by Jessica Pan
Cometh the hour, cometh the woman.
“Is that a good book?” I say, leaning over our table, toward the man.
He looks up. Then I see the expression on his face. I have disturbed this man, this man who just wanted to eat his delicious ramen in peace at 8 p.m. on a Saturday and quietly read about the power of vulnerability.
“I don’t know. I’ve just started it,” he says. He purposefully opens the book and starts reading. Door shut. Curtains closed. Fuck off.
Oh God, I am “that person.” A chatty nightmare who terrorizes innocent people going about their daily lives. And because I’m obsessed with Deep Talk, I am also in danger of becoming the person who ruins every fun moment with a protest of, “But what about the children?” The party guest who friends describe afterward as “that lady who frankly scares us.”
The man is already reading the book on vulnerability and loneliness. I shouldn’t bother him. He’s on his way. He’s good.
Sometimes it’s good to ask Deep Questions, and sometimes it’s better just to be quiet. To live and let live. My old mode of being, which I had forgotten was sometimes so sweet. Especially to the strangers around me.
Our bill comes, and we pay. We put on our coats, and Sam and I walk into the cool night. I take one look back through the window to steal a glance at the man—he’s still intently reading the book.
We amble home, bellies full of hot, salty noodle soup, our hearts full, and get back just in time to catch the weekend soccer highlights on the BBC.
eleven
La-La Land
or
Traveling Solo
I board the train for the London Stansted airport at 6 a.m. on a Tuesday morning. It’s still dark outside, and I can’t remember the last time I was up before the sun.
I sit down on the train and rip open the envelope that arrived in the mail last week. There’s a handwritten note inside.
Hi Jessica,
Embrace what you don’t know.
Have fun,
Sarah
I don’t know Sarah. All I know is that she’s the one who chose where I’m flying to today. I’m leaving the country; I’ll end up somewhere in Europe. Only Sarah knows the rest.
One note in the envelope told me to arrive at the airport by 6:30 a.m., where I will board my flight to the unknown. It’s the closest a layman will ever get to receiving a note that says, “Your mission, should you choose to accept it . . .” and I am desperately hoping my mission isn’t too painful.
At exactly 6:30 a.m., my destination will be unlocked. All I have to do is scratch off the code in the second, sealed note in the envelope. I will type it into my phone, and then all will be revealed. On the train to Stansted Airport, I look out of the window and watch the sun slowly starting to rise across London as I wait for the clock to tick down. Would I land in a new city like Bologna, eat giant plates of pasta, and ride an orange Vespa? Would I drink strong coffee and walk by the sea in Stockholm? Explore the back streets of Madrid?
6:28 a.m. In these final two minutes, the possibilities are still endless. I could end up anywhere. Doing anything. Having the time of my life.
I’m in search of something more than a new place, though. I’m in search of a feeling and a state of being: that magical time when you can’t possibly predict what’s going to happen next or whom you are going to meet or where they are going to take you. In this state, everything flows, every surprise is a delight, and new people guide you to special adventures. My neighbor Hannah (future best friend?) told me that she calls the thing I’m looking for la-la land. Sometimes you can fall into la-la land (not the musical) on your doorstep, but it’s easier to access this feeling of infinite possibility when you are in a foreign land.
6:29 a.m. When in life do we have the time and room and space for this kind of surprise and adventure? Hardly ever. For vacations, we stay in positively reviewed hotels, eat at restaurants with excellent TripAdvisor ratings, go to the places with the most Instagram tags. There are standardized versions of every vacation spot—we leave home looking for a new adventure and return having enjoyed a near-identical vacation to everyone else we know, complete with the same photos of us jumping into the ocean from the same spot.
There is no mystery. There is no enigma. There is rarely la-la land. By not knowing where I am headed, and relying on the kindness and insights of strangers instead of using social media or guidebooks during my stay, I’m hoping to find it.
With just sixty seconds to go before my destination is unlocked, I think: I could be watching a Scandinavian indie band in Oslo in a few hours. Drinking red wine on a terrace in Bordeaux with a winemaker named Gerard. Wandering the canals in Amsterdam with a wooden pipe in my mouth.
6:30 a.m. It’s time. I find a coin in my pocket and scratch off the code on the paper. I key it into my phone. The numbers begin flashing:
5, 4, 3, 2, 1 . . .
I hold my breath, until finally, finally my secret destination is revealed:
Budapest, Hungary.
Oh.
✽ ✽ ✽
Whenever I travel, I tend to overplan. A part of introversion for some people is being too much inside their own head, being overly cautious, and not opening themselves up to other people. Which means less spontaneous adventure and more agonizingly detailed activity spreadsheets, with plenty of scheduled breaks.
So I decided to take a trip to the literal unknown. With no guidebooks, no internet tips, no Instagram searches. I will take the advice of people I meet along the way and be open to adventure in a brand-new foreign land.
Which is why the big reveal feels so anticlimactic. Because I’ve been to Budapest before. My parents went on a cruise along the Danube, and when they disembarked there, I met up with them.
