Traveling while African-American through Europe

   So, I absolutely loved my trip to Italy, Spain, and France.  It made me see and experience a part of the world I never knew existed.  I had a blast traveling alone.  

It gave me a renewed sense of self and purpose.  The only thing that would have heightened my experienced was doing a little research and knowing the items below before leaving the States. 

So, I made a checklist of things to consider when traveling abroad.  Bookmark this page as I will probably be adding more to the list:

1.       Louisiana hot sauce, seasoning salt - I recommend this no matter where you go.  I felt like the food was really bland, and this would’ve intensified my foodie experience.

2.       Plan your hairdo - I am 5’0, black, voluptuous, lively woman who generally wears my hair in some type of braids, locs, twists, or some type of fly curly Fro style. My rather eclectic hairstyle presented some interesting situations where I had perfect strangers coming up and touching my hair.  It caught me off guard the first time I turned around and saw a little girl with this guilty look on her face as she held a wisp of one of my blonde faux locs in her hand.  “It’s just so pretty”, she said faintly.  She melted my heart and made any additional stops and stares completely harmless from that point on.  But, if you don’t want the additional attention, plan for a more “european” style.

3.       Baby Wipes, Disinfectant Wipes – I cannot emphasize this enough.  I walked into some of the most disgusting bathrooms I have seen in my life.  Euro toilettes re not regular toilets, especially the public ones.  Trust me when I tell you make sure your squat game is tight before you leave, because by the time you get to the second nasty bathroom, you will have discovered 2 things.  1 – I can survive with a limited amount of water until I get near a clean toilet or 2 – I am so surprised my Kegel muscles work so well.

4.       PLEASE understand some Italian, French, Spanish – So, I never knew how an immigrant felt until I left the country.  I am ashamed to say, that as an American, I used to get really frustrated with immigrants who didn’t know English or communicate with me on the level I was accustomed.  How very closed minded of myself.  When I found myself wandering the streets of Rome, lost at times.  The one thing I needed the most was a patient soul who didn’t make a mockery of my broken Italian.  The interesting this was that I was met with Italians and French completely differently in respect to their reaction to my lack of knowledge of their language.  To the Romans, I was treated with disdain.  How dare I come into their country and not know the language!?1 (sound familiar?)  But to the French, they humored me much more, and I think they found me quite amusing.   I remember one incident quite fondly.  I walked up to 1 gentleman and was trying to explain that I wanted to go shopping in an area where only locals shopped.  After about 30 seconds of listening to me try to put my limited foreign language kills to work, he finally threw up his hands and asked me to stop.  Then, he said in perfect English, “I have never met a woman who has managed to butcher 3 languages in 1 conversation.  Please stick to English!”  I burst out laughing.  I thought it was so funny.  He didn’t realize that I was getting my languages confused with my geographic location.  Not to mention, I was trying to wing it through Google Translator.  Great app, by the way. Trust me, this will enhance your experience do much more.  Also, I hate to admit it, but I am an ear-hugger and to not understand all the lively conversations happening around me was a little disconcerting.  I really felt l ike an outsider.  And also, being black was kinda cool in a tour group, because everybody was always looking for me to make sure I didn’t get left.

5.       Pack Light - If you travel between countries, depending on the airlines, there will be a weight limit for carry-ons, and you will be charged extra if you have more than 1 bag.  I was hit with a $90 charge for having an extra bag, so my next trip to Europe will all be fit in a backpack.

6.       Bring a backpack – The amount of pickpocket signs I saw made me always carry my money in my purse, and I left my passport at my hotel whenever possible.  You can always purchase a passport case to protect your passport.  But, usually, if you present your phone with a picture of your passport, this will suffice for ID.  Also, people are watching and it is extremely crowded in Paris.  1 little bump and if you did not secure your camera in  the deep crevices of your backpack, it is gone just that quick.  Also ladies, you don’t want to carry a purse for the risk of it getting snatched.   I broke this rule though, because I was tired of back sweat.  So, what I did was I bought a hooded zippered sweatshirt, and I wore my sling shoulder purse underneath.  This way, if someone tried to grab my purse, they would have 2 problems. 1- The sling strap is pretty strong and you have to pull really hard to break a cloth string strap. 2 – if you do somehow manage to pull my purse off my shoulders, I have the sweatshirt for extra reinforcement. 3 - //because of the extra precaution I took, I felt like this was a major deterrent from getting robbed.

7.       Know your data plan – I spent so much money on extra data through Verizon, I am still pissed about it,  I don’t even want to discuss it.  I do know the next time I travel, I will have an international plan in place before I even get on the plane.

8.       Buy your currency at the local bank before leaving the US – the money it costs to change your currency from US to Euro varied widely, and sometimes ws downright robbery . Some places charged as high as 30%.  In the future, I will budget my trip out and only bring the amount of currency I need to enjoy my trip. FYI – it is better to be alittle over then under.  You can always return to the bank and make the same exchange back to US Dollar at our local bank.  Also, watch out for credit card fees.  This one caught me totally off-guard.  I take my CC for granted, but I will not be using this in South Africa.  Th transaction fees I paid I felt were astronomical.

9.       Download movies and music, bring a book – This is so important because you don’t have Wifi on international flights.  And on a 12 hour flight,, I personally needed multiple ways to entertin myself.

10.   Compression socks – My leg swelled up for 2 days when I 1^st went to Thailand.  So, this time around, I wore compression socks on my way to Rome.  My legs did not swell up at all and I t made everything so muc easier.

11.   Comfortable walking shoes – Paris is a great example.   There are many subway stations that did not have escalators.  Sometimes, when transferring between lines, you would have to go upstairs, the back downstairs, then down another flight of stairs to get to your destination. 

12.   Travel adapter 

13.   Laundry detergent