Brit Happens

Well, isn't that something.

I'm sitting here in London, in the basement of the hostel, eating my breakfast of toast, cereal, juice and coffee, and who should be looking at me but that crusty old sea captain painting that I encountered at the beginning of my trip.

But something is different this time. When I was just starting this trip, he seemed to have a scowl on his face, like he didn't approve of me or anything I'd done with my life. His look seemed to say, "How did you end up in MY scullery room, you bloody prick? Off with you!" But now that I look at him again, 10 weeks later, he's different. His scowl is no longer a scowl, but a slight look of surprise that seems to say, "Wow...you survived your trip. I AM impressed. Good job, my boy. Good job."

It's a good feeling to start coming back to what I know. It feels as if everything is now coming full circle, and like walking backwards in time, I'm seeing everything pass before me again a second time as I head back west. The creature comforts of the world I know are starting to come back: English keyboards, people speaking English again, CNN and BBC. It feels nice to know that I'll be shedding my backpack in a matter of a day or two, ditching the campgrounds and the hostels and getting back to my normal life. Not to say that anything of my experience this summer was bad. As a matter of fact, it was all pretty incredible. But after doing it for 10 weeks, you need a vacation from the vacation.

When you backpack, you end up making a lot of sacrifices that you never expected. First of all, your privacy disappears. You're stuck in rooms crammed with 30 other people, all bumping into each other. Or you're stuck in a tent next to someone who stinks just as bad as you. Each bathroom you go to looks like a toxic waste dump because 100 people trashed it right before you got there.

And then there's the continuous moving around from place to place, constantly packing...and repacking...and packing again. You realize your backpack can't nearly fit everything you had hoped it would, so you're continuously telling yourself that you can't acquire things. And then you start seeing yourself wearing the same clothes over and over. You feel like you're some cartoon character or cast member from "Gilligan's Island" who never has a new outfit to show.

At first, all of this is no big deal. But after a while, you start to miss the privacy...and the cleanliness...and the variety of clothing that you had in your former life. That's when it's time to pitch the backpack over into the river and call it quits and go home, which is where I'm at right now. Except I'm not throwing my backpack in the River Thames...it cost me way too much.

I think my breaking point was two days ago in Munich when I was at the Euro Youth Hostel. I was awoken at 2 am to the sounds of these young drunk American kids yelling and making a racket about something. One of them had thrown up on the floor of the dorm room, and glass was broken all over the floor. They just started waking everyone up, turning on lights, and making a scene. That's when I started realizing, "Hey...I'm 32 years-old. I really don't need to put up with this crap anymore. I'm done with this."

Yep. I think my backpacking days of wandering around willy-nilly across the globe are done. Not to say that I won't do a little more of it in the future, but nothing of the magnitude I've just done. I'm an adult now, and don't need to subject myself to this fraternity house atmosphere anymore. It was all good and fun, but now, I ready to move on. I got it all out of my system, and it feels good.