You know what, don’t
you all just love camping. Man, what a great way to save a bit of dinero when out on the road.
I mean, is there
better feeling than knowing your place to sleep for the night is strapped to
your back? That once your tent has been erected and the zip zipped up, that all
around you then is your personal, movable space.
Take a moment. Think
about it.
There are no annoying
18-year-old American princesses jabbering loudly in the middle of the night
about how amazing that last nightclub was. No Scandinavians turning the lights
on in order to pack their bags at arse o’clock. No Brits comparing shades of
red nor Aussies chaffing down more cheap wine than your average wino consumes
in a year.
No, instead it is just
you, your backpack, and whatever little else will fit in that cramped and
sweaty
space with you.
Let’s cut the crap
shall we. This blog is all about regrets and at the moment I sound more like a
tent salesman or some cheesy beer commercial than a man possessed by such
travel demons that he feels the need to exorcise them on these pixelated pages.
Instead, let’s all
admit the truth shall we: Camping is a mixed bag, great fun when done in small quantities
(like tequila) but a shocker when strung out over a week, a month, or, dare I
say, any longer than three months (again, like tequila).
We’ve all seen serial
campers. People who have lost the will to shower, whose hair has become a
matted mess that sneaks off and murders kittens in the night, whose breath is the
thing of Game of Thrones legends. (Forget dragons and winter, one whiff of a
serial campers breath and no amount of spear wielding mountain looking half-burned
people will save your face from peeling off and dressing itself up as a kitten
in the hope it will be killed of by some matted hair in the middle of the
night.)
Furthermore, let’s
debunk a few camping myths shall we:
a. Camping
gives you your own wonderful space = Bollocks. Go travelling for more than a
month and that cramped bit of a canvas lined privacy becomes nothing more than
a medievally reminiscent trap designed to ensure you never escape that bear
like monstrosity that your backpack has become. I mean, am I the only one who
finds their backpack takes on an inverse Marry Poppins’ effect? Namely that it
looks massive but you can fit bugger all into it?
b. Camping
means you get closer to nature = Codswallop. Those nice, comforting sounds of
animals that sing you a lullaby as your drift off to sleep become horrifically
magnified in the middle of the night and, throwing in an element of half-awake
madness, you become convinced that there is a wolf/panther/yeti/serial camper
out there just biding its time before it slashes through your ‘waterproof’
tent’s outer layer and eats your cold sweat covered flesh like a drunk Aussie
with a free kebap on George Street passed midnight.
Anyway, you get the
picture. Camping is not always good times.
One example of which
from my own regret filled history comes from my first real travelling
adventure.
It was 2008 and,
having finished my studies in Sydney the year before, I had slaved away in
various language schools and managed to save up enough for that right of
passage of all Australians: the Euro-trip. Now, back in 2008 I was quite the
penny pincher. So much in fact that I pretty much lived off goon, a terrible boxed wine that anyone
who has spent longer than a week in oz would have encountered. As you should
all know, goon tastes much better
when mixed with lemonade, cherryade, greenade, yellowade. Any ade basically. I,
however, was so cheap I wouldn’t even spend the 50c a bottle of fizzy sweetness
cost. Instead I ever opted to get as much goon down my gullet before I could
really taste it through the wonders of the paper/scissor/rock
drinking game. (Other great goon games
include: Edward Goon hands, Goon-of-fortune and ‘av-a-go-on-me-goon-baby.)
What all this equates
to is that, when I was planning my great Euro adventure, I realised that if I were
to book ahead things would work out much cheaper. Well, I kind of got carried
away and one week later I had an Excel
spreadsheet outlining every hostel that I had a reservation in (thank you www.hostelbookers.com), every train and
bus I had a reservation with (thank you www.bahn.de
and www.eurolines.com) and every
sight that I was due to see (thank you Lonely
Planet).
A bit over the top you
might think? Well perhaps I should add that such planning was for an eight
month trip so… yeah, it’s safe to say I got a bit carried away.
Anyway, the first stop
on this extravaganza was to be Amsterdam, a city whose mere name can conjure up
all manner of regrets I’m sure. Well, I wonder how many other people’s regrets
involve camping in minus 5 on the edge of the city near a motorway surrounded
by mushroom tripping fellow travellers who spend the whole night declaring, ‘I.
Am. Your. Friend’ with a stutter that makes their declarations the equivalent
of a machine gun in the misty faded expanse known as sleep deprivation.
No one? Well, just me
then.
Anyway, my trusty Lonely Planet had told me that this was
a cheap option for those travellers on a budget. Considering the fact that I
used to steal cheese in order to cut down on my food shopping I would say that
this category was definitely the one for me.
