Thematic travelogue entry: Travel and safety
I just found out that the Harry Potter GoF DVD extras are only on the two-disc special edition. :( Oh well, I downloaded most of the extras on LJ, I hope...
So I've been meaning to do another travelogue entry for months now. I think my last one was in December. Yikes. This will be a thematic entry on safety and travel, prompted by my new boss. She asked me recently about my trip to Europe in the fall of 2004 - specifically, did I feel safe as a woman travelling alone? My answer was yes. I took precautions, and I was definitely aided by a lot of luck as well, but I wasn't robbed or harassed or anything like that. Which is more than I can say for weekend trips to Montreal. ;) For a six week trip in France, Belgium, Netherlands and Germany, that's pretty cool.
The precautions I took: First, as a woman travelling alone, I decided to not go out at night, and to try to be back in my hostel before sundown. Generally this worked, though sometimes I got back just after sundown (and was really nervous - not least of all because everything looks different at night, and I lost my bearings). Later in my trip, I got more confident, and was less nervous about getting back right as it was getting dark. My last night in Paris I was probably out for a couple of hours after dark and I felt pretty safe.
I met a woman at my hostel in the first week of my trip who had been travelling on her own for over a year, and she'd just come back from a few months travelling in the Middle East. She started out there with a male friend for safety, but shortly into the trip he went home, and she decided to go the rest on her own. She completely awed me - a blonde American woman travelling in the Middle East alone. That's pretty damn brave. She said she had some incidents, but generally people stared at her but it wasn't a big deal. She didn't even blink an eye about going out in Paris at night - compared to what she was used to, why wouls she? One night she visited the Eiffel Tower and l'Arc du Triomphe alone, and said they looked magnificent at night. I think on my next trip I will try to go out a bit more at night alone, as my experience was certainly altered by not being able to check out clubs and other nightlife. At the same time, having a self-imposed curfew may have been the key to my safety. Who knows.
I also told my boss that I was lucky to show up in Paris (the first stop on my trip) and basically get adopted by the other travellers in the room at my hostel. They showed me the ropes, and gave me stern warnings about being careful in tourist areas especially - to wear your backpack on the front of your person if possible, even inside Sacre Coeur (the nearby Church and tourist draw), and to keep a hand on your wallet when you're in a crowded area.
I was really only seriously nervous about my safety in one city - Amsterdam. This was the third week of my trip, and I was getting pretty confident. So imagine me on a train, 10 minutes outside of Amsterdam, reading my Lonely Planet - specifically, its very stern admonitions about how the city is one of the worst in Europe for pickpockets and if there's anywhere where paranoia is to be encouraged, it was here. To keep ahold of *all* of your belongings, don't leave them on the ground or otherwise unattended for even a second, to wrap the handles of your bookbag around your legs when sitting in a restaurant, etc. (Yes, I did all of these things my whole trip. Crazy how lax I am in Canada.) Looking back, I think they really overemphasized things to get people to pay attention, and, by god, it worked. I was a mess by the time the train pulled into the station.
And downtown Amsterdam (the touristy area near the train station anyway; apparently the technical downtown is elsewhere) really is seedy, and looking around I thought, "Shit, I think they were right." Just pull out all your ganja-smoking, petty crime stereotypes, and they're all in Amsterdam. I was practically shaking as I made my way to my hostel, keeping a firm hand on my bags and staring hard ahead and trying to avoid bumping into people, or at least trying to be extra suspicious if someone bumped into me (as that's the main way pickpockets operate. Bump and grab, and you don't even notice it). I calmed down after I'd been in the city for a few days, but I was more careful to get back to the hostel before sunset - especially since the immediate area outside my hostel was *exactly* the kind of area I wouldn't want to be in at night...
Having said all that, as I told my boss, travelling alone really wasn't nearly as scary as many people tried to tell me it would be. Absolutely nothing threatened my safety while I was there - and, really, even if it did, it might have happened at home, too. Many things happen to me right here in Canada, so why should I expect an incident-free trip anywhere else? In the end, fear can stop you and block so much. I see so much of it in my friends here when I talk to them, and so many people tried to scare *me* before my trip about all the horrors that supposedly go on in Europe... But why let that stop you?
I can listen to the fear, to the assumptions, to the arrogance of people who have never challenged themselves to move beyond their own comfort level, or I can choose adventure and put myself in new and challenging situations that will test me and teach me and help me to gain a greater understanding of the world and, in turn, of myself. There's no other way to live.
