The Loneliness of the Long Distance Traveller

People often get the wrong impression about my job and especially the amount of travelling that comes with it.

I remember having a conversation with my ex-brother-in-law some years ago.  I was working in Zurich at the time, which meant a very easy commute.....basically an hour and half's flight on a Monday morning, return on Friday evening, 15 minute cab ride between home and the airport each way, and maybe an hours' waiting time (in a comfortable Business Lounge) at both airports.  My hotel was 10 minutes' walk from the client, and the airport itself is only a 10 minute train ride from the Hauptbahnhof, with about 5 trains an hour.  My total travel time for the whole week was probably no more than seven hours.  Compare and contrast that with Mark's commute.  At that time he was living in Kent, and working in Docklands, East London, and because of the hours he was at that time working it meant he had to drive to and from the office.  Country lanes, M25, A2, then the roads around Blackwall Tunnel....I've done it myself many times, in a former life, and you can reckon on at least 3 hours a day in total, most days nearer 4.  So effectively, he was much worse off than me, even though my "commute" involved taxis, trains and international flights.  He was surprised at that.  OK, it was an exception....my work journeys are rarely that straightforward, although I alway ensure my hotel is located (as far as is possible anyway) within walking distance of the client site.  If I take away the flying part (and all that goes with it....like waiting for flights, potential delays and so on), it's very rare that I spend more than a couple hours a week walking to and from work.  Quite literally, it's a walk in the park.

I'm based in the Central European region in our company's hierarchy, which means that the majority of trips take place within a couple of hours' flying time of Warsaw.   There is the occasional longer trip - my farthest east is Almaty, west Mexico City, north Stockholm and south Nairobi Kenya, with a couple in the middle east (Saudi and Abu Dhabi) - but they are very much the exception.

So all in all the travel is not all that difficult to cope with.

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The other misconception is that my job is somehow glamourous, on the basis that if I'm going to all these places, making all these flights and staying in all these hotels, it must be....Q.E.D.  Let me tell you now, it isn't.  In 11 years I've seen only two celebrities, both in airport lounges.  About 8 years ago I spotted F1 legend David Coulthard in the BA Lounge in Heathrow, on his way to Barcelona for some pre-season testing.  Then a couple of years ago I saw CNN's excellent Richard Quest in Warsaw (he was actually on the same flight as me to Frankfurt).  I also once shared a Warsaw - Heathrow flight with Labour's then Foreign Secretary Robin Cook (this was a few months after 9/11 changed everything).  His aide wanted me to change seats with him so that he and Cook could work but I refused so Cook slept the whole way (the miserable bugger never thanked me either!).  But I don't class him as a celebrity.

The type of hotel I stay in probably goes a long way towards explaining this (and of course the company's Economy fare only, no Business Class rule).  I very rarely get to stay in anything above 3 stars - so average accomodation.  No glamour there, I can I assure you!

Sometimes I get lucky though.  I had a good week in New York at the Hyatt Grand Central, located in the Trump Tower, Midtown Manhattan.  My room was on the 73rd floor (or something equally ridiculous) and boasted fabulous views downtown to the old WTC.  But I didn't really appreciate it....I only really slept there.  By day I commuted out to New Jersey to work and in the evening my colleague and I spent our time in various local bars with his best mate from school who had an apartment on nearby 7th Avenue.  I got an almighty bollocking when I got back to the office the following week because of the expense (my excuse was I had been instructed to make the same booking as my more senior colleague....I got away with it).  Another time, a client in Abu Dhabi booked and paid for a fabulous hotel where I was placed in a little cottage with its own private beach access.  They soon saw the error of their ways though, and moved me after only one night into a city centre hotel 10 minutes walk from their office and right next door to a mosque (to my ears the muezzin's call to prayer is a discordant row at the best of times; at 5 in the morning  right outside my window it's absolute hell).

Usually, though, my hotels are functional rather than exceptional.  Double bed (although I've had two singles before), a colour tv of varying quality, an internet connection that is sometimes payable (but claimable on expenses) and a ridiculously expensive mini-bar.  Sometimes I get lucky and have coffee-making equipment in my room.....and even porn on the movie channel (again prohibitively expensive.....and not claimable on exepnses).  The bars are usually ok, the restaurants again of variable quality.  Breakfast usually inclusive, often good but sometimes absolute crap.  Again, not too much in the way of glamour there!

I've also had the odd entertaining hotel with wildlife in it.  In Bucharest I found a large cockroach (thankfully deceased) on the bathroom floor one morning.  I left it for the cleaners to dispose of, but it was still there when I checked out three days' later.  In the same hotel, a couple of weeks later, my first nights' sleep was disturbed by mysterious scratching sounds from the drawer of my bedside cabinet.  I think it was mice, but frankly I didn't open the drawer to check.  As it was my last week there I just left it and put up with it (sometimes I'm just too nice and English to complain!).  That hotel wasn't actually too bad.....there was an excellent pizza restaurant next door and around the corner an even better Irish bar...I spent many happy hot August evenings sitting outside with cold beers watching the world (and many beautiful scantily dressed Romanian girls) go by.



