Solo at 16 – My First Travel Adventure

I’m fifteen years old, stuck in middle-of-nowhere Sweden and dying to get the hell out of dodge. Of course at that tender, wonderful age most of us believe we’re very mature and adult. I was no exception and somehow I managed to persuade my parents to believe it as well. Yes!

So it was that a few days before my sixteenth birthday I set off, all by my ownsome, to visit a pen-pal in North Wales, a journey that involved me travelling by ferry, train and coach for some 30 hours. What had I let myself in for? Being brave was definitely a lot easier without actually leaving the house – now I had to conquer the North Sea for 24 hours from Gothenburg to Harwich, get a train to London’s Liverpool Street, then from there get myself to Victoria Coach Station and find the bus to Bangor, and all of the above in English as well.

My jolly opinion was as per usual “how hard can it be?” and at least initially it didn’t prove particularly hard at all. My parents dropped me off at the ferry in Gothenburg and with a tremendous sense of independence and achievement I settled into my cabin. The voyage was peaceful and it wasn’t until the following day I found out we were running two hours late. I had given myself two hours to get from Liverpool Street to Victoria, having never been to London before. Now suddenly the two hours were gone and as far as I could tell I would miss my bus to Bangor, the last one of the day. Gulp! Panic set in…

To calm my jittery nerves I went to the onboard cinema and concentrated so hard I can still remember the entire plot and some of the lines of “White Nights” with Mikhail Baryshnikov and Isabella Rosselini, some 30 years later. We arrived in Harwich slightly earlier than anticipated and I made a mad dash for the London-bound train, failing to realise it would simply wait and leave when everyone had disembarked.

Still, I got to Liverpool Street half an hour before my bus was leaving from Victoria and decided I had nothing to lose. I grabbed a cab and learnt the valuable lesson that a desperate woman can make a London cabbie step on it and break every possible traffic rule, even if she’s 15 and it’s the first time she’s trying out her English in England. We made it with ten minutes to spare, but my problems weren’t over yet. To my abject horror, Victoria Coach Station was huge and there were buses everywhere. By now I was sweating like a pig, dragging my sorry suitcase along behind me, legs shaking, asking everyone for the bus to Bangor.

“Bangor? Yes, right there, love.” Phew there was hope at last.

Getting on the bus in question, of course I asked again to make extra sure and got the answer that “no, this is the bus for Dublin.” Little did I know, back then, that the bus to Dublin stopped in Bangor on the way, so I clambered off the bus again and continued my search, increasingly close to tears.

One minute to six, just as the bus was leaving, the driver, who’d directed me to the right bus in the first place, spotted me and put me out of my misery. I got the last bloody seat on the National Express to Dublin (and Bangor!) and like a wet rag I sank into it, thinking I probably didn’t have the nerves for travel after all… One trip does not a seasoned traveller make, but it was good practice.