The Habits of Habitual Travelers

Unsure exactly what I was after, but determined to obtain it, I stormed the gates of the local, internationally-inclined supermarket at half-past nine at night, emerging, fifteen minutes later and eight dollars lighter (relatively unscathed). In another ten minutes, I was home, a bag of Colombian dried plantain slices open on the kitchen table beside an unopened sleeve of galletas, though these were an unfortunate, Mexican-brand substitute for the digestive tea biscuits I had once been used to. On the counter sat my main prize, the stove-top espresso maker, identical but for the lack of wear and time-earned tarnish to the one I’d grown familiar with in Spain.

Another five minutes and the percolator was filled with steaming espresso and I poured out the ink-dark liquid into three excessively large mugs before realizing that a) it was after ten at night, b) there was no one else around who wanted espresso given point a), and c) I had made way too much coffee, given points a) and b). I had no one to blame but myself — it was late, I was feeling vulnerable, I’d been looking at old travel pictures. I’d succumbed.

Staring at three double-shot servings of espresso that no one would drink, neatly arranged with biscuits no one would eat (fine, I ate those), I started to think: travelers do some weird crap, even when they’re not traveling. Now maybe, in a desperate effort not to feel pathetic, I’ve started to apply my own idiosyncrasies to all travelers, when these are really just characteristics I’ve developed, but it will be years before I’m emotionally mature enough to admit that. Thus:

The List of Weird Idiosyncrasies Travelers (Plural, So, Not Just Me) Have Developed:

• Complaining to your friends how you can never get a decent loaf of Italian-style bread/a Moroccan omelette/ South African boere vors anywhere in your home country. Because apparently, just because you’ve visited someplace else, everything you enjoyed about someplace else should follow you home.
  
• Similarly, trying to force the tastes you’ve acquired (olive oil and vinegar on salad, guava-flavored soda, cornflour cakes, fried plantains and espresso) onto said friends, regardless of their own tastes. Or allergies.
  
• Never letting your purse or pack out of your sight or reach (which includes hanging it on the back of your chair or leaving it on a coat rack). Even at your cousin’s baby shower.
  
• Trying to communicate in the language of the last country you visited in the next country you’re visiting (even though no one there speaks it, and frankly, neither do you).
  
• Accepting that no matter if your bag zips shut before you leave and no matter how many toiletries you use up once you’re there, you will never be able to fit everything back into the bag without a colossal effort that will leave you in an exhausted heap on the hotel floor.
  
• Carrying packs of kleenex with you everywhere you go. Not because its allergy-season, but because you’ve been caught in a bathroom where no one has replaced the toilet paper in three years.
• Photographing things (street signs, manhole covers, restaurant cutlery) that wouldn’t be remotely interesting at home.
• Ignoring the people who look at your pictures and swear they’ll “go with you next time.” They won’t (or maybe these are just my friends?)
• Accepting that no matter how comfortable you make yourself, you will not be able to sleep restfully on that seventeen hour flight/train trip/camel ride.