The first time I went off to travel South­east Asia people kept telling me that I’ll become a travel-addict very soon. A lot of people use that ana­logy and there’s quite a bit of truth in that state­ment. You can take it quite far actually!

The last 10 years of my life I have basic­ally been a junkie. Isn’t admit­ting the prob­lem the first step or some­thing? I was con­stantly on the lookout for my next fix, the next place to go to, the next coun­try to explore.

Being away meant a con­stant high for me. I love the adren­aline rush of not know­ing what I’ll be doing the next day, where to sleep this night or what’s around the next corner. By talk­ing to other trav­el­lers I found out about other fas­cin­at­ing places and exper­i­ences. This talk was the fuel for my addic­tion. There is always another place!

I never even real­ized that I was addicted. I only knew that I did some­thing I love. Com­ing back home was always some­thing of an anti-climax. And it didn’t take that long for my drug to wear off. Then the with­drawal symp­toms set in. That’s when I star­ted plan­ning that next trip and star­ted sav­ing up as much money as pos­sible in as short a time as pos­sible. Dur­ing these times my social life was non-existant. Every Euro I spent meant another Euro that had to be earned again. Even­tu­ally my cof­fers were filled and off I went get­ting stoned on travelling.

But as we know, every drug has some nasty side-effects. The same is true for trav­el­ling, at least in my case. Trav­el­ling changes people, there’s no doubt about that. I’d argue that 99% of these changes are good. Some other changes you don’t really notice they hap­pen so slow.

When I’m away I’m more or less self-sufficiant. There are long stretches, some­times up to a couple months, where I hardly meet other for­eign­ers. I quickly learned to be on my own and to not need another per­son. The more I trav­elled the more intro­ver­ted I became I guess. Once I was back where there are other trav­el­lers, starved for a good con­ver­sa­tion, it was always easy to hook up and meet other people.

Now that I’m back home my beha­viour poses a prob­lem. I’m still self-sufficiant, but it’s a hell of a lot harder to meet people, let alone meet­ing someone spe­cial, without them think­ing I’m a bit of a weirdo. I also find myself lost for words. I simply have noth­ing to say to what people com­monly talk about or I find their con­ver­sa­tions really trivial. There simply isn’t enough of a com­mon ground on which to base a conversation.

At first I thought it’s just reverse cul­ture shock, but I’ve been back now for half a year and I still have that feel­ing of not really belong­ing. I do won­der if my long-term travels have made me slightly socially chal­lenged in a nor­mal setting.

So what am I going to do about it? The easy way out would be to get another fix and go trav­el­ling, but at the moment I really want to give a nor­mal life a go. One thing is cer­tain though. I won’t give up trav­el­ling com­pletely. I think the way I travel will change. Not go away for a few years at a time, but do short trips of a few months each and keep a base here in Germany.

It actu­ally might be time to settle down a bit. What do you think?