Tent City

Every time the Contiki group reaches a new destination, we lug our tent parts into an open field and find a soft patch to hunker down.  We hammer the pegs into the firm ground and assemble the A-frames.  A rain-proof tarp serves as a roof.  Temporary homes are constructed in less than ten minutes.  I find the warmth of my tent comforting, but its lack of a closet is inconvenient.  Or perhaps the feeling that my possessions are necessary is the true burden.

I was initially skeptical about spending so much time outdoors inside a stuffy, nylon pyramid.  I couldn’t watch my favorite TV shows, and it contained no pantry to store my snacks.  My blow-up mattress did little to cushion by back against the cold hard ground, so I eagerly awaited the day I could sleep in my soft bed once more.  After reading Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, I changed my mind. 

Thoreau built a cabin in the woods and lived deliberately for two years to escape the trivialities of society.  Even in the 1800s, people were tied down by expensive mortgages that take years to pay off.  We were——and still are——imprisoned by our houses.  We work so much to pay off our houses and our cars.  The bigger the house gets, we spend more time at work, more time driving to and from work, and less time at home.  What’s the point of paying so much for a house you barely inhabit?

During this vacation, I had the opportunity to live simply without the stigma of poverty.  If you live in a small hut, some may judge you in a negative fashion because your abode is not luxurious.  I grew up in a double-wide trailer and thought I was poor when I watched celebrities give tours of their mansions on MTV’s Cribs.  I was hypnotized by this drivel. 

I wanted a ten-bedroom house with an indoor basketball court and a thirty car garage, but I never stopped to think how I would fill up that space.  Why did I need nine extra bedrooms?  Star athletes and rappers always seemed to be having pool parties with their massive posse of mooching friends.  They must be the ones sleeping in the guest bedrooms, I assumed, but who did the dusting around the house?

Thoreau retreated to the woods to reclaim principles lost amidst the narcissism and stratification of our society.  Many of us have forgotten the original purpose of shelter, which is to provide warmth and protection from the elements.  My tent was not equipped with hardwood floors or marble countertops, but the rain cover lived up to its name.  My humble fortress also kept out the mosquitos and the wind, and sweeping the floor took up no time at all. 

I will admit that sometimes it was a pain to use the bathroom in the middle of the night.  I’d have to put on my glasses, my jacket, and my shoes and walk the unfamiliar path in the dark.  Every city we visited had toilets and showers in different places.  If your mind was foggy from drink or lack of sleep, you may forget where you were on the map and end up lost and peeing behind the nearest tree. 

Nonetheless, a nomadic lifestyle is refreshing.  At home, my shower and electrical outlets never move.  The voltage and the water pressure are constant.  Every morning I can find my cereal in my pantry, and my coconut milk stays cool in my fridge.  Some days I never leave the house.  There is no need to adjust, but this is not the life for which humans were designed.  We were born to run from predators and scavenge our prey, but now that lifestyle is optional and considered bizarre. 

I cherish my days in the tent, where putting on pants is an elaborate process because I cannot stand up inside.  I scrunched up my neck pillow and that is where I rested my head at night.  Before turning in, I read a few pages illuminated by my tiny flashlight.  I hand-washed my socks and spread them out on my backpack overnight to dry inside this mesh humidifier.  When I’m at home, I can press buttons to make life easier.  Although I love the convenience of light bulbs and dryers, I savored my semi-primitive home.

Making Friends

I met the Contiki group in the basement of the London Royal National Hotel.  There were about forty of us.  Most arrived in pairs, but there were a few solo travelers.  We all went to a pub next door and walked around, greeting each other.  After swapping names and repeating names, small groups began to form.

I knew that the first few moments of these social gatherings were crucial to forming friendships.  I had never been particularly skilled in socializing in large groups.  Usually I listened to everyone else talk while I sized them up and analyzed their potential to become my friend.  After examining the pool of suspects, I would hone in on a select few and interview them further to see if we could complain about the same topics. 

Shared enemies make for fast friends.  However, I recently discovered that I tend to focus too strongly on the negative when entering a foreign environment populated with people unknown to me.  While I walked under the gray skies of Dublin and took in the dreary surroundings in an unremarkable neighborhood, I wanted to go back home, but at the same time I berated myself for having such a bleak outlook during this rare opportunity.  Something in the environment of my upbringing has caused in me an inclination to criticize, and I resolved to fix this.  I wanted to battle this urge to find fault and, instead, be open-minded to bringing new change into my refreshed existence. 

