Leaving

I always assumed that by the time the two years was up that I would be sick of the city, missing home, ready to leave. The truth is, I've been pushing myself to mentally disconnect myself from London for about six months now but the closer I get to my deadline, the less I want to leave. I feel like I've been here forever, this is my home. Now I have to ship everything back to New Zealand or get rid of it. I made a list of things I have to do before leaving London, like taking a ride on the London Eye, going to Kew Gardens and standing ontop of Parliament Hill for the last time. It all seems grossly unfair.

The price of adventure

When I was 20 years old, for ten months I saved up every paycheck I had from my restaurant job and went to Los Angeles and New York City for two weeks. After ten years of watching Home Alone (where Kevin goes to New York), My Girl 2 (where Vaida goes to L.A) and reading the Sweet Valley High series (the quintessential American Dream) I had never wanted anything in my life as much as I wanted to go to New York and California. A bit like a kid who saves all his pocket money for the latest toy, I saved all my money, not realising that budget travel was an option.

I stayed in some seriously expensive places.

Recognise this?

If your an Eagles fan, it's Hotel California, the pink palace that graces the cover of one of their most famous records, circa 1970. In reality, this is the Beverly Hills Hotel. Past guests include Marlene Dietrich, Elizabeth Taylor and Marilyn Monroe. I stayed there in 2008 for three days at the price (after receiving a promotional discount) of $300 American dollars per night. I ordered room service every night and lazed by the pool during the day. I tipped everybody. I felt like Macauley Culkin in Home Alone. The world was my oyster.

Housekeeping came everyday and organised my Disneyland souviners

The famous pool

Beautiful huh?

Fast forward five years and this is the likes of where I stay these days...

Kate making the bed at our hostel in Russia

But you know what, it's okay really.

A fellow traveller recently wrote of the FOMO syndrome. Fear of missing out is basically what happens when you start to research your destination and realise that you must, quite literally, do everything. If you don't do everything, you will Miss Out. I have yet to discover what happens when you Miss Out, but I'm sure it must be bad. Therefore, as far as budgets go, numbers are crunched together so tightly so as to ensure the lengthiness of one's trip. $1000 spent on accommodation five years ago is an extra month backpacking through South America.

It would be easy to look at my before pictures and feel resentful when comparing them to my after. But I've discovered the contrary, travelling as a backpacker is the only way to see any country. When you have to take the bus or the train you come face to face with the locals. You see how tired they are, what time they are getting home from work, where they shop. You get a glimpse into the mundane of their life. When you cook every night you shop at the supermarket and buy the brands that mothers buy for their families. When you are searching for the cheapest street food possible, you discover the winding backstreets of giant metropolises where graffiti artists perfect their art and the locals hang out their washing.

When you are driven to your resort in a taxi and eat at the hotel restaurant, what do you think you are seeing? What are you learning? The answer is nothing. Your comfort zone has not been violated, you haven't smelt the fog or the tar of a hot, sweaty city. You haven't drunk with the barman and found out how he knows six different languages or why he has a lazy eye. You haven't happened upon amazing artisan markets or seen the blood on the streets. You haven't felt the fear of not knowing what is happening, or the panic of getting lost. You haven't seen the life, or the soul. You haven't any stories.

This afternoon, after reading the blog of a European couple who took a year out from their jobs to travel the globe (Africa, Asia, South and Central America and Australasia) my opinion was instantly validated. They went to New Zealand. Adventure capital of the world. Doesn't everybody love New Zealand? It's so beautiful. I'm constantly being told what an amazing country I'm from and being asked to explain why I decided to leave. Here is why.

"...(New Zealand) leaves little room for surprises and eventually this is what we started to miss...At our previous destinations just walking down the street usually brought about a funny or exciting moment, something new or exotic! In New Zealand, excitement has turned into big business with over-abundant activities ... What blew our minds were the tons of brightly coloured free brochures that can be found in every hostel, cafe, tourist information. Tourism is so professionally marketed here and right in your face that we look back to travelling Latin America with nostalgia..."

Moral of the story? You can buy a plane ticket, you can buy a backpack, you can stay wherever you like and see what you like, but money aint going to buy you the smell of an Italian pizzeria, the heat of cobbled streets on your sandals, the sound of sirens or the quiet of a silent passenger train gliding through Provence.

Best pizza of my life found on a quiet street in Marseille

Arriving

"Everything looks like Coronation Street."

The tall brick houses reminded me of everything I should expect from England and I felt safe in the knowledge that I had finally travelled sufficiently far enough away from home to finally breathe a sigh of relief.

I stayed in a backpacker's that night, courtesy of Bunac.  For some reason I cannot place that hostel now, lost in a sea of varying recollections. The streets were small but crowded and I felt claustrophobic. I slept with my belongings tucked closely to my body as I slept in a dorm housing men of various nationalities.

The next morning I went downstairs and enquired as to why I wasn't in a mixed dorm. The young guy looked at me blankly and said, "You were."

I didn't leave the hostel after breakfast of tea and toast. I calmly did my laundry, leaning up against the tumble dryer for hours as I read a magazine, the closest thing to normality I'd had in six weeks. I took strange pleasure in folding my hot laundry just the way I figured any independent adult would and packing it neatly away in my suitcase, pretending it was a set of drawers that didn't smell of airport. I reorganised the few belongings in my suitcase, the way one feng shuis their bedroom and I made a to do list.

