I’ll soon have been traveling for two months and several thousand kilometers. To spend such a long time with oneself in an enclosed space, you have to get along pretty well with yourself. Otherwise, it’s too long to survive it unscathed. Tackling such a project in constant conflict wouldn’t be for me. Up to now, it’s gone quite well. Sure, I reproach myself now and then. You make your own argument against something, and before you know it, you’re fighting with yourself. Couples and groups have it easier—they can separate. But me?
For this reason, it’s important to keep the team’s morale up. You develop strategies and gather experience. I want to note the most important things here:
1. Keeping things neat
(Or: making sure to put things back where they belong)
The drive up the E75 in all its facets is complex enough to begin with. Your equipment always has to work, and batteries need to be charged—including your own. Every evening, you need a new place to spend the night. And so on. So keep things neat. It doesn’t always work, and particularly this point is an extremely touchy one for lone travelers. Whose fault is it when something’s not where it’s supposed to be?
2. Good food
Good food lifts morale in a way that’s positively uncanny. That’s sometimes not so easy. The main problem is monotony. Burgers, pizza, and wings as the only things available for hundreds of kilometers is the natural enemy of anyone’s morale. In this respect, it helps to change countries—then you get steak, pork knuckle, and—for people for prefer to eat vegetarian—chicken. So cooking for yourself can often be a good escape. ’Cause those “fitness salads” with their chicken strips can really get you down.
3. Consumption
Consuming things is very important, of course. Consumption is satisfying. I realized that even as a preschooler. But it’s tricky. What to do with all that stuff when you’re on the road for so long? So the cycle shortens—the latency between purchase and disposal becomes short and obvious. And that, in turn, leads you to severely limit your consumption. Apart from a couple of snow globes (and food), I haven’t bought much. At home, you can pack your apartment or house to the rafters. But here? That’s one of the nice lessons of this trip: you don’t need much to be happy. Except, of course, for a good camera…
4. Good photos
This is morale booster number one—the most important thing. If the crew’s morale is good, the pictures get better, too. The opposite could become a vicious circle, but the spiral is swirling happily upwards!
Recommended reading:
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert M. Pirsig
To Have or to Be? Erich Fromm