The #1 Quality I Look for in a Travel Partner

Attitude is the difference between an ordeal and an adventure. -Bob Bitchin

As I mentioned before, everything didn’t go as planned during my one week trip to Norway. However, this is how travel is: not always predictable, a little messy, but always, always worth it. People that picture travel as an endless vacation filled with pure relaxation, rainbows and butterflies are either rich, delusional, or boring as hell (and possibly all three).

Long story short, we were on our way to our Airbnb the night before our 20 mile hike. We were a little behind time (it was about midnight), when we realized that we had to take a ferry across the Fjord to get there. What we failed to realize was that ferries shut down before midnight, meaning that there was no way we were making it to our place. We rolled up to the empty ferry station, lights dimmed and vacant, with a shocked expression on our faces.

If you’ve ever been to Norway, you know that it’s pretty empty. Other than Oslo, the people and hotels are fairly scarce. There was really no other option, other than sleeping in our car. Our car was a tiny four door Volkswagen, filled to the brim with our backpacks and hiking gear. I tried several times to get comfortable in the cramped car, sticking my head in the trunk and my legs over the passengers seat. I knew I wouldn’t be in good shape for our intense hike that we had been gearing up for. We needed to be up by 7am the next day. IT SUCKED.

Now, this could have been the worst night of my life… but it wasn’t. Attitude is so so important when traveling, and thank god I was with one of my best friends during this extravaganza. I could imagine being with a lot of other people where this night could have gone a different way. But, the two of us realized there was nothing that we could do about this situation and we would just have to stick it out. So what did we do?

We laughed. We laughed a lot. We laughed while we were eating cold, stale pizza. We laughed while my head was in the trunk of the car and my body was in a fairly uncomfortable perpendicular position over the car seat. We laughed as I tried to use my hard, dirty book bag as a pillow. We laughed when I woke up freezing cold and tried to wrap my clothes around me like a sleeping bag. We laughed the whole damn time. Because sometimes, that’s all you can really do.

And this is the type of people I like, not only as travel partners, but also in life. Positive people. The type of people that can make light of a less than ideal situation. The type of people who won’t stress out, get mad, give up, or cry when something is less than perfect. Life is full of obstacles, and the way you handle these obstacles makes all the difference.

And even though we woke up with cramped backs and deep circles under our eyes, we saw the sunrise over a Fjord side winery, and we hiked 20 miles like we slept in a 5 star hotel.