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Stories

When You Forget Where You Are

written by Brenna Holeman September 5, 2013

IMG_0953

Cartagena, Colombia

My ears perked up. “Winnipeg”, I had heard the girl say, I was sure of it. I had a fleeting sensation of excitement, of hearing the name of my hometown dropped casually into conversation, and I briefly wondered why she was mentioning it at all. This entire process took about 1.5 seconds in my brain, before I once again stopped myself, rolled my eyes.

“I’m in Winnipeg, you idiot,” I thought to myself. I had been for a month.

 

This happens all the time, these moments of forgetting where I am, what I’m doing. It’s sudden and short-lived, but I’ve had to stop myself from uttering out a cry of recognition whenever I’ve heard someone mentioning a place or a city. It happens often in hostels, where none of the faces are familiar, none of us is from that place, and from my chair I can only vaguely make out a beer bottle that might give me a hint of where I actually am. When the accents are all different, when the music is in English, when a few drinks have clouded my thoughts, my initial reaction is sometimes only, “I’m somewhere else.” I hear a backpacker say something about Buenos Aires and it can take me a second to realize that, well, of course he’s talking about Buenos Aires, we’re in Buenos Aires.

 

It happened in London this week, early in the morning, while I was still in bed. My window open, some construction workers across the street started their usual banter, shouting about coffee and bulldozers and last night’s match. “He has an English accent,” my sleepy brain registered, and in that tiny fraction of a moment, I had no sense of where I was. It’s a fallout of a transient life, of moving so often, of never having roots in one place for long, and I wonder if I’ll ever stop experiencing these tiny splinters in my consciousness.

 

I’m sure we’ve all felt it, anyone who has ever left home. We wake up to an unfamiliar ceiling, or a scratchiness of a blanket we’re sure isn’t ours. Or maybe, engrossed in a book in a park somewhere, we hear a sound that can’t possibly be of our town, or of our country, a different siren, a different bird. We glance at a sign and expect to see our own language, or our hands freeze when we reach into our wallets to pay for something in a currency we don’t know. The moment lasts not a second, but that foreignness, that unknown, makes our heart skip a beat.

 

“…that bar in Toronto…” I overheard at a bar in Islington on the weekend, and I could have been anywhere. My breath caught in my throat, just as it does whenever I hear someone mention Canada or when I lose sense of my surroundings. The crowded London club could have been any crowded club in any city. Everything stood still for that flash of time. And if, while in Berlin this week, I forget where I am, even for a moment, I’ll revel in it.

 

It’s a very good feeling to have, after all. A feeling I’ll never take for granted.

 

Home Sweet HomeLondon
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Brenna Holeman

Brenna Holeman has travelled to over 100 countries in the past 15 years, many of them solo. She's a big fan of whisky and window seats.

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13 comments

Christy September 5, 2013 - 8:37 pm

I’ve definitely done that a few times. That photo of you is gorgeous! I love the colors.

Reply
Brenna September 6, 2013 - 2:16 pm

Thank you, Christy!

Reply
Lauren Harvey September 5, 2013 - 10:39 pm

I had been travelling solo for 15 wks in South America… One night I woke up at 3am, on a sofa, in a condo, looking out a glass door, past the balcony to a dimly lit street below. All looked very unfamiliar. It took me nearly 10 minutes to figure out that I had passed out on the sofa in MY OWN CONDO as at that time I had been back home in Toronto for two days!

Reply
Brenna September 6, 2013 - 2:17 pm

Ha ha, I have DEFINITELY done that at home before!

Reply
Sarah September 6, 2013 - 3:01 am

I have more or less the same feeling every time I wake up in a foreign bed. Or back in my own bed after traveling for a while. I wake up and think “what? where am I???” And then I slowly remember… It’s a weird thing, isn’t it? Wonder if any psychological studies have been conducted on the matter…

Reply
Brenna September 6, 2013 - 2:18 pm

Yes, it happens to me a lot. I also often recognize someone in a new city and then think, hang on, that can’t possibly be him/her…although once or twice it was!

Reply
Briana September 8, 2013 - 2:48 pm

This is one of the best feelings in the world. It always seems to happen to me in the morning as I am just waking up. When I was in Ireland,staying at a four star hotel I might add, I had this feeling every moment. I knew I wasn’t at home because the bed was just WAY to comfortable. I love it though! It is one of those moments that reminds me of how amazing my life is!

Reply
Brenna September 11, 2013 - 4:22 pm

Yes, these moments definitely remind me how lucky I am to be able to travel!

Reply
Amy September 17, 2013 - 8:02 am

I’ve definitely had that feeling while I’ve been travelling – it’s disorientating but oddly satisfying as it reminds me that I’m constantly moving and exploring.

Reply
Brenna September 17, 2013 - 5:21 pm

Agreed – it can be a really nice feeling sometimes.

Reply
Kisha September 18, 2013 - 10:29 pm

Crap! It seems like since your migration to WP your updates haven’t been showing up in my feeder and, as a result, I’m behind on a few posts! I’ll have to check and make sure I’m still following you….I was wondering why you were so quiet!!

Reply
Brenna September 18, 2013 - 11:14 pm

I know, unfortunately in all of the chaos of a) moving to London and b) migrating my blog over to WP, I didn’t even think of the repercussions of dropping out of people’s feeds. Hopefully everyone will find me again!

Reply
Jill at Reading the Book May 28, 2017 - 6:57 pm

Oh yes, this has happened to me many times! Especially when you hear someone mentioning that city you’ve been researching for months (you’re now on the trip in that city), or you wake up from a dream about your life at home and can’t remember what country your hotel is in. I love that feeling!

Reply

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About Me

About Me

Hi, I'm Brenna

My name is Brenna Holeman and I drink a lot of whisky. No, wait. That’s not how I want to start. After travelling to more than 100 countries over the past 15 years, many of them solo, I tend to write about travel a lot, but I write about other things, too: getting dumped, buying way too much jewellery, and yeah, OK, whisky (none of those things are related, I swear). You’ll find a mix of advice, opinion pieces, and stories on this blog, but either way, I hope to make you want to read more. And up next? I'm about to become a single mom to a beautiful baby boy, the biggest solo adventure I've ever been on. For more about me and what you'll find on This Battered Suitcase, click here .

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Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life." - Jack Kerouac

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This Battered Suitcase is not only about the where and the how of travel, it's about the who and the why.

Originally from Canada, all I've ever wanted to do is travel. After eleven years of solo travel and over 90 countries, I'm currently living in London and fulfilling my other dream of becoming a writer. If I'm not travelling, I'm writing about it, either for my blog, my job, or my book. I firmly believe there is adventure everywhere, so long as you keep your eyes (and your mind, and your heart) open. Join me as I continue to look for these adventures. Hopefully you'll find your own, too.

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