Getting lost abroad: five places I’ve lost my way and found it again

A wise man – J. R. R. Tolkien, to be precise – once said, “not all those who wander are lost.” He had a point. I love wandering around a new city and I often know just where I’m going. However, that is not always the case. Sometimes when I wander I am just plain lost.

Getting lost is not always a bad thing. If you fall off the beaten track, you might get to see the real city, find places which you never thought you’d see or stumbled across hidden gems. Yes, it can be a nightmare, I’ve had horror film scenes flash through my mind and you can lose valuable time if you’re in a city for a limited amount of time but I’ve found that it usually turns out for the best. At the end of the day, you’ll probably at least get a decent story out of it. Here are some of mine.

1. Sat Nav failure in San Francisco

If there was one thing I took away from my first every road trip, it was that I didn’t have a great sense of direction. I managed to take the Gap Year Buddy on a 2-3 hour detour looking for our campsite just outside of Santa Cruz. We were about 20 minutes away when I first got her to turn our truck around. It wasn’t always my fault we got lost though. Sometimes in was our sat nav.

On our way to Berkeley, the Gap Year Buddy was driving when the freeway split and neither of us had seen any signs. Our sat nav had died and we ended up taking the wrong fork and going over the Bay Bridge with a dwindling amount of petrol. We tried to find someone to tell us where there was a petrol station but we appeared to be in a mainly Chinese-speaking area of downtown San Francisco.

We finally got pointed in the right direction but when we arrived we couldn’t figure out how to use the pumps. They were different back in England – in the US apparently you have to pay first. After staring blankly for a while, a man popped up and started to help. As he chatted away, he mentioned he was from Venus and told us we had enough petrol to get to Mars. He also suggested he came along for a ride. We declined but gave him some money for helping us. Seeing us pass over some notes, his “brother” popped up and opened the door to our truck. In hindsight he was probably just going to let the Gap Year Buddy in but we weren’t entirely sure he wasn’t trying to get in so she shouted, I dived inside and we hit the locks and sped off. The adrenaline apparently kicked in because I suddenly gained map reading skills and got us to Berkeley.

2. A deserted campsite near the Big Sur

After my detour on the way to Berkeley, I was driving from Santa Cruz in search of a campsite we had found on the internet to stagger our journey towards the Big Sur. After a 2.5 hour drive, following a sign, I pulled off the freeway and onto a quiet road, with a few cars intermittently coming in the other direction. An actual tumble weed passed in front of us.

We drove a while before becoming uneasy about the fact that there was no sign of anyone driving in our direction and no sign of our campsite. We pulled into a lay-by and switched on the Sat Nav. A big question mark came up in the middle of the screen. It didn’t have a clue. If our Sat Nav didn’t know where we were, how could we?

Finally at the end of the road, we found the campsite. Nobody was there. It was almost empty and no-one was on the gate. It was mid-afternoon and we were in the middle of nowhere. There was nothing really for us to do and it was raining. It was so quiet and we had seen one too many American-based horror movies to consider staying. So, we turned around and drove two hours back again and checked into a hostel in Monterey – a town I quickly came to love. I think our Sat Nav would agree, we made the right decision.

3. Clock hunting in Prague

During a month-long stay in Berlin, the Berlin Buddy and I decided to hop on a train and take a weekend trip to Prague. We arrived having done very little research, knowing only that the hostel we had booked was on Wenceslas Square, near the astronomical clock. It was a landmark and we figured that it would be “astronomically” big and easy to spot. But when we got to the station we couldn’t see it. We went to the nearby tourist information office for a map and tried to communicate our predicament to the woman behind the desk: we were lost and wanted a map. She got up and picked up a guidebook and pointed to the name on it – “Prague”. Well at least we had it confirmed that we were in the right city.

Eventually, we managed to communicate enough for her to tell us which tube stop to go to but we arrived there unable to find a sign pointing towards Wenceslas Square. Instead, we walked out onto a big square which began with the letter “V” and spent hours traipsing around towards every clock in sight. None of them were the right one. Our new map was of no use as we walked back and forwards. The only landmark on it was Debenhams. Finally the realisation dawned on us that the initial “V” square we had emerged onto was Wenceslas Square. Apparently, in the Czech Republic, they translate their street names. Our hostel was right there, and round the corner was the astronomical clock. It turned out that “astronomical” referred to the fact it showed the position of the sun and moon – not because of its size. That was obvious in hindsight.

That wasn’t the only time we got lost in Prague. It happened again when we were looking for a bridge to cross the river and get to Prague Castle. I’m not entirely sure how. It turned out not to be bad thing this time, we found a really cute bakery, where we stopped for lunch. That’s the thing with Prague, getting lost really helps you discover the city.

4. Finding alternative destinations in Berlin

On one of my first nights in Berlin during my stay in summer 2013, I was in my hostel room when a couple of new dorm-mates wandered in. They asked me for some recommendations in the area so I decided to take them to a nearby beer garden the Berlin Buddy had taken me to a couple of nights before. If only I had been paying attention to the route. Obviously, I went the wrong way and we ended up near what turned out to be Mauerpark. We grabbed some tasty Thai food from a restaurant opposite and, as we sat, we saw lots of people flocking into the park. After dinner, we grabbed some beers and went to see what all the fuss was about. It turned out there was nothing going on – Berliners just like hanging out in the park. So that’s what we did – it wasn’t a beer garden but it did feel like a typically Berlin thing to do.

Not long after, I would get lost again, this time with the Berlin Buddy. Another typical Berliner activity is to go to a lake on hot day. We managed to find one on our map in the city so tried to head there but just ended up wandering around a somewhat industrial area. We ended at a fair ground where we were able to hop on a bus to Hauptbahnhof (Berlin’s main railway station). Once there, we found a nearby beach bar. It wasn’t quite a lake and a faux beach with trains going overhead may not sound relaxing but it turned out to be just that. I ate ice cream, read some of my book and fell asleep on a sun-lounger. A while later, we did end up at an actual lake called Krumme Lanke. After walking down a long residential path I thought we were lost once again but it turned out that this time we were actually on track and we ended up exactly where we wanted to go.

5. Taking the long route in Venice

On my first night in Venice, I arrived at the bus station with the Berlin Buddy, having made the exact same mistake as we did in Prague. We knew our hostel was on an island opposite Piazza San Marco however we had no idea where the bus station was. The bus driver pointed out our position on a map and we realised we were on the wrong side of the main island. The thing with Venice is that there are no roads – everything is accessible either by boat or by foot. Since it was night and everywhere seemed empty, we decided we had to we walk across the city following the mercifully frequent signs that pointed towards San Marco.

We we wandered in and out of the alleyways, delving deeper and deeper into the lanes of Venice, I felt like I was actually getting to see the real place. This was the only time during our trip where we were not surrounded by tourists and everything was peaceful and calm. I suddenly fell out of a narrow alleyway into Piazza San Marco. It was empty and huge and I actually gaped as I looked around the beautiful place. Of course, I later realised there was a ferry port right next to the bus station which could have taken me right to my hostel but it was okay, Venice is a city you should get lost in. And it was great with no one else around.