When an Old Woman goes Backpacking

I haven't felt as old as I did when I went backpacking in Amsterdam recently.  Amsterdam is an awesome city and I loved it.  Lots to see and do, great restaurants (and coffee houses), fantastic public transport.  A great place to visit.
However, not having the money to blow on luxury accommodation, I decided to stay in a backpackers that was amazingly cheap.  Unbelievably cheap.  Only 21 euros for 3 nights kind of cheap.  It was really cheap.

When I arrived, the fire truck was loading a stretcher through a window across the road.  The taxi driver explained that as the stairs are so steep and narrow, sick people often need help to get to the doctor and that's where the fire brigade comes in.  This should have warned me about what was to come.
I paid the taxi driver and wheeled my suitcase to the entrance of the backpacker.  What I saw made my hair stand on end.  Stairs so steep and so narrow, I thought I was climbing up Angkor Wat in Cambodia!  I looked at my big turquoise suitcase and looked again at the stairs.  There was no way in hell I was going to make it up the stairs with my suitcase.

I looked right and left but there was nobody I could ask for help.  I was just going to have to adjust my big-girl panties and do it myself.  These stairs were not for the sick or inebriated.  I could see why a sick person had to be lifted out the window.
The steps were so narrow only your ball of your foot could fit on them.  Thank goodness I did not take my Crocs on holiday with me.  These stairs are not made for people who wear Crocs.
The stairs were not for peole like me either.
I mentally calculated how many times I would have to navigate the stairs during my stay there and quickly decided that I would limit myself to going down the stairs in the morning and going up the stairs at night.  I would just have to amuse myself during the day.
Taking a deep breath, I managed to glide up the stairs dragging my suitcase behind me, rather like a hippopotamus trying to fly a kite in a cyclone.
I nearly cried with relief when I made it to the top.  The young man in Reception looked at me as if I had just landed from an obscure planet in a distant galaxy.  The young people sitting around the reception area all managed to avoid eye contact.  Some even whispered and pointed in my direction.  It took about ten minutes before I could speak as I was rather out of breath.
I think that I am the oldest person they have ever seen in this backpacker.
Just as I was about to ask for a room on the first floor, the young man in reception smiled sadistically and handed me a key card for a room on the 4th floor.
More steps.  Lots more steps.  Even steeper than the ones I'd already climbed.  ""Bastard," I muttered under my breath.
I felt like Thomas the Tank Engine as I dragged my suitcase up another 3 flights of stairs.  By the time I got to the top I thought I was having a heart attack.  My chest cramped and I struggled to breathe.  I had to sit on my suitcase for ages before I was able to stand.  But I had done it and it was an achievement to be proud of.  I had dragged my suitcase up 4 flights of the steepest stairs I had ever climbed!
I opened the door to the 8 bed dormitory.  Now I have stayed in Backpackers before, had even backpacked through South-East Asia with my kids.  But we always stayed in a family room, not in a dormitory with random people.  Looking around the room, I quickly decided that this was a once in a lifetime experience, something I could tick off a bucket list and never repeat again....ever.  There was no way I was going to climb up onto a top bunk and all the bottom bunks were taken.  Two girls looked like they were packing up, so I sat on my suitcase and read a book on my Kindle while I waited for them to go so I could claim a bottom bunk.  The girls took their time but eventually they left and I lugged my suitcase onto a bottom bunk and then left to explore the city.
After a fun day out, I arrived back, climbed the stairs and waited for my breathing to settle down and normalise before entering the dormitory.  Much to my shock, everybody was asleep.
In the middle of the night I had to use the bathroom, as old women do.  The toilet facility was the smallest, tightest space I had ever encountered in my life!  To sit on the toilet with the door closed, you had to swing your knees to the right.  To wash your hands in the doll-sized washbasin, you could not stand up but had to swivel your body around to the left with your knees still jammed in to the right.  A contortionist would have been proud of me!  Then I realised a horrible, terrible, frightening realisation.  I had not taken my key card with me to the toilet.  I was locked out in the middle of the night, barefoot in below zero temperatures.  After an initial moment of panic, I thought about options.  I could wake up the sleeping strangers to ask them to let me in.  Or, I could make my way downstairs in the dark, barefoot, to the Reception area and pray that there would be someone on duty in the middle of the night.  I was too much of a coward to choose the first option, so I padded downstairs.
Luckily, a young man was on duty.  He gave me a spare key card and I headed back upstairs, waiting the customary ten minutes for my breathing to slow down before opening the room and tiptoeing to my bed.  I spent the rest of the night clutching the key card in case I needed to use the bathroom again.
The next morning young muscular men covered in tattoos walked around in their boxers.  I decided to pretend I was sleeping until they got dressed and left the dorm.  The shower proved to be just as small as the toilet.  There was no place to put a towel or your clean clothes without them getting wet.  I was not going to pad around half-naked like the rest of the youngsters staying there.