Here’s what I remember about Budapest:
1.Gorgeous views of the city from a castle
2.A museum called the House of Terror full
of Nazi and Soviet nightmares
3.Frowny locals
4.Goulash
That was seven years ago. Budapest had been fine, but I hadn’t really loved it. I can’t quite remember why, but I wasn’t sure I’d ever return—and now I was on my way back. The company that booked me on this trip is called Srprs.me. Like, “Surprise Me!” Well, it definitely was a surprise—not least because I would never book a vacation flight that required me to be at Stansted at 6:30 a.m.
When you book your vacation on the Srprs.me site, you can pick up to three cities to veto. I chose Munich, because I’d just been there for the wedding; Barcelona, because I’d read that they’re currently protesting against overtourism; and Marseilles, because a woman I had met at a networking event a few weeks ago told me ominously that she had been drugged there and then said, “It’s fine . . . FINE. But never go to Marseilles.” Like a reverse fairy godmother, she gave me advice while clutching a glass of prosecco and staring away with a haunted look in her eyes. I took her very seriously.
I paid £220, and the site assured me that they would take care of accommodation and the flight. A week before the departure date, they sent me the weather report, so I had some semblance of what to pack. All I had to do was prepare for “amazement and ceaseless adventure.”
Done, Srprs.me. You’re on.
My parents were convinced that Srprs.me was really just a for-profit kidnapping operation in which idiots (me) fork out money and essentially fund their own abductions. Like the Liam Neeson movie Taken, except I willingly board the plane, my belongings neatly packed, and later disembark and run into the arms of my kidnappers yelling, “I’m herreee! What’s for lunch?”
So. Budapest. Hungary.
What do I do at the airport? I can’t buy a travel guide. That’s breaking the rules.
I make a beeline for the Duty Free perfume aisle and spray Chanel Chance on my wrists to symbolically i
nvite spontaneity and luck into my adventure. I slather Crème de la Mer all over my face, because that shit is expensive. It is not integral to adventure, but I’d rather fly by the seat of my pants with youthful skin. Then I rub Kiehl’s lotion on my hands, because airplanes are very drying. OK, NOW I’m ready.
Budapest. Yes, and . . . ?
✽ ✽ ✽
My hotel room is sparse but clean and decent sized. Large windows. A minifridge. I unpack. I’d packed a fancy floor-length dress because I’d imagined going to the Italian opera in Rome. A white bikini in case I was on the beach in San Sebastian or diving into the Aegean Sea. I put my things down and pack my bag for the day: some Hungarian cash, a black swimsuit (quick Danube dip?), my bottle of water. Ready.
I go to the door to unlock it. And struggle. I try to turn the key, but it won’t budge. I’m locked in. I can’t get out. I try to wiggle the key again, frantically. It’s stuck. I’ve locked myself in. I start sweating and feel a strangled yelp rise in my throat.
I’VE BEEN TAKEN. I HAVE KIDNAPPED MYSELF.
I run over to the room phone and press zero.
“Help. I’m locked in my room!” I shout breathlessly.
“Are you inside of the room or outside of the room?” the man on the end of the line asks, long-sufferingly.
“The inside.” How else would I be calling you?
He doesn’t even try to stifle his heavy sigh.
“I’ll send the maid to let you out,” he says.
A few minutes later, a confused maid does let me out. She tries to show me how to use the key, and I mime to her (thank you, improv) that I understand how to use the key but that it’s a very sticky lock.
She steps outside in a demonstrative flourish to lock me back in the room and test what I have learned. Once again I am stuck.
When I’m released the second time, I immediately pack up to switch rooms.
✽ ✽ ✽
Take two. Backpack on, passport tucked away, I pull my hair into a ponytail and tighten my shoelaces.
If I’m going to succeed at this, I will have to pretend I am Jason Bourne, thrust into a city with a mission. Except Jason wasn’t really into making friends. He was a trained assassin. Running for his life. Maybe this isn’t the best metaphor, but it’s helpful in the moment.
I suddenly feel very free. Where to? I could go anywhere.
I check my phone and see a message from Charles, my travel mentor.
Charles was Sam’s tour guide on a two-week trip across America about fifteen years ago, and they’d stayed friends ever since.
He has led multiple group tours across America, ranging from wholesome families to drunken bachelor parties and buses full of Australians, and not one of them died, despite many trying their very best to with idiotic, booze-fueled antics, like stealing people’s guns in New Orleans.
He has been to all fifty states in the US and trekked his way around Southeast Asia, South America, India, and Australia.
But that’s not why I chose Charles as my mentor. I was much more interested in his secret ability. See, Charles is one of those people who stumbles into la-la land nearly every place he goes. He’s the first to admit how lucky he is. He actually says things like, “It doesn’t really rain on me.” He wanders into bad situations and emerges wealthier, with fifteen new best friends. He forgets his passport and still makes his flight, then gets upgraded. He’s that guy.
It’s hard to listen to Charles for too long without hating him. Which is made extra hard because he’s extremely friendly and likable. He even looks like Ben Fogle. It almost goes without saying that he is an outgoing extrovert. We could not be more naturally different.
But when, over dinner in London, I tell Charles about my mission, to go out and meet strangers and have a good time and make friends without using my phone or guidebooks, he looks concerned.
