Attending networking events and meeting lots of new people lately, I’ve honed my elevator speech (lift lilt in Euro parlance, perhaps?) answering, “So what do you do?”
Everyone should have an elevator speech to sum up who you are/what you do in a few sentences, in case you’re ever in a brief situation with a bazillionaire to whom you can pitch your grand business venture. As to how I ended up traveling for nearly a year, it’s not a short story. Given the amount of time and interest you have:
I spent several months backpacking solo in Europe and road-tripping around the U.S. Yes, it was amazing, thank you!
-OR-
I was let go from my job last January. My apartment lease was up and I had some great travel invites, so I put my stuff in storage and went, mostly solo, through eight* European countries and 25** U.S. states. Yes, it was amazing, thank you!
*France, Italy, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Czech Republic, Germany, Poland
**Hawaii, California, Colorado, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas, Illinois, Michigan, Tennessee, Wyoming, Nebraska, Missouri, Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia, Virginia, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas
-OR-
I was let go from my job last January. I started looking for work immediately and had signed up to visit Russia with my great-aunts. My apartment lease ended, so I realized I could couch-crash for awhile to save on rent. Then, we postponed the Russia trip due to safety concerns, so I ended up backpacking for 2.5 months in Europe. When I returned, I’ve stayed with family which gave me the opportunity to road-trip around the U.S. Yes, it was amazing, thank you!
-OR-
I was let go from my job last January. I started looking for work immediately and had signed up to visit Russia with my great-aunts. My apartment lease came up, and my best friends invited me to stay in a beach condo, so I decided I should couch-crash to save on rent. I reconnected with a French man with whom I’d been chatting online for a couple years, and when I realized I could have a stopover flying back to the U.S. from St. Petersburg, I asked if he wanted to meet for a few days. My family and I postponed the Russia trip due to safety concerns, so the fellow suggested I come to France instead. That didn’t work out like I hoped, so I backpacked solo through 8 countries for over two months. Then I stayed with family and road-tripped around the South and Eastern U.S. Yes, it was amazing, thank you!
-OR-
About a year ago, I was let go from my job (I was not at fault). I started looking for work immediately, to no avail. I had already signed up to visit Russia with my great-aunt and my aunt’s mother. My apartment lease came up, and my best friends invited me to stay at a Mississippi beach condo, so I decided I should couch-crash to save on rent. Meanwhile, I reconnected with a French man with whom I’d been chatting online for a couple years, and when I realized I could have a stopover in Finland flying back to the U.S. from St. Petersburg, I asked if he wanted to meet up for a few days in Helsinki. When my family and I postponed the Russia trip due to safety concerns, the fellow suggested I meet him in France instead.
We started exchanging loving messages in spite of eight hours’ time difference and a language barrier. We planned to spend at least six weeks road-tripping in his convertible, staying with his friends in France, Spain, Italy and maybe Switzerland. I was most excited to drive through the Pyrenees Mountains and maybe work at his family’s bicycle shop. Then we’d get married and I’d move to France. Obviously! (Ha, that seems so ridiculous now. But it is absolutely what I believed and what we discussed.)
I arrived in Paris and we had 24 almost-perfect hours together, including this view of the Eiffel Tower from our balcony. After that though, it was very clear that 2.5 years of typing did not accurately predict the validity of this relationship. My storybook foreign relationship was with Google Translate, not a real person. The French man’s English speech was good but definitely not capable of the sweet and personal things he’d typed over the years. He’d encouraged me not to learn French before the trip yet was very impatient with my lack of knowledge to the point of refusing to speak to me in English.
I felt physically terrible because of health issues, ironically exacerbated by French food, cosmetics and stress. I lost 10 pounds in two weeks (in spite of lots of baguette, beer, tartes and cheese) and his only response was that I looked “better” but needed to buy tighter clothes. I tried to cook for him because “that’s what French women do,” and when it was a burned disaster, he made me serve the ruined food out of the trashcan. The convertible in which we were supposed to tour Europe didn’t even start… unless I paid 500 Euro to fix it. I wasn’t supposed to smile at anyone else or go anywhere alone (except to the corner store for something he wanted me to mail illegally which I did NOT), so I felt like a hostage.
After two weeks in France, we decided to fly to Rome for a long weekend, like how people in the U.S. go to Vegas. By this point, I’d given up on amour but not le voyage, so I wanted to make the best of it, plus he hadn’t paid for my return-to-the-U.S. flight as previously agreed and still unseen.
In Rome, I could finally smile and speak English again! Frenchie and I lasted a day before he out-of-nowhere got very angry with me, and I finally admitted to myself that I was in an unsafe, unhealthy situation. NO, he did not hit me. NO, unless you’ve been in an abusive relationship, you don’t understand what someone’s eyes look like right before they go crazy on you. NO, I was not being overly-paranoid, and YES, I considered coming back early — for approximately 17 seconds — before realizing that I have never let a guy keep me down and certainly wasn’t going to start on my “dream Euro trip.”
Even the best desserts in the world aren’t sweet enough to put up with someone leading you to treating yourself poorly.
I’m leaving out so much good stuff, like the dying sailor traveling his Bucket List, the beautiful tattooed Canadians in the Metro station who convinced me to stay at their hostel, the Dutch family who helped me find a bus at 4 AM… and that all happened in my first few hours solo! But yeah, I ended up backpacking solo for two more months and eight countries.
Then I road-tripped around the South and Eastern U.S., but that’s another story… Yes, it was amazing, thank you!
Of course, this is way more than an elevator speech and would be impossible to share at a networking event. But it’s my life, and it’s how I ended up on the most incredible journey of it so far. I share it because some people might think I’m just a lucky woman with a break from work who wanted to backpack around Europe by herself. I AM lucky – lucky that I wasn’t physically hurt, lucky that I had the foresight to save some money through the years, lucky that I met kind strangers, lucky that anyone cares enough to read this far… but I cannot take credit for being one of those awesome travelers who intentionally sets out for a grand journey alone. Maybe next time. But this time, I was just making the best of a bad situation, much like the job-loss which set this whole experience in motion.
I’m sure by making it all the way through this post, you’d be hitting the alarm button by now if you were actually stuck on an elevator with me! Crazy travel lady… Merci beaucoup. Grazie. Thank you.
Your voice matters!