Throughout my stay there, everybody ignored me and avoided eye contact.  I truly believe that they had never seen someone as old as me stay there before.  I was definitely out of place and was made to feel so.  This is not something I would repeat again in a hurry, no matter how cheap it was.
Leaving, required manoeuvring my suitcase down four flights of narrow stairs again.  Somehow I made it down without killing myself - quite a miracle!  Young men stepped aside to allow me to pass, never once offering to help.  Maybe they thought if they offered to help me I'd want to come again!

Cindy Vine is a teacher and author living in Cape Town, South Africa.  She is the author of C U @ 8, Not Telling, Defective and Hush Baby.  All Cindy's books are available on Amazon in both Kindle and Paperback format.  www.cindyvine.com

Things I've learnt over time

There are times when there is no logic to things people do

When I recently checked into the Lutheran Mission Guesthouse in Iringa, Tanzania, the guy at reception put me in a large room with the biggest bed I had ever seen.  I could lie sideways, upside down, it didn’t matter, as the bed was so huge it made no difference.  The next morning as I was heading out to my workshop, the same guy who checked me in the day before informed me that I must give him my luggage as I was moving to a new room.  “Why am I moving?”  I couldn’t hide my irritation.  “Because your room is booked by some other people,” he replied with a smile.  “So why did you put me in that room if you knew I couldn’t stay there?”  I thought that was a reasonable thing to ask.  He shrugged, “I don’t know.  No reason.”  What can you say to that?

Being back in Tanzania, albeit for just a few days, made me remember some of the strange laws that defied logic.  The traffic police dressed like sea captains in their white uniforms that would be covered in a layer of red dust by the end of the day.  The road blocks to check that buried somewhere in your car’s trunk would be a fire extinguisher so that you could put out the flames if your car suddenly randomly caught fire.

Going to Iringa Airport, I was surprised to see that they had upped their security.  Drivers of the vehicle have to step out of the car and be body-searched, while the people actually traveling and boarding the plane are left alone to sit and wait in the car for their driver to be allowed back in.  That defies logic.

At Dar-es-Salaam Airport I noted that my departure gate was Gate 7.  However, there were no signs anywhere for a Gate 7.  They only had Gates 1-6.  So I asked one of the staff there if they could tell me where Gate 7 was.  The response, “There is no Gate 7.  You must go to Gate 5.  We just say Gate 7 so you can go to Gate 5.”  Sometimes there are no words!

If you show compassion people will take advantage.

By the grand age I am now, life should have made me more cynical than I am.  But despite my cynicism, I know that people will continue to take me for a ride.  I am a Giver and people just cannot resist a Giver.  They spin you a story so that you will help them.  What annoys me the most is that they believe I am so gullible and stupid, and that’s why I help them.  The fact is, I see through their bullshit but there is something in me that compels me to help them.  Whether it’s the desperation in their eyes as they spin me a line or the fact that they have children, I don’t really know.  But I will do what I can to help them.  This is self-destructive behaviour.  I think I need therapy.  Because you give them a hand and they grab all of you in until you start drowning in their mess.  You give all you have until you have nothing left for your family.  And you know that nobody is going to help you.  You just have to work your way back up until the next person asks for help.

People are well-meaning but invariably let you down

Everybody has good intentions.  They make kind offers because at that time it makes them feel good.  However, because of time constraints or lack of resources, they let you down the majority of the time.  So when people offer to help, you need to have a back-up plan in case they don’t come through for you.  At the end of the day, the only person you should rely on is yourself.

24 Hours in a day is not enough

In fact 7 days a week is not enough.  A two day weekend is too short.  Time is the biggest enemy.  Time also has a special friend called Procrastination.  The amount of things that need to be done does not leave much time to follow your dreams.  Eat Work Sleep becomes my mantra.  Often it is just Work and Sleep.  However, recently I have decided to make time for reading and writing, my two loves.  Cooking is another favourite past time, but cooking costs money, so that is on the back-burner for a while.  Sometimes I think a 36 hour day would be better.  But then I have to ask, would I have the stamina to last that long?  As it is I start work at 5.30am and leave my office at 6pm feeling shattered and dreaming of an early night and sleep.  Then my brain can only do something mindless like watch the Crime Channel or Reality TV.  Serious thinking is beyond reach.  I really think we need to start protesting for a four day work week and a three day weekend.  That would definitely give our lives more balance.

Traveling gives your life an added dimension

For the life of me I cannot comprehend people who never leave their home town or city.  As a person who travels a lot, and by a lot – I mean more than most people, I have to say experiencing different cultures and seeing different places others just dream of, makes your life richer.  Seeing a place in a photograph is not the same as embracing it with all your senses.  Although endless traveling can be exhausting, the benefits make it all worth it.  One day when I am old and senile, I can look through all my photographs and remember the places I went, the food I ate, the things I saw and the amazing people I met.  I can honestly say, that I have lived my life to its fullest.  If you can travel, do it.  If you don’t have the money, find it and travel.  The world is out there waiting to be explored.

