How Solo Travel Changed My Life – Mandi’s Story
Growing up, my hero was Samantha Brown as she trekked across Europe meeting new friends and showing the world how accessible travel could be to a small town kid like myself. I loved how she was usually alone, but would meet new people who she would inevitably befriend. They’d invite her out to dinner or show her the area in the only way locals could. This way of traveling was both terrifying and thrilling to me.
I first traveled out of the U.S. in 2004 at the age of 18 on a school trip to Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. It completely changed how I moved forward in my life.
In 2004, after a particularly rough break up and losing my job, I chose to go back to Germany on my own for a 10-day trip in a small town about 2 hours outside of Frankfurt. I drained my savings and planned the trip for 6 weeks later. It was terrifying and the 4 years of German I’d taken 6 years prior apparently hadn’t stuck, so staying in a small town where I couldn’t speak the language was incredibly isolating. That trip was the loneliest I’d ever been in my 24 years of living. I had ONE good day though and that day, wandering the streets of the oldest town in Germany called Trier, is what changed the trajectory of my life. I knew then, for whatever reason, that I’d enroll back into college when I got back and I did. I spent the next four years getting my degree in occupational therapy.
Occupational therapy has been a blessing and a curse. It’s why I now live with chronic pain but it’s allowed me to travel more than I ever could before. I traveled as a therapist for years and saved every dollar for more solo trips and trips with friends. One of my friends I met because of occupational therapy invited me to her wedding in India, another travel adventure that taught me a lot about myself (another story for another time). In 2022, I spent two months in Italy by myself after taking a break from my career to care for my grandmother. It was two months of discovering myself and what was important in life.
Solo travel has consistently been the impetus to change in multiple stages of my life and it is something I will always recommend to everyone.
Mandi
Mandi is a photographer for the website Nerds and Beyond, as well as an occupational therapy assistant in a skilled nursing facility with 10 years of experience. In 2014, she suffered a back injury while working and has had chronic pain ever since, as well as other chronic pain issues that have yet to be figured out. She has traveled all over the world since she was 18 and after managing her chronic pain issues, realized that when she was planning her travels, she’d plan around her chronic pain, finding easier ways to still enjoy the adventure and beauty of travel but with less impact to the body. She’s planned trips for family members with chronic pain and those that are wheelchair bound. Her unique views as an occupational therapy assistant has allowed her to be able to plan trips for various abilities. Mandi’s goal of participating in activities when traveling that everyone else does but in a way that doesn’t add pain to her travels is something she wants to share far and wide, so that others may be able to travel in a similar capacity.
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