I suppose, I should talk about my first intrepid steps into doing things like this. I started doing vaguely ambitious trips within the UK in around 2015. I remember my mum saying to me that once I was 16 I’d be allowed to get off on my own to different places, and I suppose I held her to her word in that respect.

London was always the place that seemed to be the big ‘no’. Because, as parents are, they irrationally worry about things and my mum was convinced I’d be blown up as soon as I stepped onto the platform at King’s Cross. However, me being me, I went a solid half dozen times before she realised that I’d been at all. I survived! I didn’t really know fear in that sense, I suppose. Sure, I got anxious sometimes and was cripplingly anxious about so many other things in life, but I don’t think booking a train, jumping on it, and going to the other end of the country has ever fazed me.

Sure enough, by 17, I had a two-week-long All Lines pass and was away for most of it basking in glorious Devon sunshine, wandering down the Avon canal and getting pissed on with rain the Welsh Valleys. I didn’t use hotels all that often, and for six nights I slept on the seats of the Night Riviera between London and Plymouth, having a full day out, leaving London at midnight, getting myself into Plymouth for 5:30 and being back in London for 9. Sleep at times was seemingly optional, and I have no idea how I did what I did, as even these days at the ripe age of 20, I need to have my head down on a bed at night if I can help it!

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The following year (2017), I did much the same thing, except I realised that one night on the seats of the Riviera was one night too many. I was also a little more social, taking one of my now friends (at the time I’d been speaking to her for about a week on Twitter) on a guided tour of the attractions of London.

And, continuing the London-centric theme, I started off one morning in London, took an early train to Norwich, met a friend, took her back to London for a tour then deposited her back in Norwich where I also collapsed in a hotel bed. It went well, but it was here that I also that I also realised that I was in fact fallible as I woke up an hour late, and ended up diving out of bed, throwing my hotel key at reception (not literally) and sprinting across the Circle Line at rush hour to grab the first Norwich train I could. I thankfully managed to meet her without much drama and just about kept up my reputation as a wonderful tour guide (thanks Cat). At least all those times navigating the tube came in handy.

It was shortly after that I broke through to pastures new, and pastures that continue to fulfill me to this day. I headed off to the wider continent. It was a bit of a last minute decision and set me back £99, but it was certainly a defining moment when I booked the Eurostar to Brussels. The first and hopefully last time that I pay full price for said train. Even at 18, where I’m a legal adult, that still felt like the rebellious teenager in me protruding outwards as I slipped onto the 06:47 to Bruxelles-Midi, my parents blissfully unaware as they basked in some Mallorcan sunshine. My little trip to Belgium went off without any drama, but there was one small problem with it.

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I was a bit hooked.

I’d only been in university for a couple of weeks before I suddenly decided that £56 return flights to Hamburg for the following week were incredibly tempting, so I booked away and went for an Ibis Budget off the Reeperbahn. It actually started off quite well, as I splashed out on the Airport lounge and sipped back some wine before sauntering onto what was a pretty empty plane, managing to lie across an entire row while doing some shorthand (blissful memories eh) and landing a little after 11pm in a very quiet Hamburg Airport. I then hit a slightly major problem: my phone coverage didn’t work. I ended up getting pretty irate at Virgin on Twitter via the Airport WiFi as it turns out I should have told in advance to activate the EU roaming. I ended up screenshotting directions to my hotel and jumping on the next S-Bahn into the city.

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I can’t lie, I was somewhat shitting bricks and it was my first true taste of being alone in a foreign country for more than a day trip. Anxiety levels were a little through the roof as I managed to get my friend Chris to text my parents and let them know all was okay (maybe not quite that I was having a Wednesday night in Hamburg) before I managed to navigate my way past a few rather happy drunks and into my hotel room. I was tired, my ears were bust from flying while a bit ill, and I was wondering what the hell I’d got myself into.

Yet, I woke up at 6am the next day, wandered up to the ticket machine at St Pauli station, and set off on a trip around the sights of Hamburg, Google Maps downloaded in preparation, and had a bloody good day. I hopped on the plane back feeling dead proud of myself that evening, and recall landing back in Manchester around 10pm, and making a lass on Tinder quite irate that I wasn’t going to then go straight to Huddersfield to see her (And miss 8am shorthand? Never!)

Soon after, I was a little more hooked. I booked two trips abroad for January 2018 and was soon on my way to the Netherlands. That actually went quite well, aside from when I placed my Interrail pass in the wrong pocket and ended up at a police station in Den Haag claiming it had been stolen having told my sob story of how my ticket was ‘lost’ to two conductors, everyone in the ticket office and two police officers. Thankfully (?!) the police officer sent me away as she couldn’t help and as I was walking back to Den Haag Centraal, I checked the only pocket I hadn’t already. What a prat. Other than that, I can’t say that my foraying went off without any sort of hitch. I got myself exploring Amsterdam, Berlin and Brussels and was having the absolute time of my life.

