It was November 2010 and I was living in Madrid, Spain. Anxious feet kept me ungrounded from my Spanish roots. There was too much of the world to see and I was keen on personally being as unseen as possible, moving too fast for real life to catch me. I never travelled with the same friends twice and took every opportunity to hop a £30 flight wherever it was heading whenever I could. There was something about the steady, laid back lifestyle of Madrid that made me want to run and I looked for every excuse to do just that.
I spent hours searching the internet for any reason, any blog, reference - something to pull me away. My criteria: I wanted to go somewhere I had never been before and somewhere that wouldn't take more than a few hours to get to. Easy. I would pull out a map of Europe and start punching in names of places into Google Images until I found something that struck my fancy: Kaunas, Rome, Berlin. I never knew what I was looking for, until I saw it and this time it was just a single photo.
I found this picture of a gorgeous little street that looked like old Europe. I’m not sure what I mean but you’ll know too when you see it. I got that jolt in my gut. This was it, find this street. That was my next mission, and off I was. I bought a ticket, threw everything in a rucksack and headed to the airport.
I arrived into the center of Riga, Latvia just as everyone was heading to work. It was grey, a chilly morning, threatening snow. I was exhausted, mapless but ready for whatever the day held. I chose a direction and started walking.
As I walked, it slowly started to dawn on me that I should have looked at a map of the city to find more than my hostel. Any references to an old town, or a historic part of the city would have helped. But back then I had enormous faith in the universe. That no matter where I landed, if I found the street or not, the journey would have been worth it. It was the feeling of discomfort I craved. Any experience that would teach me, lead me to be stronger, and wiser, was worth committing myself wholeheartedly to.
I wandered actually for a shockingly short amount of time. Perhaps the Universe really was on my side that day - more likely I had chosen a really easy objective.
It hit me harder than the first time I saw the photo online, perhaps this time with a twinge of victory that I had actually made it. There it was, in all its splendor. I wandered from the end of the long street, a huge smile starting to spread across my face. I looked right and then left as if to find a wandering stranger to share this moment: “did you see?? I found it!!” but there was no one there. Eyes then unblinking, unwavering from the prize before me: I slowly swung my rucksack around, slowly unzipped the top and removed my camera as if any sudden movement would make this apparition vanish.
I stood in the middle of the empty street, alone, all the shops closed for some reason unapparent to me. I took my photo but it felt too easy, so I took a few more - just in case. This victory was won quickly.
As I walked down the street, past the central point of the photograph, turning every few steps still in disbelief. I began to mutter the words “what now?”.
I walked up to the building that I had sought to take one final moment with it. And with that I turned right, down the next street to leave this moment behind me. As the distance between us increased, from the sky now dark the snow started to fall. I smiled to myself and thought:
I had accomplished what I had come for. That with a touch of direction and a bit of determination, anything is possible.