Tomorrow is Another Day

No matter how much you plan, no matter your best intentions, if you travel, someday, somewhere, something is bound to go wrong. You'll miss a flight, or get lost in a new city, or lose something of value, or get sick; the possibilities are endless. Merde happens. Like most travelers, I have a regular encyclopedia of experiences that were none too pleasant at the time. Is it just me, or do mishaps seems amplified in stressfulness when they happen while traveling? To ease the pain, there's something that everyone tells themselves while living through an unplanned travel detour: this will be really funny tomorrow.

Though difficult to believe at the time, I've found this statement to be largely, incredibly true. The stories my friends and I tell over, and over, and over again - the ones that get bigger and better and funnier each time we tell them - are the stories of events that totally sucked at the time. With the luxury of distance, disasters are the best on-the-road stories a traveler could hope for. The time my friends and I booked an early morning train from Cannes to Strasbourg, all separately missed our alarms, frenetically scrambled to get to the station with seconds to spare, had to leave one person behind at the station because she forgot her passport (which we needed to be able to use our eurorail passes), and spent the long ride north comforting yours truly who was so distraught she spent almost the entire first leg of the ride in the shaky, disgusting train bathroom getting sick, has turned into one of our favorite laugh-generating "remember when?" stories.

Why do travel disasters make for the best post-travel stories? Is it because everyone loves a tragedy, or at least one that eventually turns out ok? No one was every seriously hurt during my travel mishaps. We all survived, and if anything, came out stronger on the other end. Maybe it's because these events are sort of a badge of honor. Later, you can say, "yeah, I was practically hugging that toilette on the train, and I lived to tell the tale!" Or, "yeah, I stayed in a really bad hostel, it was awesome!" Of course, you weren't laughing at the time. You were freaking out, overly stressed, frustrated, or angry, or scared...and telling yourself it would be funny tomorrow.