ChrisCrossesCountries

When I left New Jersey on the 21st of November 2022, it was fast and with barely any warning. Within two weeks I had decided my departure date, quit my job and had my plane tickets for Europe in my hand. My first stop would be 5 nights in London, mostly because from a logistical standpoint it made sense to fly there from JFK Airport, it was somewhat short flight and I could sleep on the plane and then drop my bags at my hostel and explore the city I reached out to my friends who I knew were living in London at the time, both of whom I met on a previous trip to Thailand in 2019.

My hostel was located in the center of London, a neighborhood called King’s Cross. It was at the center of the subway lines and only a 10 minute walk from the station which was a huge advantage for getting around what was pretty much my first time in what I going forth would consider a mega-city. London, Tokyo, Bangkok, Istanbul, Siagon, all of these are locations that other cities aspire to be. Massive, sprawling, infinite lights and endless sounds, nearly impossible to walk, public transit or a taxi is a must in these places.

When I landed in London Gatwick Airport it was about 4am, I had barely slept and I was a physical manifestation of anxiety, it had finally happened. I was doing the thing I always wanted to do, I was Bilbo Baggins leaving the Shire heading towards the Misty Mountains. Yes, I had been to Australia in 2018 and Thailand in 2019, but those were so small scale compared to my ambitions with this trip. The plan was fluid but I knew I would make my way East to South East Asia, the parts of the plan that were concrete was I would do 5 days in London, fly to Morocco, go camp in the Sahara Desert, make my way north to the city of Tangier, catch a flight to Lisbon, see a friend I had temporarily living in the city named John, spend 4-5 days with him, then fly to Germany, see another friend of mine in Frankfurt, take a train to Koln, see the Christmas Markets in the city, then go to Belgium, swing by Brussels and Antwerp, and then head to Amsterdam for Christmas and the New Year, then take a train down through France to Spain, meet John in Barcelona or Valencia and fly to Istanbul.

Very ambitious and turned into my first lesson in backpacking, there is no plan that will make it to action. Everything changes.

As I stepped out of the gate and towards immigration my head was speedrunning all the things I wanted to do while I was here for the next few days. I had two friends in the city who agreed to meet. I wanted to go to the British Museum, the Library of London, Big Ben, Parlament, London Bridge, the London Eye. I wondered if this was what I wanted to do, or if this was all there was to do. It was the beginning of figuring out what kind of backpacker, traveler, vagabond I wanted to be for the rest of my trip. I knew I could lean on my two friends in London to help me find the “Hidden Gems” that the tourists wouldn’t know about but when I wasn’t with them I wondered what else I could find and what would be worth doing. 

Then before I could process it I found myself at Gatwick’s subway terminal and I was facing my first challenge. Metro systems. I had never had to use one before, in fact being from New Jersey we actively avoided subways and metros, I grew up using a car to get everywhere, the only time I used public transit was when I would take the train up to NYC on the rare occasion I needed to go to the city, and once in the city I had always walked, or taken a cab. The only time I took the subway in somewhere like NYC was when I was with locals who understood the lines and how to get around. It seems such a small thing now but I was racked with anxiety and I fear of ending up in the wrong neighborhood. 

Again, it’s such a silly thing when I look back and the fear I had, staring at this lifeless machine that spits out tickets with dozens of different names and lines and neighborhoods, unable to ask a simple question of, “Where the hell is King’s Cross and how do I get there?” so I began to look around for an employee, a ticket checker, someone with a pulse and more brain cells than myself who could help me in my sleep deprived state figure out where to go. I saw a small slightly overweight woman in a yellow vest by the tracks. I approached with a smile and asked as kindly as I could, “Excuse me Miss, which line is the one that goes to King’s Cross?” and to my horror the voice that came out of this woman’s mouth was the heaviest Scottish accent I had ever had the displeasure of hearing. I did not understand a single word of what she said. I just stood there, staring at her in disbelief that of all the people in this country, this city, this airport I picked the one employee I couldn’t understand. I must’ve made it clear to her I didn’t understand a word she said with my expression of defeat because she glared at me, sighed, said something in the ancient unknown language of the Scots and walked me over to the terminal. A second later the screen lit up, with the line for King’s Cross as she had done all the work for me. I handed over my credit card and a few minutes later was on the next train to London. No SIM card, no internet, no idea which stop was mine, and a crushing feeling of embarrassment and stupidity.

