Over the past years, and despite my age – I’m 25 years young now – I had the opportunity to travel a lot and to different countries. In Europe, I’ve had the opportunity to visit nearly every country for at least a couple of days, while I’ve lived in Tallinn, Estonia, for a bit over a year. Recently I’ve also been to the United States and later this year I will go to Dubai for a conference. I’ve noticed myself the impact of traveling, and I can see the impact around me. Several people around me are about to dive into some pretty exciting travel experiences, and with this post I’d like to share some of my experiences with them.

1. You might never get home again. This is a tricky one. I don’t mean that you might not safely return home – there is always a risk, but let’s focus on getting back safely! What I mean with never getting home again is that during your absence, you might come to the conclusion that what you considered to be home has a lot of less pleasant aspects. For self-protection purposes, people often start to devaluate their former home base, while they idealize their new habitat. However, it takes a long time to really feel at home on your new spot – if ever! I experienced this when I lived in Tallinn for a year. Amsterdam became just another city on the map where I happened to have spend some years of my life, while Tallinn didn’t feel completely at home either. At the same time, the people you used to have around continue their lives without you, getting new friends, making small and big changes in their lives and so on. Result: Nothing feels like home as it did before. It did make me feel more European, though.

2. More appreciation. Being away from family, friends and certain commodities makes you to appreciate them more. You might discover and value more that true friendship from people who support you at distance and stay in touch with you despite your physical absence. You might actually start to appreciate the quality, frequency and availability of public transport in your former home town (Amsterdam, in my case). While traveling, you might just end up by yourself, without any comfort zone. No family. No friends. No familiar food on the table. The longer you stay away, the more you will find out about what is truly important to you, and you will start to appreciate it more.

3. Less appreciation. This might sound like a contradiction, but it’s not. While you start to appreciate certain people, places, commodities and yourself more, you will also find out that some things and people you used to care about are just not worth it. I’ll give you a rather funny example. Despite the better quality, higher frequency and broader availability of public transport in the Netherlands compared to Estonia, I was both surprised and upset to find out that free wireless internet is available on all intercity buses and trains in Estonia. For quite some time already, so I was told. Meanwhile (and two years later), in the Netherlands, not a single bus or train has wireless internet on board. Back in the Netherlands, I also missed a sense of national pride like people showed in Estonia. These kind of things made me to appreciate my own country less.

4. Broader perspective. When you lived in one country (or even never traveled abroad) for 10 years, 20 years or even longer, you are very used to the way things are supposed to go, both in the way things are organized in society as well as in human interaction. When you go abroad for a longer period, you quickly find out that certain signs mean different things, that what is polite at home is extremely rude abroad, that what you call friendly in one country, can be intimidating somewhere else. You might see some of your presumptions confirmed, others might fall apart instantly.

5. A trip can change your life completely. Whether it is a short trip you’re heading for, or a longer one, or one that has no fixed end date yet, it can change your life radically. Changing the outside = changing the inside. You might meet someone who is going to change your life, bump into a life-transforming career opportunity, experience things that will forever change the way you think about things. Realizing this, you also have to be aware of the fact that you have a big stake in deciding whether such change will be for the better or for the worse.

Whatever you experience, whether it is positive or negative, always ask yourself: What’s the worst that can happen to me in these circumstances, and what is the best that I can learn and get out of this?

Have a wonderful and, above all, safe journey!

Photo by gundolf