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One of the nuttiest trips I did was shortly after. I’d just finished the exams in February and had booked a very cheap return flight to Frankfurt followed by a 44 euro ticket that would let me travel anywhere in Germany provided I didn’t want to use the ICE trains. I questioned my sanity a little as I joined the 04:53 to Aschaffenburg, considering maybe going to Nuremberg if I felt like it. Anyways, 13 hours and a visit to Nuremberg and Munich later, I was freezing my tits off in Lindau on the shores of the Bodensee, looking directly at Switzerland. I had ended up finding some rather deep snow and was having an absolute ball. I maintain that view from the island town of Lindau across the lake to be one of the best I’ve seen. I didn’t get back to Frankfurt until gone 1am, having had a rather unfortunate incident in Stuttgart Hbf where I slid on some piss while running for a train and nearly collided with a rather angry man.

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I then discovered the issue with booking very cheap flights and having to deal with everything else later. Stansted to Basel is £9.99 each way. Everything else is not. By the time I’d booked a Megabus to London for a tenner, Premier Inn for £45, hotels in Switzerland for £200, travel there for £100, and yeah you see where this going, don’t you? I also learned here that Stansted Airport is the absolute worst and is to be avoided at all damned costs. Everything however ended up going smoothly until I reached my hotel and realised that my adapter didn’t fit in the socket. The hotel ended up letting me borrow one and every time I attempted to return it the reception was closed! So there it sits on my shelf to this day.

I can’t lie, Switzerland is in a league of its own. Sure, it is genuinely expensive but the scenery and quality of life there are incredible. Everywhere I went was absolutely gorgeous. Even unassuming suburban railways would suddenly dive into the face of a mountain and emerge hugging a lake. A decent recommendation for Switzerland would be staying in Konstanz (far south of Germany) and commuting in each day. I did this the second time I went, paid £150 for five nights in the Ibis, and could have walked over the border in 20 minutes. That said, some of my days are tantamount to masochism, as I would frequently get the 5:09 to Zurich which meant waking up at about 4:30 and walking to the station in the bitter January cold with a biting wind off the lake. Probably not quite sipping champagne in St Moritz.

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But then it was time for something big. I had planned a 22 day Interrail and was going to stray away from the easy countries like Germany. I fancied a challenge. Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia, Czechia, all entered the list as I intricately listed off my planned journeys and where I wanted to go. Soon enough, I was on a flight to Stockholm Skavsta, on the bus to the centre and wondering once again what I’d got myself into. Slowly but surely, I found my feet and wandered around the city, taking in the sights and had myself two days before I was on the sleeper train down to Malmo.

Here, things got fast paced. I set off for Copenhagen before reaching the familiarity of Germany and heading towards Dresden. Then, I started to feel nervous again as we crossed to the Czech Republic and everything seemed a bit different. The trains were a bit more rickety, less people spoke English, and the whole feeling wasn’t quite so polished. On arriving at Prague’s main station, an angry man tried to headbutt me in the subway for no reason at all. I can’t say that was the introduction I was after.

Thankfully though, after a few days, I started to find the quirks of Central Europe part of the fun of travelling, and enjoyed taking the slow train, relying on smiles and hand signals with the token few words of Czech/Slovak to communicate, and of course how much cheaper everything was. Of course, never mention this to people in these countries as their wages are in fact accordingly lower so you’ll just seem like an ignorant prat. I still made a few errors though- I once jumped off at a station on the outskirts of Bratislava and on being unable to see which side the platform was on (they’re a bit lower this part of the world), I got off straight onto the tracks. Thankfully, in a world of common sense, I gave the driver a thumbs up and stepped back to let the thing leave so I wasn’t flattened.

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Nothing actually went that wrong until I got to the north of Spain and we had a bus replacement on this rather infrequent and adorably tiny railway line. Thing was, the bus was somewhat of an imaginary one! This was all of my travel anxieties rolled into one and I wanted to curl into a small ball. That was, until a group of French backpackers and their dog, Luna, got talking to me and we decided to keep strength in numbers. We managed to argue our way into a taxi which took us some of the way before a train picked us up. But the whole experience went from hell to heaven, as I had a can of beer chucked my way and one bloke got his kazoo out to play the French national anthem. We ended up sat in my hotel drinking cheap red wine until the small hours.

And there, I suppose I reached the pinnacle of travelling solo, and wasn’t much of a newbie anymore.

Of course, the story continues.