection is easier or better than the other. Plus, I’ll (hopefully) have hostel buddies to share my experiences with, assuming I don’t turn into Sperglord SpaghettiFall.
It’ll be interesting to see if I have the same mindset when I get back.
Also, Google is love, Google is life.
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“Reflect” was the wrong word. I meant something more akin to discussion. Out of my own experiences I find that walking around in a city for hours on end can get mildly boring unless I have someone to discuss whatever I find with. You can replace that person with a smartphone, and chat with people back home, of course, but activities are funner when done together (at least in my own experience). Hostels are definitely a good place to find people in. I’m assuming you’re college-aged, so hostels are going to be filled with people around your age. I was in Germany, and I hit it off with this biker from Italy. He was going around all of Europe on his bike (not that rare), and didn’t speak much English. Despite that, we had a good time traveling together for a bit, choosing where to go next. Suddenly, what had been a fairly good time spending ten hours in a city turned into a situation where ten hours weren’t enough.
But yeah, I agree with your topic sentence being that the various kinds of travels aren’t necessarily better than each other. Traveling on your own is good, because you can just look at tripadvisor and wander around, without having to argue with anyone on where you’ll be going next.
Good post, by the way.
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Ah, I see. Fair points indeed, Mr. Sauceman.
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