Longing for home?
A friend asks the key question, but I still have miles before I sleep
“Ever long just to be home?”
I’ve been on the road for four months now, so the question tugged at some heartstrings. It was from my friend Jacquie, who had just had a dream trip to Spain tarnished by lost luggage that included the charger for her only means of communication: her laptop. (She eschews cellphones.)
For Jacquie, I guess it was a little like getting on that rollercoaster where your only thought from the start is “when will this end!?”
Despite a few stumbling blocks tho, my trip has gone pretty smoothly. I’ve made a few bad choices for lodging, but that’s just the luck of the draw when you travel on a budget. I’ve also been ill a few times, but that happens to me back home, too. This past week I’ve been laid low by a stomach bug, also known as gastro or tourista, which wasn’t a whole lot of fun, especially with the call of seagulls constantly reminding me there’s a beautiful ocean beach just a few blocks away.
But the great experiences have far outnumbered the bad—knock on wood—and I have a trove of cherished memories backed up by thousands of photos and videos.
To get back to Jacquie’s question, tho: Yes, sometimes I want to get back on a plane and go home to my Verdun apartment. It has provided me for a decade with stability and comfort and familiarity. But I am on this excursion because that was exactly what I needed to shake up in my life: my routine and my complacency.
I miss my friends, too, of course. But I chat with several regularly, even video-chatting at 3 am from the bus station in Dijon, France.
The moments of wanting to go home are fleeting, pushed into the background whenever I start planning the next legs of the trip. I just added three more days in Essaouira, to make up for that lost beach time, then I plan to bus-train it to Fès, 525 km north-east, as the jet (rarely) flies. A few days in Fès, then a train to the coast, then a ferry across the Mediterranean to Spain.
It’s the ferry that interests me most. I’ve been on big ocean ferries to Vancouver Island, but the Mediterranean crossing is emblematic of the world’s migrant crisis. I want to get a tiny sense of what that crossing entails, though my ship will be 1000 times more seaworthy than those that desperate migrants typically travel on, sometimes for weeks. I’m looking into routes other than the typical one-hour crossing at the shortest gap between Africa and Europe. There’s one from Nador, Morocco, to Barcelona that’s 31 hours, but it arrives at 2 am., so no doubt I’ll need a hotel room rather than my usual hostel or airbnb. On the other hand, the crossing includes a berth for the previous day.
I can’t help but think these are tiny considerations compared to “what happens if I drown after my family has spent everything we have to get me to Europe, what we believe is only hope for a better life?”
All my plans are, of course, up in the air. Some people hate “up in the air,” but it is the essence of freedom for me. Even the small commitments, three days at Hostel A or two at Airbnb C, make you feel a little trapped sometimes. I’ve done a lot of things on the spur of the moment, like my trips to Montpellier, Strasbourg and Essaouira, with few regrets. In fact, my biggest regrets come from my longest commitments, like a booked two-month stay at a Toulouse Airbnb where it was clear after two days that the landlord and I had to part ways. #Unbooked. The silver lining to that experience is that it freed me to make my jaunt from Montpellier to Paris and back.
Constant movement isn’t easy either. Packing and unpacking the same 8 t-shirts and 3 sleeved shirts, the box of electronic doodads to solve any connection problem, even the bottle of Chianti I was intending on gifting (I don’t drink) on New Year’s Eve. Sometimes you don’t even bother unpacking for shorter stays, you just put all the things you’ll definitely need in the knapsack and store the rest in the valise.
The arrival at a new place is an adrenalin boost that makes it all worthwhile, usually. Some places are a little disappointment (hello, Casablanca), but others invite you to extend your stay, perhaps forever?
So what’s my forever home? I haven’t figured that out yet. Toulouse is still my first choice in France, but there’s lots more France to see. The entire west coast, in fact. Then there’s the unexplored options in Spain, Portugal, Italy. Hell, why not Belgium, Romania, Denmark or even Estonia?
Do I long to be home? Yes. I just need to find out where that is.
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Thanks for keeping me company.