Travel

I don't travel well. Not in the sense of getting sick (unless I get on a boat), but mentally I don't travel well. I start to worry about missing the plane about two days before I set off, and don't calm down until I'm safely at my final destination. Travelling alone is even worse, and I was utterly terrified heading off on my trip last week. Not only was I flying to Barcelona alone, late at night, trying to negotiate the bus, find my hostel, find the coach station, buy a ticket, make sure I got on the right coach etc etc, but I had to do all this with the serious handicap of being me. I speak no Spanish beyond a tentative and poorly pronounced 'Ola', I'm scared of strangers and I have the world's worst sense of direction. Honestly, I once got lost on my way to work. It was a ten minute walk that I had done five days a week for four years, and I got lost. Anyway, I made it through the whole process with remarkable and surprising ease and managed to find the coach station, much to my pride. I was rather intimidated by the idea of navigating the Spanish ticket machine but waded bravely in, and was amazed to find that I understood exactly how to book a ticket to Zaragoza. It wasn't until several pages into the ticket buying process that I realised why I understood it. It was in English.