Who Travels Alone?

It may very well be unfashionable to admit to traveling alone. When I explain to people that this weekend I’ll be going to x or y place, they ask, “Who are you going with?” No one. “Alone?” Yep.

At this point they’ll probably give me a strange look. It could be a safety concern—though, as a young man moving within friendly, English-speaking Ireland, that’s unlikely. Or it could be the fear of loneliness, both of how it feels in the moment and of how it appears to everyone else. Both considerations are viable: I’ve eaten at a restaurant alone, and most every picture I’ve taken has had no one to include me in the view. Neither reality is preferable. I’d much rather be with a group of friends as I move through a new place. Groups can secure you as a traveler. But sometimes a group can be a luxury which just isn’t available.

By this point I’ve been out on two weekends away from Dublin, one with friends and one without. The first was to Cork—that’d be the same trip whose bus ticket I mistimed. The second was to Galway—blissfully free of mistakes but also of companions. Hindsight deems each experience a success and a gem. But I get the feeling that plenty of people would view the Galway trip as a failure, regardless of the sights I saw along the bay and the music I heard echoing through the cobbled streets. Galway might be penalized from the first moment, when I climbed onto the bus alone, to ride alone to a town where I’d be a stranger all by myself.

Such a penalty misses the point of travel. At its most basic, a trip is about where you go, not who travels with you. Companions can certainly enhance the experience. They can also worsen it (Disney World in August with children, anyone?). As previously stated, I’d prefer a group of people to enjoy the destination with me. In Cork we all laid on the grass of the Titanic Memorial Garden, looking up at the shifting clouds and making tentative plans together. It was simple and relaxed, all of us sprawled around on our backs. But we could’ve done that anywhere. Conversely, I can’t walk out along a jutting pier into Galway Bay from my friends’ apartment sofa. That demands travel. I needed to push myself into motion so that I could behold the sight of the shimmering Atlantic, visible through the mouth of the bay. For me personally, the destination is a better motivator than anyone who might join me.

Still, the alternating gold and dust of trips alone need to be sifted. Wandering by myself through St. Nicholas’s Church for prayer, and then through the nearby farmer’s market for snacks, gave me an unhurried, unattached pace for once in my life. But dinner gave me pause. “For one,” I told the greeter, and, without a moment to think, she turned to seat me at a table fitted into the nook of a jutting wall. No other chairs could physically be added on; I got the wiped-down, tidy little loneliness table for one. Has this table ever seated more than one? “Oh, I think so,” the waitress lied. Lemons are just lemons, however, and I treated myself to that dinner, eating slowly and ordering an Irish coffee and then a pot of tea. Pathetic as it might sound, you can’t wine and dine yourself if any friends come along.

Afterwards, the night was cold as I dangled my feet over the bay’s inlet, and colder when I walked along Market Street listening for the music to spill out of the pubs. Unfortunately, when I eventually plopped down at a hopping bar, the chalk sign outside had advertised music falsely, as the regular drinkers’ hubbub was the only sound. Ultimately that didn’t matter, as the muted rugby game overhead let me ask questions of the man sitting to my left. His name was Enda, and he explained how no one in Galway (Connaught province) would cheer for the Leinster province team who was playing against the Scots in the mass of muscular clashing. He introduced me to his crew of middle-aged mates, two of whom were also named Kevin. Nowhere else would I think that this was, in fact, waking life. Enda and Kevin (the first one, I think) clapped me on the back and wished me well when I called it a night. While the walk to the hostel was short, it remained chilly and dark after the buzzing relief of that pub.

Galway was a success. That’s not to say that it was pitch-perfect from the first moment to the last. Walking alone and eating alone are cold realities in foreign towns. But they gave me ample time to observe a new setting, one somehow containing both the modern and the medieval—the wall of a Celtic fortress is somehow housed within a shopping mall. A pinch of nerve let me be buoyed by the jovial pub-talk which strangers can somehow give so freely. Any cluster of friends might’ve lulled me into thinking I didn’t need to reach out for these experiences, that the uncertainty of stretching wasn’t necessary. Such a lesson would’ve proven counterproductive. This is the best time for kicking myself into gear.