Before There Were Holidays, There Was Moving Abroad Alone

I moved to the UK for one reason: university. I wanted to study Law and Criminology, and not just anywhere – I’d set my sights on the University of Manchester, one of the best in the country for it. That goal is what got me on the plane. Everything else, I figured I’d work out once I landed.

And I really did mean everything. My English was mostly textbook English, which turns out to be a very different skill from following a fast conversation in real life – I missed more of those first conversations than I understood. I arrived with enough money for one month’s rent and expenses, no savings cushion, and no plan B. Within a few days I’d found a job at a restaurant, because I needed one, not because it was part of some careful strategy. From there it was a constant juggling act: a new country, a new language, paperwork I didn’t fully understand yet (hello, opening a bank account and working out tax codes), a job, and a university course that had absolutely no intention of slowing down to wait for me.

The first few weeks were, without question, the hardest. I was homesick in a way I hadn’t expected, and figuring out an entire life – practical and emotional – completely on my own, with no one to turn to and ask “is this normal?” I just had to decide things and live with the consequences. But somehow, piece by piece, it came together. And ten years later, here I am.

What I will say – and what I’ve carried into every trip since – is this: getting on that plane alone, with everything I owned and no certainty about what came next, taught me something that life keeps teaching me. You don’t need to feel ready. You just need to go. You’ll figure it out when you get there.

I did figure it out. Eventually.

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The Second Trip

(One Year Later, Very Different Energy)

A year after moving to the UK, I booked a solo trip to Paris.

Four days. Student budget. No plan beyond “see Paris.” I walked until my feet gave up, sat in cafés nursing a single coffee longer than was strictly polite, and navigated the metro with the intense concentration of someone who had never navigated a metro before and refused to admit it.

Paris on a tight budget as a student in your early twenties is, I will maintain forever, one of the best things you can do. Not because it’s cheap – it isn’t, at all – but because the lack of money forces you to slow down. You find the bakery that becomes your breakfast spot by accident, not TripAdvisor. You spend two hours on a bench in a park watching the city happen around you because you’ve already spent your afternoon budget. You discover that the side streets nobody photographs are often better than the ones everyone does.

That trip is where I understood something about myself: I wasn’t just someone who went on holiday. I was someone who travelled. There’s a difference, and I felt it for the first time in Paris, age 20, alone, with approximately €40 left and absolutely no regrets.

Looking back, moving abroad at 19 with no idea what came next is still the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Which is exactly why everything since, Paris included, has felt easy by comparison

Everywhere I went after that deserves their own space – so that’s precisely where they’re going. More very soon.

Got a question or want to share your own travel story? I’d love to hear from you!

– Elena