I actually managed to pay attention and found my stop easily, and using the wifi in the station figured out the path to my hostel and next came checking in. I was early, very early, it wasn’t even 7am and clearly sleep deprived. When I got to the hostel I was greeted by a young english guy, probably in his early 20s and a middle aged woman who was probably some sort of supervisor or night shift worker. They had told me that check in was at 4pm and to come back then, gave me a tiny locker for my backpack, which at this point in my trip was a tiny little 35L (9 Gallons) backpack with only my bare essentials. Toothbrush, toothpaste, floss, five pairs of underwear, three shirts, a digital camera, small tripod, two pairs of socks, one pair of flip flops, one comb, various charging cables, a universal travel adaptor, one bathing suit, one pair of basketball shorts, and a pair of Maui Jim sunglasses, I wore my one pair of jeans. For those curious, eighteen months later the only thing still in my possession is the pair of flip flops and the camera, the sunglasses were sent home after fear of losing them or being stolen, every other item was either destroyed from overuse or donated to hostels, or forgotten when I was packing.

The next lesson I would eventually come to learn was from this hostel, early check in is a fantasy and it doesn’t matter if you get an overnight flight/train/bus if you’re gonna be sleep deprived and exhausted praying for rest when you get to your accommodation, this also is something I feel more and more as I get older and keep traveling. If you can’t guarantee early check in, book a morning or afternoon transport. It’s not worth the pain, maybe at 20 or 22 when you have infinite energy, but at 29 or 30? I’d rather pay the extra $20 to spend a day traveling than a night bus.

So much to my frustration, I sat in the lobby of this hostel wondering what to do while I waited for my room to be ready. First mission was to find a SIM card for internet, I Wasn’t going far without that, then I’d head to the British Museum. Getting the SIM card wasn’t difficult, because I never got it, I had a quick conversation with some backpackers in the hostel and they mentioned to me something I had never heard of before, called an eSim. Which is a digital sim card you buy online and add to your phone through a QR code you scan. With the added ability of hindsight I will say most eSim packages are a bit of a ripoff. For the amount of money you spend on an eSim, you can get a sim card for half the price, but the convenience of not having to set up the sim card, or worry about losing the physical card itself is nice, and if you are moving through multiple countries quickly, I’ve found regional eSim card work well with that style of travel.

After a few minutes of research and $30usd later I had my eSim, which would work through the vast majority of Europe for 60 days, and had 10GB of data, then began my walk to the Museum, only a 15 minute walk from the hostel I was relieved I wouldn’t have to worry about taking the Metro system for the moment. Fast forward to my arrival and I was genuinely shocked to find the museum was free to enter, given my previous experiences in Australia, Thailand and the United States I just always figured if you ever wanted to see or do something interesting you’d have to pay for it. The entire museum is massive, and I really should’ve done some research on what specifically I wanted to see and do inside. What actually ended up happening was 4 hours of speed walking through as many wings of the building as I could, snapping photo after photo telling myself I’d read the plaques and descriptions when I got back to the hostel. 

As I think back on that morning as I tried to adjust to the new time zone, my jetlag, the mental and physical exhaustion finally catching up with me I do regret going to the museum that day in such a state, because I remember very little about what actually happened inside, the most memorable thing I found going through my photos was that I got to see a replica of the Rosetta Stone, which was the tablet used to translate Egyptian hieroglyphics, and I only found out it was a replica of the object later on after I took the picture. Overall a very underwhelming morning, with the hindsight of disappointment and a lesson on time management learned.

When I arrived back at the hostel it was still too early to check in, about 2pm. However I was exhausted, tired and weak from my flight and the running around the museum had put on me. I remember walking up to the front desk in a state of desperation and hope that maybe, just maybe the room was ready, it was a different staff this time and to my fortune it turned out the room was ready, and had been ready since the night before as no one had booked that bunk in the dorm. So I could’ve been sleeping all morning if the night shift had done their job and checked to see if the room was ready. I would normally have been livid at this discovery, but I was too tired to complain and start an issue, so I took my room key and collapsed in my tiny hostel bunk.

