Many of the people who will end of reading this, are fellow travelers or are aspiring to be. You are adventurous individuals who have decided to leave the comfort of home to feel the thrill and the excitement that traveling just naturally evokes and to learn things about yourself that you didn’t even know you could or needed to learn.
After finally settling into my new environment and slowly acclimating to the new ways of life around me, it was at the beginning of October that I gained a new level of confidence. I no longer felt like an unprepared tourist in a gigantic land, but rather somebody who could comfortably navigate around with ease. With this new sense of certainty, I decided to branch out from my home-base in the western side of Switzerland, and explore.
Which brings me to the main theme of this post…the importance of a good travel companion!
The fact of the matter is that not every person is the same and traveling is such an intimate and personal experience. If you don’t have the right person with you…then you may reconsider making a trip. I’ve always thought of myself as somebody who is able to go with the flow. However, a recent excursion to Oktoberfest in Munich really opened my eyes to the idea that sometimes, you just can’t go with the flow. First off, Munich and Oktoberfest were amazing. I would definitely recommend going. Almost all of the people were extremely welcoming and the atmosphere was incredible! As an English speaker, it was comforting to hear fellow native English speaking tourists, just because of how long it has been. Anyway, I learned halfway through that I chose to travel with the wrong person. My travel companion was rather aggressive and didn’t have the same sense of wonder like I did.
For instance, I would see a view and say how cool I thought it was, while their response would be something along the lines of how they wanted to be somewhere else. Our conflicting personalities just made it hard to fully enjoy the experience.
On the other hand, I have traveled to different mountains around Switzerland with other friends, and their attitudes just made the trip so much more enjoyable. Hiking is so much more fun with the right company. They genuinely wanted to experience anything and everything!
Essentially, choose your travel partners wisely. There are always those who just want to travel to get as drunk as possible in different cities, those who want to seclude themselves from other people, those who want to live as the natives do, etc. However, the important thing to remember is that no traveling style is the right one. You just need to find somebody who has a similar one to you. If you have any doubt about somebody who is asking to travel with you, listen to your gut and drop them like a hot potato! Well, don’t actually… but just try to avoid the situation where you have to travel with a less than amicable companion.
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