7 Reasons You Should Never Go Abroad (Unless You Like Joy)

(7 minute read)

International travel: the sweet thrill of crossing the planet only to hand yourself over to a parade of inconveniences, discomforts, and, worst of all, the people who find the whole thing fun. They will tell you it broadens your horizons. Let's be honest, there is nothing enjoyable about it whatsoever. As a public service, then, here are the terrible things you'll want to avoid, each of which has, unfortunately, handed me some of the best stories of my life.

1. The airport, where time is a lie

The airport is a purgatory of overpriced sandwiches and shoeless strangers, built to test you before you've gone anywhere at all. And yes, it can undo you, but usually only if you get cocky. Once, flying from Lyon to Edinburgh, we found a bar right beside a sign pointing to our gate, "just ahead." We had an hour. We did what any reasonable person does with an hour and a gate "just ahead": we had a couple of drinks. What the sign neglected to mention was that "just ahead" meant down a staircase and through a fluorescent tunnel running under the tarmac for roughly the length of a marathon. The stroll became a jog became a flat sprint. We reached the gate at final boarding, where the agent's scanner refused to read one of our passports and she paused, for a long moment, as though deciding whether the malfunction was a chance to teach us something. It read eventually. We made it. My cardio did not thank me, but the story has aged well.

2. Jet lag, the uninvited houseguest

Cross an ocean and your body files a formal complaint. The first time I came to Burgundy, I flew Dallas to Paris, poured myself straight into a cab, then a train, and arrived in Burgundy by early afternoon completely destroyed. I have since learned my lesson and always spend the first night in Paris, because Burgundy is far too relaxing to fight jet lag in. You need a little friction to stay upright.

There is a cure, and it isn't coffee. Another time, Paul and I landed in Paris, checked into the hotel, and wandered over to Les Invalides, where there was a special exhibit on the French Resistance. Somewhere around the third yawn I realized I was touring one of the more solemn chapters of French history like a man being gently hypnotized, which felt disrespectful, so we left. We grabbed a pair of Vélib bikes (Paris's bike-share) instead, and ten minutes of pedaling did what no espresso could. Motion, it turns out, is the antidote.

3. Foreign languages, and the great English ambush

You picture yourself pointing helplessly at a menu, at the mercy of strangers with accents. The reality is stranger and funnier. In France, my problem is usually the reverse: I speak French, and the second my accent lands, half the country switches to English to spare me. Once, at a train station coffee stand, I ordered in perfectly comprehensible French, the woman answered in English, I pressed on in French, and she said, with enormous warmth, "Ah, yes. Eez good to try." She meant it kindly. It remains one of the most quietly devastating things anyone has ever said to me, and Paul and I have lobbed "eez good to try" at each other ever since, any time one of us fails at something with real effort.

The other lesson is that you can't assume who speaks what. Years ago, in a Paris restaurant, the music was so good that when the bartender brought our drinks I complimented his taste, in French. He looked alarmed and went to fetch the server. Sensing a misfire, I tried again in English, and he lit up: he was Italian, spoke no French, spoke fine English, and yes, the playlist was his. We all laughed. The common language, more often than not, is goodwill. While miscommunications can happen, it really is good to try, and locals appreciate the consideration.

4. The terror of unfamiliar food

What if dinner arrives with no fries? What if the sausage is made of something you'd rather not picture? Here is the truth after a few years of eating my way across Europe: the fear is almost always misplaced, and when it does get you, it gets you from a direction you never saw coming. I was nervous about boudin noir, the blood sausage, and I love it. I was entirely unbothered by andouillette, the tripe sausage with a scent all its own, and these days one whiff of it turns me around in the street. Haggis, which everyone warns you about, was a delight. And escargot is exactly what its defenders promise: a delivery system for an outrageous amount of garlic and butter, which is to say, unimprovable. Order the thing. Worst case, it's a story. Best case, it's a soup you'll dream about for years.

5. Culture shock, or: it doesn't work like home

Everyone frets about culture shock, the late dinners, the shuttered Sundays, the unspoken rules. Mostly it's just your brain discovering there are many reasonable ways to run a life. The real trap isn't the big differences; it's assuming a place works like the one you already know. I once treated the London Underground as though it were the New York subway I'd lived with for years. Paul and I confidently got off at the wrong stop, surfaced with no idea where we were, and then I tried to hail a cab the New York way, arm out, full conviction, to absolutely no effect. We stood there flailing until a young woman took pity, asked where we were going, and, since her Uber was headed the same way, told us to climb in. When we tried to hand her cash, she refused it. Culture shock, it turns out, is often just a stranger being kind in a way you didn't expect.

6. Other tourists, the supposed enemy

They block the view, narrate their own selfies, and applaud the sunset like it owes them a bow. Surely they are the problem. They are, of course, also you. The truth is that sometimes you cannot dodge them. In Split, the old town is small and the cruise ships empty onto it daily, along with wave after wave of twenty-two-year-olds on trips engineered entirely around alcohol. There was no avoiding them, and it did not matter, because the place is stunning and the history is worth every jostled step. A couple of tricks do help. Walk far enough along the beach to reach the nude section and you will find blessed open space, provided you're willing to fully commit to the bit. And on our first night we found a bar we loved and simply kept going back, until by week's end the staff treated us like regulars and the owner, after locking up one night, took us out to a club. The tourists were still everywhere. We had just made the place ours.

7. Getting scammed

Somewhere out there, legend says, is a scammer with your name and a brand-new yacht. In reality most scams are less heist than nuisance, and a little alertness handles them. Paris taxis run a classic. On that same jet-lagged first arrival, we took a cab to the Gare de Lyon, paid by card, and the driver announced, gravely, that the payment had failed. It had not. I opened my banking app and showed him the charge. He frowned and said the amount was wrong, it didn't match. Paul, who had been arguing with him in French the entire time, pointed out that the figure on my American account was simply in a different currency. The driver attempted to continue to argue, but we got out. We left. That was the end of it. "No, thank you," delivered with a calm face and a moving pair of legs, is still the most powerful phrase in travel.

The horrors are not that horrible

That is the supposedly fatal case against leaving home. An airport that tests your cardio. Jet lag you outrun on a rented bike. A woman who gently assures you it's good to try. A sausage that betrays you and another that surprises you. A stranger who shares her Uber. A bar owner who becomes a friend. A cab driver defeated by the concept of exchange rates. Not one of them ruined a trip. Every one of them became a story, and I've just told them all to you.

So go. Let the plan be a suggestion. Learn five words, get one of them laughed at, eat the thing you can't pronounce, and sit on the steps to watch the city switch on around nine. The horrors are not that horrible. The stories are the entire point.

What's the travel "disaster" that turned into your favorite story? The missed train, the mystery meal, the stranger who saved your afternoon? Tell us in the comments.