If you know me (some of you don’t), you know I have traveled and lived around the world. And even though I’m an experienced traveler, I am still a human with my share of travel anxiety.
It’s not so much the anxiety of packing, remembering my passport and getting on the plane. It’s getting around as though I know a place so that I don’t look lost or out of my depth. So this week, as I was thinking about what to write, I thought I could write about shyness and travel anxiety.
If you go to a place like Paris, you’ll be able to get around pretty well without speaking French. The main attractions - the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, a boat cruise on the Seine - all have information in English and many other languages. No problem there. But if you want to get into the underbelly, you may need to brush up on your français.
I moved to Paris in January 2022 after enrolling in an intensive French course at the Catholic University (my Catholic forebears would be so proud). I didn’t come in cold; I started learning French in middle school and continued in high school for a year, college, and later as an adult.
But by the time I arrived in Paris two years ago (nearly to the day!), I was exhausted from my previous job and my brain couldn’t connect the vocabulary in my head to what came out of my mouth. As a result, Parisians would either speak to me quickly in French and be annoyed if I looked perdu (lost), or just break out in English. This, for me, was a nightmare.
When I came to Paris 25 years ago, I don’t remember people speaking much English, so I had to rely on my French. Now, perhaps they have just grown sick of people looking confused, or they are simply proud to show they can speak English.
Even today, when I go to Paris, I don’t want to be immediately marked as an étrangère (foreigner) though I think the blond hair is a sometimes a dead giveaway. So when I interact with a shopkeeper in Paris for the first time, I feel a combination of shyness and anxiety as I make my approach, even after these two years. I want them to know I speak French and speak it back to me! But these days, it doesn’t even matter — they’ll still reply in English.
To reinforce this point, in December I was in Paris for about 10 days. I was having tea with an old classmate of mine who thankfully doesn’t speak English. At the table next to us was an older couple speaking French, but I could hear the woman was North American. We exchanged some small talk with them in French, and after I complained that people always talk to me in English, she said, “I’ve been here for 30 years and they still do that to me. Get used to it!”
One tactic I’ve employed is to insist on speaking French when they speak English to me. Of course, this has backfired before: one time, I put my hand on a waiter’s arm, after he spoke to me in English, and said, ‘je parle français’. When he switched to French, I didn’t understand what he said… how embarrassing.
I’m currently in Bogotà, Colombia - a country where I don’t really speak the language. I came here not so much to tour around the city, but to have a place to hang out, write, and see cool places.
Believe it or not, I have often hesitated about visiting places where I don’t speak the language (specifically Spanish) - that’s what brave people do. But I came to Bogotà for the first time in 2018 for work and really liked it, so I thought the familiarity was enough to get me over here.
But I still have fears, even at the most mundane things.
For example, I arrived here on Tuesday and in the apartment building where I’m staying there is a communal laundry room. Even though I wanted to do some laundry, I felt very shy and hesitant about going downstairs to figure out how to do it! My fear, I suppose, is that I’ll look like an idiot - or worse, lost. So I kept putting off going down there. Eventually, yes, I did go down to do my laundry and it was very easy to navigate. This helped restore my faith that everything is fine, even if I’m not fluent in Spanish.
This may come as a surprise, but I had an initial fear about going out and getting caught in a situation where I can’t communicate. So in order to go beyond my comfort zone, I left my apartment with specific places in mind to see. I am choosing one place a day and if I do more, great, but at least I am exploring. So far, I visited a really cool neighborhood, a local marketplace that has tons of food stalls and vendors, and a neighborhood that I remember from when I was here before. I even took taxis to get from A to B when I was too tired from walking.
Despite all I have said so far, about Bogotà and Paris, the irony is that I feel right at home in Asia. I lived in China for a total of six years and have traveled to Laos, Malaysia, Thailand, and South Korea. After a while I acquired some ability to communicate in Mandarin, but as for the other countries, not a lick of the language.
This probably goes without saying, but I have often relied on using hand signals when I need to communicate. Once I indicated that I had a sun rash at a pharmacy in Laos and the woman gave me a steroid cream. I have also pointed to my head and had a painful look on my face to show I have a headache.
In China I had to point to menus with pictures to indicate what I want. When I arrived in Beijing in 2010 - I didn’t speak any Chinese whatsoever, but I had to eat. I went to a restaurant in the compound where I had temporary housing, and was able to point to pictures on the menu. Later, I learned some words to accompany my pointing - like ‘NAY-guh’ and ‘JAY-guh’ - phonetically spelled here, meaning ‘this’ and ‘that’.
I think the reason why I feel so comfortable in Asia is because I clearly do not look like someone who is from there. We’re all on the same page. Somehow that lightens the load for me. In contrast, in Europe, I may look like someone who is local, so I feel more pressure to look like I know what I’m doing and saying. That pressure leads to a bit of shyness, hesitancy and fear when I step outside. But I’m getting better about it.
I guess my message here is: it’s okay to be a bit shy when traveling. And there is a phrase that I like to think of during these moments: feel the fear and do it anyway. That’s actually the title of a book by Susan Jeffers, who wrote about taking risks in life and going outside your comfort zone.
Tips for Getting Around
Sign language: it works.
If you need to take a taxi, figure out a monument or landmark without having to give a lot of directions. For example, I know how to say my street or I’ll say the name of a nearby museum or shopping center.
Get a local sim card or work with your service provider to have data and download Google Translate! (There are others but that’s what I use.)
Feel the fear and do it anyway!
I don’t know if any of this is interesting or helpful, but when it comes to travel, there are so many intangible things that go beyond simply sight-seeing or spending time in a different town or city.
Have you experienced any of the anxiety I’m describing? Do you have any other tips for getting around a place you aren’t familiar with?
Another great post Jenn, keep writing...
A lot of this spoke to me. Like you, I love foreign travel and have a natural shyness when exploring new places. Like you, I force myself to do it anyway even when it feels easier and safer to not go out. This attitude forced me to explore Paris every year for my birthday when living in London. My go-to phrase was “Pardon, je suis Anglais”. Even saying that in French got me sympathetic reactions. I also fondly remember a conversation on the street in London when a French guy was asking me, in French, if I knew the whereabouts of the TEFL store and I answered and gave directions in English as my brain couldn’t translate into adequate French, and we understood each other perfectly well, lol. Similarly, exploring New Orleans on my own, I had at least one American tourist approach me for directions, which I found hilarious. A positive attitude in unfamiliar surroundings can get you a long way.