I was tired and it was busy outside. London was busy. I lived in a city now and I knew that once I left the doors of the hostel I would have to deal with what was out there. I finished my magazine. Inhaled the smell of my my newly laundered clothes. And then set off for Swiss Cottage in north west London.

The one with Alice Ayers

Have you lived somewhere too long when you know the streets like the back of your hand? When you are able to identify locations you've already been, watching the play unfold two years later from the exact same spot?

  

Russia

Church of the Spilt Blood, St Petersburg

Ten minutes after leaving St Petersburg's airport I knew. Five burly Russian men surrounded Kate and I insisting we needed a taxi. We quickly relented once we realised that minus 18 degrees wasn't ideal dithering weather. We were assured the fare would be metered but it transpired when dropped off in front of a bunch of old warehouses that we would be charged more than the price of five night's accommodation for two people, for a twenty minute drive. It took us about 45 minutes to find our hostel which was signposted with crayon written on a piece of scaffolding in front of a precarious set of stairs that lead to a heavy duty door of an old warehouse, one of about 15 in an otherwise vacant lot. Two single sheets to cover a queen-sized bed and one flannel later we lay in bed, wondering what could possibly happen next.

The next morning we met the occupants of the other rooms. Everybody was living there. The manager was a curiously tall Rusky who wore short denim cut offs with thermals and two fluero hoodies at a time; one pink, one green. He spoke good English and chatted thoughtfully and eloquently, often scratching his beard for emphasis. The others were young. Another Russian with a red mohawk and large headphones who sat on his computer all day and never changed his clothes. The only thing I ever heard him say was, "Money is the source of all the world's problems." I wondered if his parents knew where he was. I wondered if any of their parents knew where any of them were. A very, very thin Korean man with excellent Russian and English who claimed his computer had been stolen from his room the month before. He came to Russia to study the language. He helped us with directions and booking tickets and eventually we would bump into him at the supermarket in the evening while we all shopped for our evening meals. Two 18 year old Turkish lads who drank all of Kate's vodka and then proceeded to pester the guy with the mohawk for weed. They talked about the world's problems and admitted sheepishly that they were virgins. A 19 year old girl with the face of a 12 year old who answered the door. Two boys the same age as us who claimed to be realtors but didn't work a day we were there. They took us sightseeing that day but soon became exasperated with us. We didn't speak Russian and they didn't speak English except to repeatedly ask, 'How are you?' Later, after a bottle of wine, they mustered an 'I love you- will you marry me?'

We cooked in the kitchen every night and had McDonalds for lunch everyday. One particular McDonalds employee on Nevsky Prospekt loved us. She told us how much to pay for cheeseburgers. She made others give up their table so we could sit down and she could practise her English. Understand? Understand? She would ask.

I don't remember any of the museums, or the churches. Just these people. Coming home every night to cook in their crappy kitchen, sharing their booze and listening to dated western music until 5am.

The truth about itchy feet

Everybody is on the hunt to find me a husband. We talk about the amount of time I "have left" in hushed tones and everybody gives me pitying glances when I mention being kicked out of the country.

The truth is, I have roughly six months left in London and I am very aware of the fact that a marriage of conveinence is anything but, so yes, there is nothing I can put in place to stop this descent. No spousal visa, no ancestry visa, no British passport, no job, no sponsorship. It will be over. O-V-E-R.

It seems my friends and work colleagues are sadder about this than I am. The truth about itchy feet is that once you give them a scratch they just become .... itchier.

I have a friend who planned an eight week Contiki trip around Europe (visiting something like 101 countries) just to, in her own words, "get it out of her system." Now, she's talking about Russia, Africa and volunteering trips teaching kids English in third world countries.

I am the same. I have learnt that we don't need to be sad about the journeys that are finished, we can become excited about the ones that are about to start.

This is just the beginning.

You know you live in a big city when...

1. You're constantly on the offensive. Strangers will irritate you, everybody is incompetent and nothing is working as efficiently as it should. You start getting your fighting elbows ready even before you tap in on your Oyster card.

2. You're constantly late. Time speeds up, everything and everybody else is running late too. Punctuality is a quaint notion.

3. You're constantly busy. Staying home is incomprehensible. Home is for showering and sleeping. You look forward to a quiet night in which terminates at approximately 11pm when the boredom sets in.

4. You're constantly broke. See number 3.

5. You're constantly cooing at any patch of grass bigger than your bedroom. "Ooh look at the park it's so pretty and GREEN." Whatever happened to green?

6. You're no longer shockable. Everything is the norm, nothing is scary or superlative. The girl with the blue hair isn't crazy or cutting edge, she's a smurf riding the tube. The guy with the pick-axes tattooed on his cheeks isn't scary, he's hilarious. And probably a bit emo.

7. The possibility of doing anything you want at any time of the day is no longer thrilling, it's life.

8. You get carsick anytime you catch a cab and no longer miss driving down motorways.

9. You buy self-sufficient potted plants - for the windowsill, and are constantly scouting for more.

10. You're no longer afraid of getting lost.

11. You start referring to the city as your home and look forward to seeing it after every weekend away.