    

As I was about to embark on a five-week trip with a bus-load of strangers, I felt it imperative to seek out individuals I wouldn’t mind sitting next to during eight-hour rides.  I abandoned my judgments and aimed to market myself as someone worth knowing. 

Brochures advertised life-changing vacations where you’re likely to make life-long friends.  I suppose this thought was filed somewhere inside my mental cabinet, as part of me is always searching for a future wife.  When I find an attractive woman, I can’t help but study her for compatible qualities well-suited to create a comfortable partnership.  Does she watch foreign films?  Does she smoke? Would my genes, entangled with hers, produce an offspring likely to thrive?  Yes or no questions echo in my subconscious as I think of jokes to pique her interest and distinguish myself from the other men competing for mates.

All the Contiki members wore a sticker on their shirts during the meet-and-greet, and I targeted those labeled individuals in search of traits I recognized in myself and traits I wanted to acquire.  I wandered around the pub, chatting with Canadians younger than me.  There were girls from New Zealand and guys from Australia, but I was the only American.  I didn’t mind this.  I always preferred to be the outcast because my differences prompted questions and made conversations begin with little effort. 

I hit it off with a family from Vancouver and met another Canadian couple.  I surprised myself with my progress and was on a roll when someone decided to take this party outside and make it stationary.  The group carried their foaming beers to two picnic tables under the awning.  The night was dark, and we were chilled by the cool London air.  A rambunctious group sipping on their second drinks took their seats and filled up one picnic table.  They smiled and laughed at foreign faces becoming familiar. 

I sat down at the table behind them in a spot less populated and noticeably quieter.  I watched as cliques formed at the other table. As those bonds strengthened, assimilation into that group would become more challenging.  We were all separate, stranded parts joining to build a working body of indeterminate shape.  Our dispositions, our attitudes, and our habits conjoined like a cog hugging a chain and learning to roll together toward a shared future.  Once these ingredients melded, I could be an unnecessary luxury like a bell on a bicycle.  In a network of friends, this is the definition of an acquaintance:  something you could use but easily say goodbye to. 

I wanted to play more of an integral role in a friendship and turned to these strangers sitting next to me.  We all journeyed from faraway homes and sat upon this bench with separate memories but shared questions about the itinerary of tomorrow.  I discovered that many of my fellow table-mates did not care to partake in excessive drinking, and they all had non-imposing demeanors. 

I didn’t follow anyone to this seat; I just happened to pick this one because it was open.  As our conversation developed, I began to see the similarities of our personalities when an outsider infiltrated our flock.

A noisy fellow with unkempt hair took a seat at our table and interrupted our discussion.  He had recently finished a camping trip with Contiki and was celebrating with his life-long friends he discovered on his vacation.  He warned us of perils ahead:  the infamous Contiki cough, the inevitable illness, and the steep prices of Paris.  After advising us not to misjudge muscular men as douche bags because once you approached them they were actually quite friendly, he told us that if we wanted drugs our tour manager could find them for us.  If we wanted weed before we reached Amsterdam, we could get it cheap.

He talked endlessly for at least twenty minutes.  His tales full of debauchery were entertaining and funny, but in his memories were scenes unlikely to match my future.  I didn’t want to drink late into the morning and sleep poorly and wind up too sick to see Rome.  I wanted to practice my French with locals, eat pizza in Italy, and trace my family’s roots in Greece.  Although he proved to be an interesting distraction, the man clearly chose the wrong table.  His time wouldn’t have been wasted with the rowdy bunch drinking refilled beers.  After the man left my table, the rest of us remarked upon his mild insanity and expressed our lack of interest in getting drunk each night. 

I wondered if our firing neurons contained magnets that were somehow aligned with each other’s brains.  There seemed to be invisible forces that caused like-minds to crash into one another and feel at ease.  The people I first sat with ended up being my closest friends on the trip, but I didn’t realize this until the trip was over.  I don’t know if all my strategizing worked.  The herd seemed to form all on its own.