“That would have worked ten years ago,” he says. “But everything has changed now. In my old tour groups, the group would bond and become good friends. Now, we’ll all go to a bar, and they’re on their phones looking at people on dating apps instead.”
I had been afraid of this.
“It’s much harder to meet people now. Before I could easily do it in a hostel or bar.”
“Were you good at it?”
“I was excellent at it,” Charles says.
He’s just stating a fact: Charles is a people magnet. The funnest guy in the room. You want to be in Charles’s orbit.
“So you’d just walk into a bar by yourself in a foreign country and meet people?”
“Absolutely.”
“Aren’t you afraid of them murdering you?”
Charles is on his second glass of wine. He looks at me.
“Fuck no.”
“Never?” I ask.
“I have zero of that in me. You have . . . all of it,” he says, gesturing at me.
I’m silent, thinking about this.
“Jess, I can’t remember ever thinking somebody’s a murderer.”
That’s because you’re a man, I think, darkly.
“I think that ten times a day,” I say.
“Well that’s probably why you’re bad at meeting people,” he says. “You can’t think like that and expect to make friends.”
“What if I fail at meeting a single person? Or having one adventure?” I ask.
“There is no fail,” Charles says. “Do it or don’t do it.” The charming Yoda has spoken.
And so I book my trip, my mind whirring with tough scenarios I might get myself into when traveling alone. Who holds your bag when you pee? What if you don’t see the sign for the right train station? If your wallet is stolen, who will spot you? What if you become ill? What if? What if? What if?
Charles’s message says this:
YOU GOT THIS! Embrace the unknown, choose your response, and make your own weather. :)
By “choose your response,” I think Charles means that we can decide to alter a less than ideal situation into a good one just by changing our outlook. Something I’m not a natural at. And I honestly don’t know how he expects me to make my own weather.
✽ ✽ ✽
I survey the streets of Budapest. I am at a total loss. I need to embrace the unknown, but I also don’t want to wander straight into the sprawling suburbs or fall straight into the bottom of a well. I turn back around and ask the guy at the hotel desk, Gabor (no relation to Zsa Zsa, he tells me), which direction I should go in, and he points directly ahead outside the front door.
“Everything is that way,” he says.
It’s a sunny, blue-sky day. I walk and see a sign for the opera house. The opera! I could go to the opera after all! I don’t need Italian opera: I have Hungarian opera!
But as I approach the building, I see that there is scaffolding wrapped all the way around the façade; it’s partially closed. At a booth outside the entrance, a man tells me that there are no performances, but I can still take a tour.
I wander into the opera house entrance and look at the ceiling’s gold moldings and fresco paintings and chandeliers while I wait in the line to buy a ticket. The ticket booth man greets me.
“Hello! How can I help you? Two tickets?”
I turn around, and there is an Asian man in his forties behind me.
“Oh, we’re not together,” I say.
Yet.
I pay for my ticket, and after the Asian man purchases his, I turn to him.
“Where are you from? Are you traveling alone, too?” I ask him, this man who is my future best friend.
“I’m from Borneo,” he says. A woman and a girl appear by his side. “And this is my family.”
The woman looks at me accusingly.
Great. I’ve hit on a Malaysian man in front of his wife. First stranger down.
Looking around at
the growing crowd of tourists assembling for the group tour in their various caps and fanny packs, I have a little moment.
I haven’t eaten today, it’s 3 p.m., and I don’t want to be here.
I want to see an opera, but I don’t want to do this tour.
Who am I trying to impress? I answer to no one but myself. I choose my response and toss my ticket into the trash.
After flagging down two strangers who seem baffled by my question of, “So where should I eat?” I head to an information booth and ask the Hungarian guy in his twenties manning the booth, “So, rather than where you tell tourists to go, where would YOU go eat lunch right now?” and he pulls out a map and points me toward an area called Október 6. I make my way in that direction and stop at the first restaurant, with red and white tablecloths and little jars of paprika on each table. After a very salty meal of wet pork and red peppers over soggy French fries in an empty restaurant, I walk through the city, looking up at the imposing Neo-Renaissance and Baroque buildings.
Alone in my head, I suddenly remember what psychologist Nick said: “Nobody waves, but everyone waves back.” I start to smile at people as they pass. No one smiles back.
Confused, I start googling Hungary stats (technically not cheating—I’m not looking for travel tips; I’m merely studying up on the locals). I land on an international ranking system comparing sixty-five country attributes among eighty nations. On the “Fun” scale of 1–10, Hungarians rate a 1.6. Italians score a 9.1. (Brits get a 4.2.) So maybe it’s not just me. I catch myself in the reflection of a store, scowling. Personally, I’m an even 0 right now.
The buildings are beautiful, but everything feels inaccessible to me: big, imposing, or empty. Normally, I’d go to a museum or gallery, but that’s not really a great way to meet new friends, and “meeting people” feels, to me, like an integral part of finding la-la land. My eyes are glazing over. It’s not even 7 p.m., but I can’t keep them open after not sleeping last night. I decide to walk back to my hotel and regroup.