I Keep Getting Goddamn Lost

Yes, I'm still traveling. Yes, it's been humbling not knowing where I'm going.

Every day is an occasion for gelato

This last month and a half has a continual lesson in being humbled by being utterly and absolutely lost everywhere I went.

Listen, I hear you. The last time, I said to look up and try to appreciate your surroundings and all that. Just noticing and being present is enough. It really is.

But when you feel like you’re in the middle of nowhere, hungry and not sure why you even bothered to embark on the adventure in the first place, it’s a bit hard to adopt that mindset.

(ok, maybe I’m being a bit dramatic here, but you get my drift).

I don’t have any grand lessons I want to impart, and that is not really the point, is it? We go through life wandering and lost, and see some cool stuff. We get hungry, annoyed, and joyful - sometimes on the same day. Of course I didn’t need to travel halfway across the world to learn that.

But, being away from my ‘home’ helped me get away from the screens and put me in a totally new environment in which I can test my resolve. That all I really need is my legs and my brain to work together, and it’ll be enough to figure all *gestures wildly* this out.

Here are some highlights on when I truly had no idea where I was or how to get to “there.”

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I went to find some coffee so my husband could sit at a park bench while my son played some of his new friends at the playground. I walked around in circles for half an hour after getting said coffee. It was cold by the time I finally figured out once my mobile data was working again that I was about a two minute walk from the playground.

I apparently had time to snap this photo of a lovely swan while walking around in circles.

And then the next week, my husband and I decided to take a cable car up a mountain in the Black Forest. The tram and bus ride was really straightforward, one of the employees at the tourist information office told us.

Only except we were tired in the morning, relied on Google Maps, and took the wrong train. Then we guessed at the bus number because a teacher and his hordes of middle school students got in. Surely they were also going to the same place?

Turns out, the bus was going UP the mountain. It was an incredibly scenic ride and we enjoyed it, but inside I was panicking. An old lady on the bus kindly told us the place we wanted to go was on the OTHER side of the “hill.”

We ended up getting off near a local inn.

I mean, it was a nice detour. We found a dirt road and it looked like it led in the general direction the kind lady told us. We were relieved when we saw a sign, proof that some tourism god was shining on us.

The cows were either telling us “you’ve got this!” or “boy oh boy did you mess up the instructions from the tourist information guy.”

About an hour or so later, we ended up at the cable car. So much for going up (the trip down was nice).

And the pièce de résistance was the time I thought it was a great idea to try out a hiking trail the tourism board claimed was an easy walk, and one that’s supposedly well marked. Why not walk among wineries and enjoy the fresh air?

We all get up early, still a bit groggy despite downing two doppios. We came to a fork in the road and turned left.

Turns out we needed to turn right.

We tried to get back on the right trail but the more we walked, the more we couldn’t find the road, even though we weren’t sure what it even looked like. We trespassed onto several vineyards. I suppose we should be grateful nobody was out early in the day.

Then, a sign for the trail - hurrah! We look beyond and the “leisurely” trail turned into a steep hill going down.

We went down anyway, convinced we’d get back on the leisurely route. The well-marked trail ended there, and we walked through rows of trees, pretty sure we were trespassing again.

Finally, an older gentleman said hello, confused why we were trespassing on his property, and we simply told him we were lost. He nods in understanding and walks us around the fields…only to direct us back up the dirt trail we came down on.

We called it quits by that point and went back into town to have lunch.

The scarecrow along the path was either mocking or feeling sorry for us.

I’d love to know: Was there ever a time you got lost? What did you end up doing?