So I've been meaning to do another travelogue entry for months now. I think my last one was in December. Yikes. This will be a thematic entry on safety and travel, prompted by my new boss. She asked me recently about my trip to Europe in the fall of 2004 - specifically, did I feel safe as a woman travelling alone? My answer was yes. I took precautions, and I was definitely aided by a lot of luck as well, but I wasn't robbed or harassed or anything like that. Which is more than I can say for weekend trips to Montreal. ;) For a six week trip in France, Belgium, Netherlands and Germany, that's pretty cool.
The precautions I took: First, as a woman travelling alone, I decided to not go out at night, and to try to be back in my hostel before sundown. Generally this worked, though sometimes I got back just after sundown (and was really nervous - not least of all because everything looks different at night, and I lost my bearings). Later in my trip, I got more confident, and was less nervous about getting back right as it was getting dark. My last night in Paris I was probably out for a couple of hours after dark and I felt pretty safe.
I met a woman at my hostel in the first week of my trip who had been travelling on her own for over a year, and she'd just come back from a few months travelling in the Middle East. She started out there with a male friend for safety, but shortly into the trip he went home, and she decided to go the rest on her own. She completely awed me - a blonde American woman travelling in the Middle East alone. That's pretty damn brave. She said she had some incidents, but generally people stared at her but it wasn't a big deal. She didn't even blink an eye about going out in Paris at night - compared to what she was used to, why wouls she? One night she visited the Eiffel Tower and l'Arc du Triomphe alone, and said they looked magnificent at night. I think on my next trip I will try to go out a bit more at night alone, as my experience was certainly altered by not being able to check out clubs and other nightlife. At the same time, having a self-imposed curfew may have been the key to my safety. Who knows.
I also told my boss that I was lucky to show up in Paris (the first stop on my trip) and basically get adopted by the other travellers in the room at my hostel. They showed me the ropes, and gave me stern warnings about being careful in tourist areas especially - to wear your backpack on the front of your person if possible, even inside Sacre Coeur (the nearby Church and tourist draw), and to keep a hand on your wallet when you're in a crowded area.
I was really only seriously nervous about my safety in one city - Amsterdam. This was the third week of my trip, and I was getting pretty confident. So imagine me on a train, 10 minutes outside of Amsterdam, reading my Lonely Planet - specifically, its very stern admonitions about how the city is one of the worst in Europe for pickpockets and if there's anywhere where paranoia is to be encouraged, it was here. To keep ahold of *all* of your belongings, don't leave them on the ground or otherwise unattended for even a second, to wrap the handles of your bookbag around your legs when sitting in a restaurant, etc. (Yes, I did all of these things my whole trip. Crazy how lax I am in Canada.) Looking back, I think they really overemphasized things to get people to pay attention, and, by god, it worked. I was a mess by the time the train pulled into the station.
And downtown Amsterdam (the touristy area near the train station anyway; apparently the technical downtown is elsewhere) really is seedy, and looking around I thought, "Shit, I think they were right." Just pull out all your ganja-smoking, petty crime stereotypes, and they're all in Amsterdam. I was practically shaking as I made my way to my hostel, keeping a firm hand on my bags and staring hard ahead and trying to avoid bumping into people, or at least trying to be extra suspicious if someone bumped into me (as that's the main way pickpockets operate. Bump and grab, and you don't even notice it). I calmed down after I'd been in the city for a few days, but I was more careful to get back to the hostel before sunset - especially since the immediate area outside my hostel was *exactly* the kind of area I wouldn't want to be in at night...
Having said all that, as I told my boss, travelling alone really wasn't nearly as scary as many people tried to tell me it would be. Absolutely nothing threatened my safety while I was there - and, really, even if it did, it might have happened at home, too. Many things happen to me right here in Canada, so why should I expect an incident-free trip anywhere else? In the end, fear can stop you and block so much. I see so much of it in my friends here when I talk to them, and so many people tried to scare *me* before my trip about all the horrors that supposedly go on in Europe... But why let that stop you?
I can listen to the fear, to the assumptions, to the arrogance of people who have never challenged themselves to move beyond their own comfort level, or I can choose adventure and put myself in new and challenging situations that will test me and teach me and help me to gain a greater understanding of the world and, in turn, of myself. There's no other way to live.