‘The Lonely Londoner’

My last post seems awful dreary, and I don’t want people to get the wrong impression about my experience in England, because the five months I spent there were the five best months of my life, and I never really fully understood how great they were until I reminisce about my experiences. I won’t lie though, there were some rough times, and whenever I’m talking to a prospective traveler or study abroader who is about to live in another country for an extended period of time, I tell them about my first week. Don’t get me wrong, I also tell them how great the experience was and how I would recommend living in another country to any person in the world, but I don’t sugar coat how hard it is to leave everything behind and start anew in a world completely different from the one that you may know.

Firstly, it can seem overwhelming lonely when you’re in another country – think about it; You don’t know a single person there and when you’re in a country like England where every person seems like they have a chip on his or her shoulder at all times it can be slightly intimidating to interact with them. Regardless there are few things a traveler can do to avoid this emotion called “loneliness”.

1. Get drunk. Seriously, the more you drink, the more friendly you become, and therefore the more you talk to that guy in the corner who you suspect of being a mega-dork, the more you realize that he’s actually a really cool guy. I’ve met plenty a decent folk while chilling at the pub and talking over a few pints.

2. Talk to the natives. No matter where you are, I strongly believe that the people of that country are generally friendly and eager to talk to you. Even when I was in Egypt (a country where I was immediately greeted with hostility for wearing shorts in public) I was able to have an enlightening and amicable conversation with an Egyptian man on a crowded train platform about the way Western women are treated in their country. And I must add that while living in England, I found that it was easy for people to assume that the English are rude and/or uninterested in others’ cultures because of their seemingly icy demeanor, but this is as far as one could come in contact with the truth. The British (as I found them) were remarkably friendly, excited to chat with a Statesman and overall extremely witty, intelligent and amicable people. So, I guess all I’m tryin’ to say people is please, don’t judge a book by it’s cover. Didn’t we learn to stop doing that in the second grade?

3. Read the Traveler’s Blog’s advice on how to escape loneliness when traveling abroad. They give a wide range of tips, tricks, advice and hope for the lonely traveler.

4. Finally, BLOG. Makes you feel better to write about it, I swear.

source:

Dealing With Loneliness On the Road, Part 3. (2008, September). Retrieved October 15, 2008, from Travel Blogs.com Web site: http://www.travelblogs.com/articles/dealing-with-loneliness-on-the-road-part-3