Leave Shyness at Home When You Travel

If you make the effort to leave your natural shyness behind, you may remember the chance conversations while traveling as long as your look of Berlin's Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin or the taste of apple strudel with ice cream. Even someone shy like me, who hardly knew more than the word "bahnhof" (train station), managed to get around a big city like Berlin just fine.

For me, as a solo traveler talking with strangers was important for even though I'd rate myself a six on social skills. But even though shy, I am pretty effective in figuring out who might know what I need to know and have the patience to tell me.

Just as everywhere, it is important for any talking traveler to use judgment in sizing people up. A few people are dangerous. Most people will help you, then go on their way. And a few, you'll remember for a phrase, a suggestion, or a good discussion.

I arrived at my Berlin hostel with few German words but the people working the desk, who spoke good English, didn't mind at all. If I had questions, when they knew the answer, I was soon on my way. By ignoring my shyness, I was experiencing, not just reading about, the importance the English language has for Europeans.

The hostel kitchen was an easy place for making travel friends. When I was boiling water for tea the first night, five Canadians were sitting around the table. I was listening, didn't even have to talk. The next morning the two men from Quebec offered to walk me over to see, yes, Checkpoint Charlie (much smaller than I had imagined). On the way they pointed out a useful bakery and supermarket. Then, because the morning was cold and bleak, we went into a doner kebab restaurant to warm up. With all this happening, I forgot to be shy..

The Canadians told me they were going on to Auschwitz the next day. I said I was Jewish, I wouldn't want to do that. After a minute, one of my new acquaintances said they were going to see it in hope the horror would never happen again. What if I had let shyness keep me from the hour I spent with these friendly travelers?

Surprisingly, my Spanish made me friends at the hostel in Berlin. When I found the woman who cleaned my room was Portuguese, I tried speaking to her in Spanish. Some guidebooks say that Portuguese people don't like to speak Spanish, but here, surrounded by the German language, she liked using it. Now I was talking with someone who had emigrated to work in another country. Reading a news article is one thing, talking to someone makes it all real.

As an American living in Mexico, I was surprised to find how much I enjoyed coming across people from Latin America One rainy afternoon, I found three card-players in the kitchen staying out of the rain. When I heard them speaking Spanish, I decided to ask them where they were from. They turned out to be from Cordoba, Argentina.. We didn't talk much about Europe but you can bet that when I got home, I checked my atlas to find out about Cordoba-which turned out to have more than a million people, the second biggest city in Brazil. Another example of how a chance departure from shyness can lead to greater awareness of the world. .

By now, you may wonder, whether I talked meaningfully with any Germans on my travels. Yes, especially with the guide to a boat trip around Berlin and also when I went away from Berlin to Dessau, where I stayed in a bed-and-breakfast in a restored row house built by the Bauhaus movement. There the owner-host of the B&B loved talking about the Torten neighborhood created by Bauhaus architects and the way the Nazis had forced the closing of the Bauhaus School. He knew Dessau intimately; his in-laws had lived in Torten from the start. He also told me of a nearby German-style restaurant that offered good food at a reasonable price and about the beautiful gardens on the edge of Dessau. When I asked him why big parks existed in the city center, he explained in a sentence that on one night in April, 1945, Allied planes destroyed 85% of the industrial city. By not worrying about imposing, I was learning far more about his country-and mine - than I ever expected during one month in Europe.

I have to add that in Dessau away from the B&B, I had a hard time without knowing German. Fortunately I found some people from the Mideast who knew English.

As at home, friendliness pays dividends. The talking and listening traveler who uses natural opportunities will overcome her shyness and besides keep that pack or suitcase light. .