I produced a blog post a couple of months ago, where I reflected upon my disastrous dating choices and tentatively travelling into mainland Europe once again. Now that the world is opening up at a more rapid pace than ever before, it feels apt to, say, recalibrate what I’m looking for in 2022.
Latvia was fucking brilliant, as I’ve previously written. It’s a country that’s suffered so much in times past and is understandably now so fiercely independent. I travelled there in the midst of a state of emergency yet everyone was so outwardly positive. It’s a country that can be proud of how it’s risen above its past and become the strong nation that it is today.
The only issue was that travelling to Latvia made me realise how much I needed to start doing this again. The spontaneous flights abroad, the last-minute planning and truly squeezing every penny I could out of a trip. I used to be a little more picky about where I’d travel to, with perceptions of whether a country was ‘safe’ or not getting in the way. But now, I don’t particularly care. This is Europe we’re talking about, for the most part. Don’t wander into dodgy estates or back alleys or wander around alone at night and you’ll be fine. Granted, I’m a bloke, things are unfortunately different for the lone woman traveller and I absolutely recognise and accept that. And by accept, I mean that I’m horrified by it too.
A week or so after arriving back from Latvia, I had a little too much to drink and booked a day trip from Manchester to Charleroi for around £25 return. It was incredibly silly, liable to going horribly wrong and gave me only a few hours in Belgium, but man was it bloody good fun. My outbound flight was on time, meaning that I could quickly head outside, head into Charleroi and take a train to Tamines. A bit of a wander later, I headed back and awaited my flight home…which was quite late. Somehow though, on arrival, I managed to bolt through security and make my booked train. Just as well too, as everything else from Manchester to Sheffield that night ended up being cancelled. All things considered, it went quite well.
Two weeks later, I did a re-hash of the aborted Bordeaux and Madrid trip, this time with Barcelona mixed in. It was again, bloody good fun, shall we say. I’m not even talking about how I accidentally had five Aperols in Manchester Airport and ended up doing rather well on Tinder. I now adore Barcelona. Nothing could beat the feeling of sitting with a drink from the rooftop bar of my hotel looking out over the skyline, or looking out over the River Garonne at sunset. What could however beat that feeling, by a long shot, was my 23:50 flight not leaving until 01:30. I reached my Manchester hotel at 4am, needing to leave again at 7am. Not a lot of work was done that day and I paid for such chaos with a broken sleeping pattern for the entire week. Still, it was time to do it all again.
I found myself shivering on the platform at Regent Centre the following Saturday morning, awaiting the first train out towards the Airport. I looked back fondly on the days that I would work at this station, seeing as it’s home to Metro’s storage facility of all-sorts of gubbins, as well as an endless maze of voids behind the platform walls and under the station itself. It was usually home to a bunch of feral arsehole kids who enjoyed pulling the fire alarm a lot or on one fun night, somehow ramming a basketball into an escalator handrail, but I wouldn’t have changed those escapades for the world.
Newcastle Airport is great. Unlike Manchester, the staff are quite chirpy and it isn’t a complete hellhole. My flight out to Palma was nicely on time, and I was through passport control nice and quick. A quick chaotic bus trip up to Port de Soller and some near-fainting in the heat walking around Palma later, it was a hop over to Barcelona and a late-night adventure to my hotel in Molins de Rei. The next day was spent exploring the Costa Brava with occasional snow flurries and causing a grown man to punch a train because I told him it wasn’t going to Girona.
And so, we’re in the present. I told myself no more spontaneous trips this month, and then yesterday I booked a flight to Poznan. Hotel, flights and train to Wroclaw for £50 all in: what’s not to like? When am I going? Saturday, of course. It’s so liberating that you can just do this again.
But, what does the rest of my year look like? In May, I’m Interrailing without the Interrail. I’m truly freestyling a trip from Prague to Split. Who needs an Interrail pass when a day pass in the Czech Republic is £15? When rail fares in Hungary are dirt cheap? When the most expensive rail ticket I’ve purchased was £26 from Graz to Zagreb? I’m also going wild and staying in private apartments in Croatia. It’s a country I’ve wanted to visit so badly for so long, and now the opportunity is finally there. No expensive Interrails, no rigid plans, just good old classic spontaneous exploring. The roots of what made me love European rail travel so much.
In June, I’m taking myself to Bari, Italy. I wasn’t quite sure what to do after that, but eventually settled on a train to Naples, another up to Rome, a flight to Bucharest and more than likely an overnight train into Hungary. I’d never really considered going to Romania before, but why not? July will bring with it more Spanish adventures, as I fly to Jerez de la Frontera, the nearest Airport to Cadiz. What comes after that? Who knows. The world is my oyster.
August is another month where I’ve booked half a trip. I’ll be flying to Riga, again, but this time with bigger things in mind. There’s a couple of museums I didn’t get to, so I’ll be filling my time in with some more dark history geeking out, before taking the train to Valga and then Tallinn, Estonia. After that, I’m eyeing up boats across to Helsinki and possibly taking the long way around to Sweden via the edges of Lapland and a walk across the border. Maybe I’ll keep going north instead and end up on Svalbard? Who knows.
Beyond that? My goal for this year is to just say fuck it, and do things. That doesn’t mean anything totally nutty, like going halfway across the world, or spending ages away from home. It means seeing somewhere I like the look of that I can realistically get to, booking a flight, and spending a couple of days there. Live in the moment, shall we say.
I just want to have fun and embrace the beautiful continent that we have lapping at our shores. I can now guarantee that it’ll be a bloody good ride.
The Lone Bon Voyager 