I'm baaaaack

It's been two months since I've written in this. Sorry, devoted readers (pretty much just Milee).

As of December 8, I had started to travel alone. Occasionally, I would meet up with people I knew and enjoyed their company, but the majority of my time was spent alone or with people I met and hung out just for a day or two. I was hesitant about travelling alone since I knew I would get lonely, but I found that it was more than just tolerable... I was enjoying it most of the time. It was (and is) very liberating.

For about two weeks, I traveled through London, Manchester, and Liverpool, coming back to London to fly out to Zurich. Once I got back to London, I was supposed to fly out to Zurich to meet up with Yoontae and his family for the holidays. After a 6 hour bus ride, a train to the airport, and several hours on the floor of Gatwick airport, I was next in line to check in and my flight was cancelled. Due to weather-related issues, a bunch of flights were either delayed or cancelled and the airport was chaotic. Several hours later, I was finally told by an EasyJet representative that I would have to find a new flight if I wanted to reach Switzerland in time, but that they would reimburse me for any extra expenditure. I took another train back to central London, found a new flight for the same day for only 200 dollars (a miracle), and half a day later I was on a plane to Basel. It wasn't where I wanted to go, but I could take a train from Basel to Zurich, so I had settled for that. This flight, though, ended up getting delayed a whopping 6 times and then I got to Basel too late to get into my hostel (what kind of hostel CLOSES?). Apparently the reception closed at midnight. I landed at 12:05. In addition, buses stop running from the airport stop running at 12:04. Lovely. I managed to meet a man who wanted to share a taxi though, so I headed towards the train station thinking about the movie Taken the whole time. He was old though so I figured I could take him if he tried to subdue me and get me addicted to heroine so he could sell me as a sex slave or something like that.

Anyway, I got to the train station in Basel while it was raining so I dried off and slept on a bench with some hobos (no joke), got up at 5 in the morning, took a train to Zurich, waited 7 and a half hours in various McDonalds and benches, then met Ben and Jullie and went with them to Austria. After that it was nice and pleasant and full of fun activities like snowboarding in the Alps, dragging Yoontae's mother up a mountain, finding out Yoontae's dad speaks German, and listening to the soundtracks to Jersey Boys and Wicked repeatedly in the car.

After New Years, everyone was gone and I was back on my own. I decided in a matter of a few hours that I would go to Morocco, and I did (I'm in Morocco right now). I can't say it was all smooth from there, but I haven't had to sleep in any train stations with bums so I can't complain.

There are aspects of traveling alone that I realize are not that great. I definitely don't laugh as much, and I haven't had a "I'm laughing so hard my stomach hurts" experience in a really long time. You don't really have those kinds of experiences except with close friends in very comfortable situations, I realized. I do miss that alot. But thanks to the fact that I'm alone and more inclined to meet new people, I've hung out with all sorts of folks and even learned how to play Backgammon from some Germans!

And yeah, sometimes I really wish I could travel with a good friend... someone that I don't just meet on the road and hang out with for a few days. I saw a Facebook status one time (forget who put it up) that said something about how its not about what you do, its about who you do it with. To an extent, that's very true. It would be nice to be able to share these experiences with another, but I guess some of these experiences can only be had alone. For now, I'll just have to share what happens through emails and sporadic blog updates!