I get a lot done when left to wander by myself.

I love to walk around pointlessly – or seemingly so. There is always something to see or a topic to muse over to the soundtrack of footsteps. It’s not like I’m some recreated nineteenth century Parisian flâneur wannabe (the stock character of the grands boulevards dandy, Baudelaire’s ‘gentleman stroller of city streets’) because I’m (first and most obvious point coming to mind) not male and am thus inclined to have a poke through supermarkets I encounter along the way, just for the sake of having a browse and seeing what’s available… My strolls aren’t gentrified and dignified strolls to see and be seen, but more along the lines of scurried anonymity (or so I hope anyway).

I walk to think and it gives me a great time to reflect. For instance, in the Polish ski resort town of Zakopane I opted for trudging the snow-filled backstreets rather than joining the jostle for the cable car bound for the slopes. It was somewhere on this afternoon of pine tree branches weighed down with snow, black-shawled babushki and stringy smoked cheeses that I decided to study in Russia – and voila! The rest is history!

But anyway, without any claims and profundity and in this vein - I’ve covered most of the territory of the co-joining Crans and Montana on foot. I’ve figured out the town centres (not that it was rocket science), located the funicular and found some pretty neat tracks through the woods to lakes and secluded chalets nestled amongst the snowy trees. Hmm… on heading back home again I’ve also realised that the public transport is free… but where would be the fun of discovery if I was sitting on a bus seat!

Do I have something to prove? Do I have a screw loose somewhere? Yes and no, because I can’t believe that many people my age are “settling down”, without hardly having shaken enough up to settle it all down comprehensively. I worry that if that was the case for me, somewhere along the line I would explode in volcanic proportions, but as that would probably occur somewhere in mid-life, then I would be all caught up with the regret of age for not doing it earlier, tied down by those responsibilities that I had set in place so early in my life, and who knows? Perhaps I would then bore those on the “backpacker trail” with stories of my own teenagers, who in turn (backpackers and my teenagers) would be equally traumatised for life. So, all in all, “getting it out of my system” is a general health strategy for personal and global-wellbeing.

Ok, that was all convoluted bollocks – please don’t interpret it as an ageist rant – for here is the real reason. There are some amazing people out there, but as people tend to get caught up in their own lives for various reasons, you’ve got to get out there to meet them.

That’s it, plain and simple.

Even during my two months of the “Eurolines Hotel du Wheels”, I met some amazing people. Filipino immigrants and Rwandan refugees waiting for late trains in early morning Copenhagen were willing to tell me their life stories and experiences in Denmark, in a most elaborate fashion. We were attempting to convey that we had known each other for years (with ears only for each other), just to prevent a young drunk who was quite obviously trying also to tell me his life story and a few things that I wasn’t interested to hear. Old Polish men who would sneak me some beer and sausage in the bus and tell me about their favourite things in Poland. People out there are willing to open their hearts or houses to a total stranger with a backpack, and that’s why I love to travel.

I must explain why Eurolines was my key to surviving my first year in Europe, although really it’s very simple.  Accomodation.  I thanked my lucky stars the day I found that Eurolines had a two month unlimited travel pass, night buses, and a low-season discount.  What seemed perfectly appealing did have its drawbacks though.  The accommodation was a bus seat (although being able to sleep quite compactly, I could crawl up in foetal position and get a good night’s sleep if I had both seats to myself), and “low-season” meant “middle of winter”, so it was quite chilly for the numerous 4 and 5am arrivals.  But what I would do is spend 5 nights in the bus, waking and wandering the cities to which I had been spirited overnight, and then a few nights in a hostel for a shower and a proper bed.  I loved it.  If I couldn’t get a ticket to somewhere, I’d just go elsewhere.  I think my itinerary read something like: Budapest – Amsterdam – Dublin (as there weren’t any tickets to Stockholm when I first wanted to go, I spent the weekend in Ireland instead) – Amsterdam – Stockholm – Copenhagen – Paris – Madrid (rest, relax… shower…) – Andorra (a day of skiing in the

Pyrenees, why not?) – Barcelona (more time…) – Frankfurt – Warsaw – Krakow (even more time…) –

Prague.

  I’ve overcome my initial attention-span deficit and I am now able to stay in a place for longer than three weeks without getting itchy feet.  Maybe I can stretch it to four weeks now… 

But no, I was recently able to stay in the one place for a year and a half – however, as it was Russia, the biggest country in the world, I could quite contently “trot” at my own pace for vast distances and through diverse cultural and geographic regions without having to deal with the bureaucratic visa rigmarole of leaving Russia’s borders.  But more about that later…

An obvious side-effect of a Eurocentric education is an inkling to set forth across the continent, mapping out places where events from history books took place in Technicolor and not just in fine-print packed into paragraphs and henceforth crammed into young heads. This curiosity more often than not develops into the more serious condition of wanderlust, and then, as I’m lead to believe, into dromomania, a passion or uncontrollable impulse to wander or travel, a malady (or blessing) by which I’m seriously afflicted.

The first time I went alone to Europe was when I was 18. Having finished high school and saved my pocket money, I was determined to somehow stretch this meagre amount to last for a whole year without working. Thanks to numerous relatives, generous students willing to share their dormitories, Eurolines and Eastern Europe, this was possible. I was also lucky enough to have well-travelled parents, with well-travelled friends, who had sent their teenage sons and daughters to stay at my parents’ house, and thus the doors of Europe where open for me.

My favourite places in Europe – what I think of as the majestic golden triangle of Vienna, Budapest and Prague; countries of the former Yugoslavia, the Baltic states and Scandinavia, anywhere in Southern Europe blessed by an ocean, and most definitely anywhere with either a picturesque mountain range or a comprehensive recycling system or bicycles as a recognised and supported form of public transport. Have I covered it all yet?