The worst that can happen when you are abroad

You plan it wrongly and choose to pay rent when you would rather use that money travelling the last days of your stay. I think I'm going to stay longer or I just don’t think. In the end, I pay extra money I barely have as I've used it to travel around. It’s not so bad coz at least it gives me a sense of home until the last moments before leaving.

You are stuck at home in a country with no public transportation. For someone who has the travel bug (or the addiction, the virus, the syndrome), this is comparable to claustrophobia. To be stuck in a country where taxis are supposed to be unsafe (or simply inaccessible) and there are barely any buses, no trains or metros yet and it’s damn hot out there to walk until the car, let alone. Basically depending entirely on private cars to see places, everywhere.

You realize your credit card is expired and doesn’t work in the ATMs. It’s been expired for 2 months already but I never noticed it before travelling outside the country. And even if I had noticed it, wouldn’t change much because now I can’t get another card shipped to me, plus the new password. And dealing with the bank outside the country over the phone also doesn’t leave me much options, security measures playing against me.

You lose your cellphone charger in the last place you stayed in. And then I am travelling and I run out of battery and the only way to reach the people I am supposed to meet. Or I don’t have a watch and need to check the time of my train, bus, whatever, over there. I need it to pass on messages in a language I don't speak. Or people stress out because I am out of reach. Or I stress out because I am out of reach.

You don’t have time/are too broke to buy gifts before leaving in the airport. This is my most common one – I know how much I appreciate to get an exotic gift from abroad but normally I don’t have the time or money to buy it myself for others… It’s upsetting and the worst is that I realize how uncool it is when I’m already on my way to the gate, with 15mins left to boarding. I hate airports nowadays, they have the crappiest things from the country, they are all sold very together and very cliché-style and that hinders my will/ability to buy them.

You realize you want to stay longer in the country but can’t distinguish the logic from the heart anymore. You get a life there, you have your friends, you have your home, you know the places and you have the colleagues and the connections you need – it became your place, almost now even more familiar than the place you originally call home. And you get emotional about it, of course. And you have not something concrete, sure, more promising to come back to. You have to restart at home.

You fall in love before leaving.