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In my first year with the company, I attended a Consultancy Skills training course, along with a dozen of my co-workers.  It was excellent, loads of role playing, and video-ing stuff, and taking the piss out of each others' efforts, and some terrific discussions.  But the thing I remember best was when we were asked by the course director (external to the company, a professional and brilliant trainer) to say what we liked best and worst about the job.  We all agreed the travel was great, experiencing new cultures, working as part of a team in a different country, perhaps learning bits of a new language, definitely learning more business stuff....  Then an Irish guy, an old hand who had been with the company for a few years, spoke up.

"I agree with all that," he said.  "But it can be so fuckin' lonely and unhealthy...."

It pulled us up short.  We were all relative newcomers (apart from the Irish guy we were all in our first year), had been on few projects and all part of teams on the sites we were working.  The idea of going solo hadn't really occurred to us.  He explained more.....

"Sometimes you're on your own," he said. "You're hundreds miles from home and know no-one apart from whoever you've been working with today.  You probably can't speak the lingo so you can't go anywhere much and can't understand a word of what's on the telly.  So what do you do?  You sit in the bar and drink too much, and eat more than you should, and smoke too many duty free fags.  It's awful....I hate those times."

Well.  You could have heard a pin drop.  The trainer nodded his agreement (he too had been around the block a few times).  We newbies sat there, lost for words, deep in thought.  The trainer closed the session and told us to go home and think about it.

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With the benefit of another ten years or so on the road, I can see exactly where Brian was coming from.

I've made many solo trips now...perhaps even more than team stuff...and experienced exactly the sort of things he described (except for the duty free fags, as I gave up smoking years ago).  I've come to the conclusion you have to have a certain mentality, a flexibility, to survive long in this consultancy game.  I've lost count of the number of hours I've spent on my own in a strange airport somewhere, waiting for flights delayed or on time (even cancelled).  Mostly I've been comfortable in a Business Lounge somewhere (one of the real perks of the job) but even that is not a comfort guarantee. 

For instance, a couple of years ago I went to Serbia for a week.  It was ok, but I had a long wait at Belgrade airport on my way home.  The building there isn't much more than a collection of interconnected nissen huts, and the airport still bears the scars of war (as does the city) back in the 90s.  There was a Business Lounge, but it was a room about 20 feet square, with a dozen uncomfortable chairs, a table with coffee cups and a kettle (help yourself to a brew) and a pay-bar.  I didn't bother: the bar in the main concourse area, such as it was, offered a better choice of food and drink.

At least there was a Lounge......last year I travelled from Beirut to Warsaw via Istanbul, and had about a 12 hour wait for my connecting flight.  The terminal building, as you would expect, is huge, modern and with a massive range of amenities (including a mosque), and what looked to be a very big and comfortable Business Lounge.  The problem was it was exclusively for Turkish Airlines Business and First Class passengers.   Even though the airline is a full Star Alliance member (of which I hold the Frequent Traveller silver card, usually a passport to any Star Alliance Lounge) there is apparently no reciprocal arrangement and I was refused admittance.  Given the amount of time I had to wait, I was not impressed.  But I had a walletful of US dollars (it's the standard currency in the Lebanon, with a fixed exchange rate of a buck equals 1500 Lebanese pounds), there was a Starbuck's next to the lounge entrance, so breakfast was not a problem, and there was a good selection of bars and restaurants throughout the terminal, so I didn't go hungry or thirsty.  I just spent more money than I had expected to.

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Over the years, I've got into sort of a routine, to amuse myself and keep myself happy during these solitary hours, wherever I might be spending them, so that I don't find them any kind of a hardship.  I always make sure I have plenty of reading material.  A good book is an absolute must (my 12 hours in Istanbul were devoted entirely to an umpteenth reading of The Lord of the Rings), and I always stock up on magazines.  I'm not bothered about newpapers, I tend to get my news fix......I'm not a News Junkie, but not far short....from CNN and/or BBC World News, channels that are freely available anywhere, whether at the airport or the hotel.  Armed thus, I can settle down either in a comfortable armchair in the Lounge or a less comfortable seat in a quiet corner of the Departure Hall and immerse myself in other worlds for as long as it takes.

Then I have my music.  My wife bought me an iPhone a couple of Christmases ago, and although I rarely use it as a phone (it was bought in Warsaw and only works on my Polish, non-roaming SIM) the iPod function gets absolutely hammered.  I've built up a library of 148 albums, mostly copied from my CD collection at home.  It equates to nearly a weeks' worth of non-stop music, more than enough to keep me going as long as the battery lasts (and it has a really long life).  There's everything in the library.....classics (some Beethoven, some Bernstein, Sorcerer's Apprentice, Wagner, Mahler.....), loads of rock (Clapton a big favourite, Springsteen, the Stones), progressive stuff (Supertramp, Led Zepp, Genesis, Ten Years After) and everything in between and around and about.  Plenty of Greatest Hits compilations too.  So as I settle down with my book I can plug my ears, switch on a Rod Stewart playlist, or a U2 compilation or something, and I'm gone......the airport disappears and I'm away. 

And I can do that equally well in a restuarant in downtown Beirut, or a crappy hotel room in Sofia just as easily.  All the crap that goes with the job, all the separation from my family, all the solitude just melts away and is forgotten (well, almost....).

Lonely?  Absolutely.  But bearably so.