Being Happy and Healthy means more than being Rich

I have come to terms with the fact that I’ll never be rich.  Money is not my friend.  I get it in and I give it away.  While money can buy you lots of cool stuff, and means you can go on amazing holidays and also pay your debts, money can’t buy you happiness.  I know that sounds like a cliché but it’s true.  For the last two years I have let the lack of money cause me such stress that it’s affected my sleep and aged me considerably.  How stupid to give Money that kind of power!  So the last while I have decided to focus on being happy and healthy.  To start doing the things that I love.  And to not let well-meaning people try and dictate to me what I should and should not do.  This is my life, my decisions, my choices.  And the choice I am making is to be happy.

Your Family will always be your Family

Every family has their ups and downs.  You may not always agree with what each other does, and you may say things or do things which hurt each other.  But the bottom line is that they are your family.  They are a part of you and you are proud of their achievements and saddened by their disappointments.  No matter what, I will always be there for my family because I believe in family.  I look at my three children and I am overwhelmed with feelings of love.  If I didn’t do much right in this life, my three children are definitely something I got right.

It’s okay if you don’t like everybody

And it’s really okay if everybody doesn’t like you.  So much of my life was wasted trying to please people and make them like me.  I was the eternal people-pleaser.  (Read doormat)  I worried about what people thought about me, and tolerated people I disliked.  As I’ve grown older, I am more concerned about liking myself and not letting myself down than being concerned about what other people think.  There are some people who, when they walk into a room, make the hair on the back of my neck rise.  There very presence causes me irritation.  Therefore it is understandable that for some people, my presence and personality might annoy them immensely so that they can’t stand being around me.  And that is okay because we are all unique.  If we were all the same the world would be a very boring place.

I am finally comfortable with how I look

For years I wanted to be anorexic model-thin.  No amounts of dieting or exercise would ever make me look that way and I have accepted that.  In fact, I have embraced that I am overweight and have discovered that I can use it to my advantage.  Today I asked for a special seat as I am old and fat.  So they bumped me up to First Class and gave me three empty seats!  Bonus!  Of course, squeezing down narrow aisles will always be a problem.  And as much as I would love to climb to the top of Kilimanjaro it ain’t going to happen.  A helicopter flight to the top will do me just fine.

Strange things happen to me

Whether it is a young Maasai dentist offering me cows for my young daughter while having root canal treatment, or falling backwards into the bath of a hotel in Moscow in the middle of the night and getting wedged with my legs sticking into the air because I mistook it for the toilet in the dark, these sorts of things happen to me all the time.  Besides giving me a wealth of stories to tell, and making my life a rich tapestry of hilarious and sometimes dangerous adventures, it stops me from being bored.  I can never say my life has been boring.  From smuggling money out of a country in a sanitary pad, to making an emergency landing in rebel-held territory, I have experienced a lot and for that I am very thankful.  At the time you wonder, “Why me?”  But afterwards you feel special that you are always the one chosen to land up in disastrous and often extremely funny situations.

For example, my first night in Iringa I was way too tired to head into town to forage for food.  The Lutheran Mission where I was staying did not sell dinner.  So I dug in my backpack and found a bag of two minute noodles and a berry-flavoured teabag.  I asked the man at Reception if I could get some boiling water, a cup and a bowl.  He brought me a flask of boiling water, a cup and a side-plate.  I patiently explained that I needed a bowl as I had to pour the boiling water on the noodles.  He went back to the kitchen and returned with a dinner plate.  My patience was now starting to grow thin.  I showed him the noodles and modeled pouring the water onto it so he could see a dinner plate would not work.  He returned to the kitchen and came back with a very large stainless steel mixing bowl.  I smiled and thanked him.  However, I must have looked quite a sight eating my noodles out of a large mixing bowl with a teaspoon!

Yesterday flying on a little 8 seater Cessna as it bounced and bumped its way through dark clouds, I had an epiphany.  Life is a bit like the flight I took.  You have smooth bits where you can see the ground below and know exactly where you are heading.  Then you fly into a dark cloud and are blown around the skies, unable to see anything above or below.  To make matters worse, you discover that the seatbelt does not work, so if the plane does plummet to earth you will have no chance of survival.  But you trust, you trust that the pilot who appears to be sleeping in the cockpit, will fly the plane safely through the dark clouds until you come out the other side.  You can’t let those dark clouds overwhelm and panic you.  You can’t let the air pockets, sudden drops and being blown around the skies frighten you.  You have to focus on getting to the end of the cloud and letting the sun shine on you once again.  And trust that the pilot wakes up in time to land the plane!

Cindy Vine is an author and teacher living in Cape Town South Africa.  Besides writing, she runs an NGO which helps children who don’t cope with mainstream education.  Cindy is the author of Hush Baby, Defective, Not Telling, C U @ 8 and The Case of Billy B.  All her books are available on Amazon in both Kindle and Paperback format.