This would be my life for the next foreseeable future. Small 3 meter wide hostel dorms with strangers, no privacy, living out of a backpack, hoping to find some version of friendship or companionship, maybe some romance if I was lucky and then try to find some answers to what I was actually doing with my life and make some memories along the way. What did I hope to accomplish out here? What does any backpacker, traveler, vagabond, hope to accomplish by forsaking their previous life, friends, family, job, and travel the world? It sounds so romantic, so exciting, and it will always fundamentally change how you view the world, its people and problems, but at this point, I had more questions than answers, and a desire to just get away and simply see the world with my own eyes, not through the eyes of a screen or a mass of pixels.

After a few hours of rest I found myself finally processing what I had just gone through and I remembered my list of things I wanted to do while I was here in London. I had only a few days before my flight to Marrakech and there were people I planned to see and places I wanted to visit.

The best advice I can give any aspiring traveler when it comes to sightseeing and lists is to have a general idea of what you want to see in a place, what you want to experience, but do not marry the list. In nearly every single place I’ve been to, whatever list or ideas I had get changed, modified, or thrown out the window completely once I touch down and start doing research. TikTok, Reddit and Youtube are wonderful tools for doing a surface level research for restaurants and activities but like any veteran traveler will tell you, going out and walking around, meeting other travelers and picking their brains, and if you are lucky befriending locals always helps. Something I was fortunate enough to have in London.

In 2019 I had done a month across Southern Thailand and had made friends with a few connections with some people who now lived in London, and who were all more than willing to show me around. Two in particular named James and Jay both currently had their evenings free and were willing to show me around while I was in London.

That night I met James at the St Paul’s Cathedral and got a tour of the “City of London” which to my understanding is the financial center of London not too dissimilar to Wall Street in New York City. We went to three different pubs and drank, caught up and exchanged stories of what we had been up to over the last 4 years since we had last seen each other in Thailand. One of the pubs he had taken me to which I unfortunately cannot recall the name of was allegedly built in like 900AD, had the original stone steps and a basement that had the history of generations written on its walls, you could feel the history in this small little hole in the wall bar. It was my first time as an American really understanding how far back history can go. As pretty much every building and structure in America is less than 150 years old, it can be confusing for our small American brains to see places older than that. I don’t think many Americans can truly understand how old some places on the Earth are, especially when so much built today falls apart so quickly.

Over the next few days most of my time in London was spent exploring back alley’s, trying to learn the metro system, and realizing how underwhelming English food is. It’s been said before but it’s worth repeating, the English conquered almost the entire planet for their spices and then refused to use it in any of their food, unlike the Italians, who have appropriated the tomato as their own or the Irish who have an entire famine based on their love for potatoes, and both of those foods come from South America.

Some of you may be wondering for continuity’s sake what else I knocked out from my list of things to do in London. I managed to see Big Ben and Buckingham Palace, which were probably the most touristy places I could’ve gone to, and the most underwhelming parts of London. And even in the moment I realized that I was not impressed and very confused. “Was this it? This is why people travel?” I remember asking myself, I knew that this wasn’t what I wanted out of traveling. Seeing nice buildings is alright, but honestly you’re not missing anything you haven’t seen in a picture. This line of questioning and wonder of “What is traveling to me?” Has lead me to a popular catchphrase I use when I am talking to people and they ask me for advice on going someplace, I simply respond with, “Well what do you want out of travel?” There’s levels, categories and subcategories to this lifestyle. I plan to break this all down in detail in a later post.

On my last morning in London I remember a feeling of dissatisfaction, I hadn’t been blown away with the city like I thought I would be, I think it may have had something to do with not having realistic expectations. Something I would get hammered with and beaten to death with on my next country, Morocco. I think I came to London expecting a grand adventure and it was not the place for that. As I was sitting on the train back to London Gatwick airport and all of my focus was already shifted to Morocco, as I knew this would be the adventure I was looking for. Three weeks bouncing around the country, my own private guide, the cracked alleys of Marrakesh and the sands of the Sahara desert awaited me. My own Indiana Jones adventure.