A couple of years ago, I was drunk in the back of an Uber in Romania, hurtling above and beyond the speed limit. It was the first night of a festival press trip and, sleep-deprived, we’d decided to cut out early (1am) to drink some more at the hotel rather than try and find the energy to dance. The driver, chatty and generous, told us that if we wanted a bottle of cider we would have to try his homemade “Romanian Jack Daniel’s” first. I refused, but watched cackling as Karl sipped on an unmarked, uncorked glass bottle in the back of a stranger’s car. We got home safe, we bought some sealed bottles from a gas station, and we danced around the living room to From First to Last. It became a memory.
For the last several months that memory, and ones like it, have been whizzing around my brain at all hours. As the lockdown rules have intensified over the last weeks, so too have recollections of times I behaved like a little savage across the continent. I had spent my entire life being so careful, a result of poverty, mental illness and being neurotic me. In the last few years I’ve taken more chances: I said yes to last-minute flights to Sweden and Bologna, yes to festivals at Romanian castles, yes to boat trips in Croatia and cutting about in abandoned monasteries. I learned that life and growth was to be found in the moments I felt a little bit uncomfortable or nervous while still, ultimately, being safe.
I don’t know when any of us will ever feel like that again.
There is so much in that small snippet, that 20-mile journey, that isn’t possible anymore: a music festival, a trip, an unmasked Uber, sharing drinks. Every step of anything we do again is likely to be done with the trepidation I feel anyway as an autistic person leaving the house, but the difference is now that the risks are real for everyone, and they will feel real for many more years. I don’t mourn anything so much as I mourn the loss of safe risk: dancing with strangers, going to parties, leaving the country in a heartbeat when offered. We weigh up minuscule decisions that once were nothing, throwaway, our only question where to find chips at 3am.
Sentences like, “I got sent to Romania,” sound so much sillier, more foreign than they did a year ago. There are reasons beyond the pandemic, namely that Brexit has made the continent feel so far away, the likelihood of loosely “work” affiliated trips diminished. I spent a lot of my life not going anywhere at all, scrawling the names of places I’d heard of in my diaries, however pedestrian they seemed to other people, they all seemed faraway and magical to me: Vienna, Brussels, Budapest, Prague, Malta. Some of them I’ve visited. Others, like Brussels, I look at and smile at little, 22-year-old, unworldly me: she was so cute. She thought Brussels was the most exciting place in the world, a bucket list item, because she’d seen photos of a nice building there once.
It is not easy for me to be spontaneous, reckless - it’s not in my nature. But it is easier the further I get from my home and my own expectations for myself, and I spent most of 2018 indulging that impulse. During the World Cup, I was in Dubrovnik with my best friend, misbehaving in that wholesome way two people who understand and trust one another wholly do. I was relaxed and I was safe. When Croatia was playing a big game, we were heavily invested, despite not giving a shit about the England game a day or two prior. We bought drinks, flags, Croatia hats, we went all in. When Croatia won, the walls of Dubrovnik erupted into joy, cheers and laughter pouring out of every street. We rushed to join them; betting against our own country, committed to another. We stripped off and climbed in the harbour naked but for our hats. Our shame shed, our dignity shielded by distance.
Two years ago, I got asked to go to Sweden for a skateboarding competition at the last minute. At that point, after nearly a full year of travelling monthly and saying yes to avoid being at home with my ex, I was getting tired. I had to fly out a day after I had landed from Lisbon in a finally empty home and I could not be arsed. I agreed to one night, my attitude bordering on ungrateful. When I landed, that exhaustion dissipated, and I realised I was a 15-minute train journey from Copenhagen. Figuring that Vans wouldn’t miss me for an hour, I went for a quick jaunt around Nyhavn, laughing to myself at the absurdity, that it was even possible to just nip to Copenhagen to say I had. I arrived in Malmö after an underwater train journey feeling refreshed, less jaded. I ate bao and met a skater I admired. Another memory catalogued.
When I was a teenager and I hadn’t been anywhere, I would count down the days until I could go into Nottingham for a Saturday or walk five miles to a slightly different village for the afternoon. The smallest trip was an adventure, and while I miss real, different, vibrant countries and cities so much my heart hurts, I’m grateful to have that sense back. I see every park, every woods, every coastline in this country that I’ve been lucky enough to go to this year slightly differently, feeling more capable of appreciating it.
Like everyone, I’ve had a lot of travel plans cancelled in the last year. I am not going to caveat about how lucky I am and how bad it all is: like, we know. I have more going on than the fact that I miss drinking cocktails on European balconies, we all do. But these are the memories I can’t stop fixating on: travelling, which I’d only just really started doing in my mid-20s, was essential to my growth, my education, my understanding of the world. Taking risks, being a bit silly in the streets of Palermo or Prague, forced me to heal, to take myself and my neuroses less seriously.
I know I’ll again drink a handful of Bacardi Breezers before swimming in the sea, letting the waves fuck up my hair and skin for the rest of the day and learning not to care. I know I’ll again run around the streets of a beautiful, historic city at 2am, slightly buzzed while children play on the park because bedtimes aren’t a thing for anyone in Europe. But for now, I’ll keep dreaming of Romania, and what saying yes even when I was scared and tired gave me.