Hasta Luego, Barcelona; Ahoj, Prague!

I honestly can’t believe I’m in Prague now; I have a bit of whiplash. 

We landed here two nights ago after a day of travel that I’d rather not memorialize in writing. (Teleportation, people; it’s 2017, why has travel only gotten worse post-airplane?) While I’m happy to be here and I’m really happy that my apartment is a bit more spacious, I wasn’t ready to leave Barcelona.

To start, there’s just so much to do. So many cultural sites, so many restaurants to try–part of working while traveling is that you can’t be a nonstop tourist. If I’d been in Barcelona with nothing to do but explore for a month, that may have been long enough, but working and doing We Roam activities as well…I could have easily spent the whole summer there.

And on top of that, saying goodbye to Barcelona also meant saying goodbye to a new friend. One of my fellow Roamers, Dawn, became one of my closest friends over the last month, but Barcelona was her final stop. For now, at least…Dawn, if you’re reading this, you better come back. 

Then on a deeper level, I’ve spent the last couple weeks feeling very off-balance. I was too overwhelmed initially to react to anything; I just experienced it. But as time has gone on, I’ve become adjusted enough to actually feel overwhelmed, if that makes sense.

I truly like every member of the trip individually, but collectively, it’s a lot. People are always doing something or planning to do something. And then those plans change, constantly and rapidly, which is difficult for someone as Type A as I am. Last night for instance, I was in the middle of trying to write this blog post when my friends decided suddenly that it was time to leave to go do something that I was only mildly interested in doing. So I closed my computer, put my shoes back on, and ran out, only to wind up spending 20 minutes standing in a hallway because we ran into people we know. (There are always people we know.) Then there was the negotiation: where are we going, how will we get there, in what order will we do things.

Once we got the excursion underway, I had a great time. I almost always do, which is why I didn’t say, “Go ahead without me; I’ll just sit here with my computer.” But in addition to that healthy self-knowledge, there’s also an unhealthy layer of social anxiety that kicks in whenever I think my friends may be having fun without me. 

I had a minor conflict with someone last week (almost entirely of my own making and resolved with friendship flowers, so all is truly well on that front), and it made me question whether or not this trip is a good fit for me. While I love the travel, the group is a tough environment for someone with my personality and particular brand of anxiety. I’m used to spending a lot of time on my own, even–perhaps especially–while traveling, and the day-to-day currents of the group can be very draining for me. But they can at times be exhilarating as well. Part of me is still wondering whether this is a great new challenge or an unnecessary irritant.

Maybe I’ll know better by the end of my month in Prague. This is the stop on our tour that I’m least enthused about from the outset. I’ve been here once, for a long weekend, and that felt like enough time to do the touristy things that I wanted to. And our first couple days haven’t overridden my initial feelings–we’ve gotten yelled at for making too much noise in every restaurant we’ve been in, my new phone is currently sitting in the labyrinth of Czech customs, things close earlier than I’d like, etc. I don’t hate it, Prague is a beautiful city, but it doesn’t fit me like Barcelona. 

But maybe this will make me a little less frantic, a little bit better equipped to find the balance I so sorely missed last month. I hope so because Barcelona felt like a careening roller coaster–fun and exciting, to be sure, but thrill rides are designed to last two minutes, not twelve months.