Such a decision began
to appear to be erring on the side of foolhardy the second that my tram ride
out to said campsite took me passed scenic canals and leaning buildings into
modern streets and suburbs before finally guiding me through an urban wasteland
that, when I look back (with a slightly less than perfect memory) looked like
something from a Mad Max movie (I will admit that my imagination can get the
better of me in such recollections). Either way, the fact that I was taking
advantage of the European honesty system soon became the least of my worries.
Finally, with an empty
tram as the witness to my impending sense of both doom and regret, the driver
stopped, opened the doors and shouted something at me that could have been
‘campsite’ but sounded more like ‘idiot this is where you get off and get
killed, ahahahahaha’.
So, obeying his
blurted commands and putting on that ‘I know what I’m doing and where I’m
going’ face that a giant backpack and ashy white features dispel, I
determinedly headed off with no idea at all where I was nor where I was going.
Now, back in 2008 we
had Google Maps, but we didn’t have
smart phones. Or at least I didn’t. So instead of being able to check a map in
the palm of my hand I had to rely on that trick of all men, bravado and
sheer arrogance
‘I know where it is,’
I declared to myself even though I had no idea if I was even still in The
Netherlands.
Trekking onward with a
vast bypass making its presence felt to me through screaming traffic punctuated
by searing silence, I did in fact manage to find the campsite and, well, it had
goats so I thought to myself, ‘It can’t be all that bad!’
At this time I was
still, no doubt, warmed by the tram and high somewhat on excitement. As such it
was only after, having found the check-in office to be not only closed but also
the kind of place used by teenagers to practice their glass smashing skills, I
found myself a nice patch of grass and looked around at the three or four other
tents that lay silhouetted in moonlight around me. About this time I realised
that, with the onset of night, it had gotten bastard cold. Cold as a badger’s
arse in fact.
Now, as I was
embarking on a massive travelling adventure due to take me from The Netherlands
to Greece via Eastern Europe, I had taken the executive decision not to pack
too many clothes and furthermore not to pack anything too heavy.
Heavy also equals warm,
I might add.
Well, having thought that
May is warm in Europe (ten years in Australia had erased by childhood memories
of May in England), I was quite shocked therefore when I noticed that my hands
had turned blue, by feet were numb, and I was beginning to rock uncontrollably
in such a teeth-chattering manner that, in hindsight, I might well have scared
off some would be serial campers whose matted hair was no doubt already eying
up my shampooed barnet.
What does one do in
such a situation? Put on each and every item of clothing in your backpack of course.
This I did, adding as well some newspaper to complete my attempts to retain
even a fraction of the heat that remained deep in my core.
Did any of it help?
Did it bollocks. Especially because, as well as the cold, no sooner had I
started to drift off into what might be somewhere considered a slight relative
of normal sleep than some drug-addled Englishman began to declare that He. Was.
My. Fr-Fr-Fr-Friend!
Not the sort of thing
you want to hear on the edge of a foreign city surrounded by motorways and industrial
sites and populated only by a few shabby looking tents that could well house:
a. murders, b. thieves, or c. murdering thieves. Call me a pessimist but I’d
rather err on the side of caution thank you very much.
So, such was my first
night in Amsterdam and the first night of my European adventure, a night in
which I slept no more than a few winks and one which left me so cold I could barely
move come morning.
If that wasn’t enough,
when trying to cook up some life-giving porridge the next morning on my handy Trangia, a gaggle of local ducks came
over to have a gander. Thinking them friendly little feathered fellas, I was soon
a prisoner in my own tent when it became obvious that, unlike the guys of the
night before, these ducks cared little for friendship. Quacks and snapping jaws
made me retreat while my porridge oats were ransacked.
When I finally did
manage to get myself ready and limber enough to walk I ended up spending the
whole day basking in the sun of a city park desperately trying to not only stay
awake but also inject an ounce of heat into my stone cold bones (I was on too much
of a budget to consider going into a café or something of the like).
The tent fiasco was to
continue for a few more days until, after trying tin-foil and all other
survival like materials to keep warm and finding that I was missing yet another
European city (this time Brussels) due to my waking dream like sleep-deprived
state, I packed in the tent and splashed out on a hostel.
Luxury that proved to
be.
Now, looking back, as
I am want to do with these regrets, I have to ask myself what lessons I learnt
from that experience?
Well, for one,
planning is all well and good but from time to time it pays to check the
weather.
Camping is great
unless it’s minus 5 degrees (English degrees that is).
And finally, if you
happen to be cooking up some porridge and a gang of ducks wanders by, best just
to do as the French do, throw up your hands and declare, “I surrender!”
In order to avoid
making the same mistakes as myself, I would recommend checking out some of the
following prior to your trip to Amsterdam:
If you enjoy reading
my Travel Regrets, have any of your own to share, or simply can’t decipher my
liberal use of English and Australian slang, feel free to send me a tweet at: https://twitter.com/travelregrets
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