7 things I hate about traveling

Even though I am always highlighting how amazing traveling is and how much I love it, how it is the best way to learn and educate yourself, not to talk about all the great experiences and memories traveling gives you, let alone the fact how I can’t keep calm unless I have a travel to look forward to, there are still some things I really don’t enjoy about traveling. As a traveler you learn that there are certain things that are more unpleasant, unforeseen, and sometimes very unexpected that you just have to deal with. In the end it is in these stressfull moments where your boundaries might get pushed further than you ever thought possible, you will learn more about yourself and also learn how to handle difficult situations better. I tried that a couple of times now just a few weeks ago –  first in the airport in Cuba, and then three weeks later in the airport in Copenhagen. I’ve come up with a little list of things I definitely don’t enjoy when traveling, but hey, life isn’t always a bed of roses, neither is traveling, and sometimes you have to take the bitter with the sweet.

7 things I hate about traveling

♥ Packing. I tend to feel a tiny wave of stress coming over me when I have to pack. Especially if i am going away for a longer time. I am always in doubt about how much to bring, what kind of clothes to bring, what I am going to wear, what occasions I need to bring clothes for, and what kind of weather the clothes have to suit. Usually it always work out someway, the best way is just to try and give your packing some extra thought and think about what you really feel like wearing, what is smart to bring, and it will all work out.

♥ Airports. Checking in. Carrying bags. A lot of people. Delays. Missed flights. Cancelled flights. Important documents and passport and passport to keep track of. Waiting time and a lot of it. A high level of stress. Need I say more? Airports will never be my favorite in this world. The only thing good about them are the planes that hopefully take you to a great destination.

♥ Flights. Short flights are no problem for me, I especially like the Berlin-Copenhagen route I am a frequent flyer on. 45 minutes in the air, and bam, you are there. It is the long flights that are my problem. Little to no leg room, bad air, mostly bad food, and the point of boredom you reach that you thought wasn’t possible. Then you try to sleep for a bit until you wake up ten minutes later because your neck hurts or you foot or hand is in some kind of cramp. The way your body feels and hurts after being squished into inhumanely little space for way too long. I was lucky enough to fly business twice on long flights, and if I was just lucky enough to be in business class on all my long flights, I would never complain again ever in my life. Being able to sleep in a bed with a big, nice blanket during a whole flight and landing feeling fresh and rested is simply amazing.

♥ Traveling time in general. Whether it is with bus, trains, flights, the time it takes to wait around, go from and to the airport, this time is annoying and can seem very long. Usually when I am going to somewhere I am always so excited, so the traveling time doesn’t seem that long, but going home, it can seem like it will never end. I wish somebody could invent a machine that would take you to your desired destination with a single click.

♥ Jetlag. Regardless if you simply can’t sleep, you wake up at crazy hours in the morning, or you are trying to stay awake but you are so tired you just want to sleep, jetlag is annoying. Especially when traveling east jetlag gives you a tough time. They say that every hour of time difference will take you a day to get over. Who has time for that kind of stuff?

♥ When things don’t go as planned. It can be a missed flight, a cancelled flight, a misunderstanding, forgotten stuff, unforeseen happenings, or simply something you looked forward to but turned out to be a big disappointment. As I wrote in the beginning life isn’t always easy, things don’t always turn out as you thought they would, and even though this can be tough sometimes, the best way to see it is as a challenge, take it and turn it into someting you can learn from. An example is when my boyfriend booked tickets for the 22nd of March from Cuba instead of the 22nd of February, and we were stranded in Cuba with no money, no phone service or internet, it hopefully taught him to be more carefull and make sure he books the right dates when buying flight tickets in the future.

♥ Unpacking. As if it wasn’t depressing enough to come back home to the real world after being away, you also have to unpack your luggage, start washing a lot of dirty clothes and put everything back where it belongs, plus put your suitcase back to where ever it is kept. Unpacking is annoying and far to often I’ve left my luggage in a corner for many days until I finally pulled myself together to unpack it.

Another important thing to keep in mind when traveling is also that you or nobody can predict how it is going to be. You can’t predict how the weather is going to be in your destination, you can’t predict if your flight is being cancelled, and you can’t predict if you will like a new place you are visiting or not. You just got to go with the flow and relax, because you can’t predict or control everything when traveling. And that is also part of the beauty.

With this being said, I know I would be able to write another list with things I love about traveling, which would contain a lot more points and reasons why I love traveling than this one.