Discombobulated

Will I remember how to travel again?

L’hotel, Paris: tonyamos.com

I’ve forgotten how to travel.

The last time I stepped out of Australia was in October 2019, when I went to Bali for a few days. In February 2020, before the true seriousness of the pandemic became clear, I took the Indian Pacific from Perth to Sydney, for the storied train’s 50th anniversary. For much of the time after that, I was restricted to travel within five kilometres of home.

It’s been a long time between drinks, as they say.

Had I known I’d be trapped in Australia for almost two years, forbidden to leave, I might have lingered in Bali for a while. A long while. As I’m writing this, I’m still unable to go back to Bali, or Perth for that matter, as the border remains clamped shut.

I’m still mad that Australians, with few exceptions, were not permitted to leave or re-enter their own country for 18 months. That the Australian government couldn’t work around border closures and quarantine to at least bring families back together. I’m madder that most Australians thought that was OK. (If you live outside Australia or New Zealand, I understand how incomprehensible this seems. It was to many of us too.)

Anyway, freedom is on the horizon. Literally. I’m boarding an Emirates A380 to Nice and Paris in early December. It’s easier to get to France than to Hobart, where my mother and sister live. That state won’t reopen until near Christmas.

Such a prolonged period of stasis, where the only ‘travel’ I did was a weekly Zoom cocktail party in LA with friends, means I’m out of the travel habit in every way. I’m not really fit enough yet for walking from one end of Paris to the other, or even tackling those long Metro tunnels, and I don’t even know where all my travel gear is, having moved house twice since the start of the pandemic.

I’m discombobulated.

I used to have everything ready to go. As I was travelling every few weeks, mostly long-haul trips, I kept my suitcases half packed. Now the suitcases are up in a cupboard, gathering dust, requiring ladders and muscles to get them down. As for the rest of the gear, I don’t even know where my unsexy neck pillow is hidden.

I’m mildly nervous about flying (weird for a travel writer, I know) so having the kit ready was always a great comfort. It was part of a ritual that soothed my anxieties about the many things that might go wrong once I stepped outside my door. It meant I had some control, although we all know by now how illusory that idea is.

Being on the move was part of my identity. I’m restless, but that’s as much a mental thing as a physical thing. I need to sit and concentrate for vast tracts of time to write books, but at least I’m going somewhere in my head. But I also need to travel physically to get the synapses firing.

I didn’t mind a year of reflection, and our family was not separated by oceans (if you don’t count Bass Strait) but the thought that I might never see Paris or New York or Cairo or Lisbon ever again seemed depressingly possible. Now that the departure lounge is in sight, I’m a bit dazzled as the new old reality kicks back in.

So I’m stumbling around now, a bit like a bear emerging from hibernation.

I’m making lists. The small details are important and anchor me. What do I need? Well, apart from basic things like batteries for my headphones and tape recorder, some fresh Artline pens and a nice, blank bound notebook, there are some serious choices to be made. Such as what to wear on the plane, so I neither freeze or suffocate. Tricky.

I’ve worn silk cashmere tracksuit pants and cardigan for years, with a thick travel wrap that doubles as a blanket. It’s better to wear slip-on shoes because it’s a drag doing up laces at each security check, but I’m going to take my Comme Converse sneakers this time because they look better. I may regret this.

I always carry a fresh teeshirt and underwear for the transit in Dubai or in case I get stuck somewhere. (Always on the cards.) And snacks for the plane because I always crave chocolate in the twilight zone.

Then there’s the medical kit. I carry every over-the-counter drug known to man, (as if the French pharmacies don’t have them.) I’m very particular about my sleeping pills for the plane and supply of Melatonin for overcoming jetlag.

Disastrously, my supply of American Melatonin has finally run out. It’s prescription-only here. And I see that I don’t have any Z-class sleeping pills left, so I have to make an appointment to go to the doctor. Sigh. Add that to the separate appointment I have to make for a PCR test.

I can talk about in-flight sleeping pills, well, in my sleep, so if you have any favourites, let me know.

To re-kit myself, I’ve been to MUJI for new zip-up cosmetics bags and plastic bottles. Because of COVID I need to carry plenty of surgical masks (the only kind the airline will accept) and another Uniqlo mask to to wear over the top. I always take disinfectant sprays and towels anyway, to sort out the toilet before I even sit down. And always slippers for the rank carpets. How passengers wear bare feet, I’ll never understand. Quite a few do.

Don’t pack nail scissors in the carry-on. Don’t pack nail scissors in the carry-on.

I can’t even think about the clothing yet. I’m trying to travel light for the environment and my back, but I’m going for business, and besides, it’s winter over there. Boots, coats, gloves. I will take at least two wrong things I’ll never wear. I always do.

My own eye-mask for the flight and too-bright hotel rooms. Tick. The compression socks that will prevent DVT. Tick. My laptop and phone and business cards and electrical adaptors. Tick

Cripes, my passport. It’s valid until 2025. Phew.

And all of a sudden, I remember how to travel.

I remember that I prefer to roll all my clothes in the suitcases rather than fold. I remember I have a leather envelope - somewhere - where I carry my important documents for border controls. That I always get to the airport several hours ahead because - well, just in case.

And I remember what it’s like to be squashed in an Economy seat for 14 hours, glued to American Family on a tiny screen, juggling my book and headphones and dinner tray whenever the person next to me wants to get up to go to the loo.

Right now, that seems pretty OK.

I count my blessings.