Campus Connection

What kinds of things come to mind when I throw out the word “intimacy?”

Passionate love-making?

Talking into the night about each other’s hopes and dreams?

Admitting your worst fears or showing your greatest weakness?  

Egh. Could be.

But in my mind nothing is quite as intimate as travelling together, especially travelling abroad.

Why do I say that? Because last week I went to Europe with someone I’m seeing.

I had never been to Europe before and decided that if I don’t go now, I might not get another chance for quite some time. So armed with much determination, I proceeded to bulldoze my guy into taking this trip with me. Lucky for me, he was quite amenable to the idea (despite his immense dislike for flying) and before long we had booked an 8 day trip to Prague and Vienna.  

Once all the logistics were settled, my excitement at the prospect of finally traveling began to grow, but not without an equal amount of worry and fear. After all, the two of us had never spent so much time together, especially not in a foreign country, with the additional pressures of not knowing anyone, any place, or the language.  

Nevertheless, I tried to set aside my concerns, instead putting all my energy into planning a jam-packed itinerary that would help me compensate for all the years I didn’t travel.

And so, last Monday, with our suitcases and travel books in hand off we went.

I knew the trip was off to a good start when I learned that trans-Atlantic flights provide you with personal TVs showing something like 10 different movies and serve free alcohol.  

After 8+ hours of these indulgences we finally arrived in Prague. Due to my excellent planning and preliminary research, I knew exactly how to get us from the airport to the hotel.

Highly pleased with myself, I was happily flaunting my travel savvy to my guy, who simply smiled and agreed with my self-accolades. But just as I was reaching the peak of self-satisfaction, I got confused by the enigma that is Eastern European road systems, ignored my guy’s insistence that we actually wait for the green light, walked into the intersection at the wrong time, and almost got hit by a car, which proceeded to come to one of those squealing stops to keep from hitting me.

Once within the safety of the sidewalk, I was highly embarrassed by my display of complete incompetence. But while he had plenty of reason to give me a hard time about this, especially after I went on and on about how great I am at handling foreign cities, he abstained from doing so. Instead, he simply told me to be careful because he would like to bring me back to the U.S. in one piece.

Clearly, I didn’t heed his words, because later on that night I almost got run over by a horse. Yes, that’s right, a horse. Prague was full of horse-drawn carriages for the tourists and again my recklessness precluded me from paying attention to the roads around me and I walked right in front of one of those carriages. Luckily, my guy’s yelling pulled me back and tragedy was avoided once more.

But even then, he did not mock me for this nor make me feel awkward or uncomfortable about being such an idiot…twice.

And this pretty much set the tone for our entire trip. No matter what I did or how ridiculous I was being, he was extremely gracious about it.

When I got us lost looking for some museum in Prague that I really wanted to see and proceeded to sulk and complain about it, he took matters into his own hands and found it for me. And when the museum turned to be pretty crappy and worthless, he didn’t bring up my unnecessary obsession and child-like behavior when trying to find it.

When I really wanted to see a Dali exhibit, he agreed to go despite the fact that he hates modern art of any kind. Granted, he spent the entire time at the exhibit either sitting on a chair and moping or coming up to various paintings to mock the art as something that could have been created by my 7-year-old sister. However, he still accompanied me and let me spend as much time as I wanted there.

When I made us late for a concert in Vienna because I insisted on showering 30 minutes before the start of show, he found a shorter route to the venue, despite my negative attitude and jeering remarks.

When I refused to let him eat until I saw everything on my obsessive itinerary, he simply said okay and didn’t press the point. And when I finally did let him eat, we went to a famous chocolate shop, where his pastry turned out to be way tastier than mine. So what did he do? He happily switched with me.  

In fact, he only really got upset at me once, when I ignored the signs for no walking on grass in the gardens of the Habsburg summer palace and proceeded to skip through it. And even then, his anger was very short-lived, even though it was quite justified.                                                              

But don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I was a whiny and obnoxious female, who wanted everything her way, for the whole trip. It’s just that in the process of spending 8 days straight together, some of these negative aspects of my personality would occasionally emerge, just as his would (but those need not be addressed to make my point).   

And that’s precisely why I found traveling to be such an intimate experience. When two people spend so much time around each other and not really anyone else, their flaws tend to come out, whether they like it or not. As a result, tensions have the potential of running high and small actions that might be cute in other scenarios can become really irritating in this one, leading to a full-blown conflict.

However, that never happened to us.

As it turned out, we were able to handle the intimacy of travel quite well. Despite some of the less than perfect traits or habits we might have witnessed in each other, we never let that get to us. Granted, he deserves way more credit for that than me, as he pretty much humored me in almost all respects throughout the trip.

But regardless, whatever it was it worked.

We had an amazing time, saw so much, and managed to not kill each other in the process, which made me realize just how lucky I really am.

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