On Travelling Alone

Believe it or not, it's the best way to travel. Travelling with a companion can be nice, somewhat irritating, or a nightmare. You might want to get to the sights early, and he might rather lie in bed all morning. On my own, I can move to my rythmn and seek company when I want it, and not be sentenced to round-the-clock companionship whether I like it or not.

There's nothing like spending a day sightseeing to make you keenly aware of your (and your traveling companion's) bodily needs. Finding a toilet, sating hunger and thirst, dealing with allergies, and becoming more sweaty as the day wears on are all rather gross situations that I prefer to keep to myself.

And yet, the problem here is that I'm not really travelling, nor am I really a student. During my vacation in Guatemala, I met other travellers almost instantly, and had to avoid them after a while. In Germany, with fellow music students, a boyfriend, and 23 roommates, I was rarely lonely. While I do have roommates here, they've proven to be a scant source of friendship: the Italain teacher who owns the apartment spends most of her time on vacation or at her boyfriend's, and the student who lived there in June (she's from the same town in Germany I lived in) was a bit of a wet blanket. Another student is arriving tomorrow, but she's in her 50's and from Mexico. I don't think we'll have that much in common.

I do manage to put together a social life, but it's often feast or famine. Apart from my conversation exchange people - who float in and out of my life - I regularly hang out with a few fun English speakers, a delightful Japanese girl, a serious German artist, and a patient Italian. But even so, you can't spend all week with just a handful of people, and I find I have some gaps to fill in my social calendar. At least, with no one to talk to, no one can accuse me of being a loud-mouthed American on the streets. But silence is not exactly conducive to language learning, and with every hour that I'm not practicing Italian, I wonder if I'm wasting my time here.

As much as I enjoy being able to choose the sights I see and my schedule, too much solitude can open the door to my own demons. My first trip to Italy was in 1997. I was 20 years old and had just spent a successful 6 months in Germany, studying the language and having some very fulfilling musical experiences. I thought I had a sweet deal travelling with my German boyfriend, who had studied art history and archeology in Rome for a year and spoke fluent Italian. For whatever reason, however, he turned on me. He was furious that I didn't speak Italian, and refused to explain anything about the art or architecture we were looking at, on the basis that as an American, I "knew nothing" about art and style and didn't have even the first inkling of how to grasp the vast wealth of knowledge he laid claim to. He didn't give me credit for being able to argue with him in his native tongue. Even as I savor Rome's treasures and masterworks, I can sometimes still hear his voice. I realize that this was eight years ago, but Keils never forget.

But then, I'll have a day like I did yesterday, with a trip to the Villa Medici in perfect weather, followed by a picnic and visit at Ostia Antica with a friend, and then music and wine with company at night. Maybe in the grand sum there's some balance, but the ups and downs can be hard to take . (I better wrap this up, I'm off to homemade sushi with friends.)

In any case, since ancient times a woman alone has been viewed as a spectacle, a travesty, or public property. A man alone is an institution. Those stares from the natives can burn , and it's awkward to walk around and realize that everyone knows I'm foreign. When I was in Urbino two years ago I asked a colleague why I was getting so many stares. "When we see a woman alone," he replied, "we think that she is sad."