He was wearing a hat that I had only ever seen on ski mountains, made of polar-tech fabric and shaped like a jester’s cap with floppy triangular sections around his face and including—I could hardly believe it—bells. In Moscow’s dim airport with women in dresses and men in buckled trousers and poor but well-kept shoes, he stuck out like a whole pack of American tourists.
“Hey,” said my friend (we will call him Ben; I don’t carry libel insurance). He dropped his huge designer backpack on the floor and gave me a hug. “Nice place.” I almost winced.
Ben was my ex-boyfriend, by then just a friend—not friends with benefits, but let’s say friends with tension (in advance, I apologize for the lack of salacious details; there are none in this story because there were none there). Before he met me in Russia for a few weeks in 1997, I had been nervous about the tension, about what traveling together would lead to, or what it wouldn’t.
But it had never occurred to me that I would be traveling in my beloved Russia with an American. By that I meant someone who would talk and criticize loudly, would fail to observe local customs, and would generally justify foreigners’ complaints about obnoxious American tourists. I took another look at Ben’s hat and thought of introducing him to my family in St. Petersburg. Oh boy, I thought.
The trip, to put it softly, did not work out. There were many reasons for its failure. Some were personal, but more important to me were the many instances where our approaches to cultural differences and travel itself clashed.
There was the time he didn’t give up his seat to an old woman on the metro. Everyone does that in Russia. I’ve seen complete strangers clip young people on the ears and give them a shove for failing to move. Ben didn’t see the point.
And there was the expectation. At 21 my travel desires and methods were perhaps less well defined than they are now, but they did involve wandering, walking, encountering people, smelling weird odors, spending hours in art galleries and alone on the streets, … they did not involve spending four entire days scouring the extremely hot city for lingerie for Ben’s girlfriend. Matching lingerie, but not too expensive. I hasten to add that the sheer boredom and exhaustion I felt at this expedition was not due to leftover jealousy, but because I really hate shopping.
There were flaws on my part, too, like the fact that I really like to eat. While some bread and fruit grabbed in passing from a street stand will suit most days, some days I want to make cuisine (or lack thereof) itself an adventure.
And there was the time Ben took a picture of a nun while we were sitting in the grounds of a convent. Like many of Russia’s old churches and religious retreats, the serene building of gray and green was built partially as a defensive fortress. Behind the thick walls surrounding the grounds, we couldn’t hear traffic from the busy street outside the gate.
We were talking with my father, enjoying the peace of the convent’s trees, when Ben lifted his camera and snapped a picture of an approaching nun.
The woman exploded. My father stood up to pacify her. The old woman, in her black habit, kept trying to get around him and attack Ben, intent on removing the film (and possibly his bowels while she was at it). He sat staring at his camera instead of trying to apologize. She was livid. My father finally convinced her to leave Ben alone, but she threw taunts at him all the way to the entrance of the church. Ben looked up sideways at me.
“In a lot of cultures,” I said, “people think you’re stealing their soul when you take their picture.” Ben made a noise that sounded almost like a snort. A derisive snort. I closed my eyes, and wondered how you could tell someone that you liked them—had once maybe even loved them—but never, ever wanted to travel with them again.
My mother and I have this problem. Our relationship could be described as often warm, sometimes incendiary. I love her. She’s kooky and creative and brilliant and interesting.
But traveling with her? It’s hell. She has this longstanding desire that the two of us make a trip to the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia, tramp the rainy settings of a mutual favorite (and dead) mystery author, Laurali Wright. The fact that I haven’t taken steps to make the trip happen is something my mother interprets as a judgment, that I don’t like her.
So not true. But it seems awful to tell the real truth: that I can’t stand traveling with her. We’ve done it. On Prince Edward Island in Canada, all through the Highlands and Skye in Scotland. She gets up kinda late and dawdles getting ready, just like at home. She likes to walk, but not quite how I like to walk—2 hours for her versus 6-14 hours for me. She lingers too long over morning coffee before leaving the B&B. It drives me absolutely bonkers.
There are people the wanderlustian can travel with comfortably, but they seem few and far between. I tramped around Turkey with a few girlfriends when I was 20 and enjoyed every minute. In general, my husband and I travel well together, although me being a super-early-morning person and him … well, he’s just not … it can throw wrenches into the pure delight I get in traveling. And my insistence on 5-hour minimum hikes can get on his nerves.
It does seem to be the case—for me at least—that a friend rather than close relative or partner works best as a traveling companion. Someone you’re not necessarily that close with, but whose company you enjoy and whose schedule is adaptable. Someone who doesn’t get insulted if you want to run off to spend time on your own, or who can entertain themselves with a book in a café while you hike, or vice versa.
I would say, tentatively, and with no intention to hurt anyone’s feelings, that the best travel companion is someone you like, but don’t love.
