Throughout my Euro Travel Series of blog posts I’ve periodically mentioned my travel partner, my best friend Danielle. You’ve received my perspective, tips and recommendations from our trip but I decided to conclude the series with a Q&A type of interview with her. So here it is my travel companion’s perspective on our trip, overall and some secrets.
Q: What’s the biggest thing you learned about yourself and me during this trip?
Danielle:
Through this trip I learned that I am quite good at compromising, I think that attributes a lot to me being pretty laid back and the fact that it doesn’t take much to entertain me and that I don’t really care what I’m doing as long as I am in good company (which you were).
I learned that I would also like to be more spontaneous, we did a couple of ‘in the moment things’ and it ended up having an amazing result (cliff jumping and floatopia), and I would like to transfer that spontaneity to my life back home.
I also discovered that I really do love to travel, and don’t mind living out of a backpack for long periods of time, even with some of the shitty days we had, I had definitely caught the travel bug and would love to continue to go on amazing adventures.
I also really enjoyed the freedom we had, back home we live with our families still and go to school, so having this freedom while traveling; getting to decide where to go, what to eat and not really checking in with anyone was really cool!
What I learned about you was that it takes a bit more for you to let go and be spontaneous so we worked around that, and in the end, you really enjoyed yourself! I won’t say you thanked me but there was something to that effect when I really instead on going to floatopia in Ios, and you really weren’t feeling it, but I pushed and we had such a blast, and now it is one of our favorite memories.
You. Are. One. Strong. Woman and a freaking amazing best friend! I obviously already knew how amazing you were but this trip really solidified that. I was in awe watching you interact with the world, taking charge (because you know I am hopeless with orienting myself), and at one point speaking THREE DIFFERENT LANGUAGES! It was just amazing to witness! I also need to thank you and say how amazing you are for playing nurse Nina for me, for someone who HATES needles, you really stepped up as a best friend and helped my sick ass out by giving me my needles, I don’t know what I would have done without you!
Q: Why do you think it worked out between us two?
Danielle:
I would say there was a combination of factors that made this trip work for us. I think the most important one was probably how easily we clicked so early on in our relationship, It’s hard to explain but we just bonded really fast and life just worked out in that way.
I think we also share similar values and a similar mindset so we were pretty much on the same page the whole time, and just adding to that we had a similar vision/ideas about what we wanted this trip to be, so again we were on the same page.
The last three I will mention, are in my opinion probably the most important; communication, compromise and being able to read each other.
We were really good at communicating how we were feeling, whether it was about how we physically felt or if we really did or didn’t want to do something, there were a few times we were each in a bad mood (on separate occasions) and we straight up told the other “hey, I’m in a bad mood so if I say something kinda mean, I don’t really mean it, I just feel crappy”, which I don’t think a lot of people do and that’s how we avoided getting into any fights.
The strong communication helped us compromise, and made us happy to compromise on things like activities or how the day went.
Also, like I mentioned before, being able to read each other was so important! I am not going to lie and say we had a perfect trip, it was pretty great but towards the end of the trip we could both tell we were just kind of bothering each other for no reason, so we held back a lot, we didn’t push things too much, had some alone time and a day or two later we were good to go. Spending 24/7 with anyone for a consistent amount of time would drive anyone crazy, but we handled it amazingly!
Q: Would you travel with me again?
Danielle:
100% YES! We hadn’t even finished the trip we were on and started planning our next one! We worked so well together and had such amazing experiences that I would love to travel with you again!
Q: What’s one tip you’d give to someone planning their own solo/duo trip?
Danielle:
Do your research, expect to have stuff go not according to plan, expect to possibly be at odds with your travel partner, embrace everything, and if you have the chance to do something a little crazy and out of your comfort zone, DO IT, you’ll create the most amazing memories that way!
Congrats Danielle, you succeeded in making me cry.
Hopefully, you have a better understanding of what it’s like to travel with your best friend and what it takes to be a good travel companion. This concludes my Europe Travel series (yes I do realize it took this long…) I hope you guys enjoyed this travel series. Don’t worry there will most definitely be some more travel posts in the future.
Naturally Nina 