A Sydney Sob Story

by Ellen Kriz (United States of America)

I didn't expect to find Australia

I didn’t expect to find… …myself alone on a bench, sobbing, underneath the Harbor Bridge in Sydney. I was exhausted, alone and on the final leg of a three-week tour of Australia. The majestic Opera House floated across the water and above it, a full sky, ready to open up as fiercely as my tear ducts. Earlier that morning I caught a before-sunrise flight from Cairns, paid 60 ASD for an overweight carry-on and absorbed the constant kicking of a child behind me on the three-hour flight. After I made it to Sydney I rushed from the airport, dropped my luggage at my AirBnB and bolted out the door to see as much of the city as I could pack into my long weekend. I sped to the Opera House and barely slowed down to take in the architecture before zooming off into the adjacent Botanical Gardens. I walked through floral displays, make-shift bamboo forests, saw oversized fake koalas and was almost attacked by resident iguanas. I next headed toward the National Gallery, through the aboriginal art exhibit then looking at my watch (okay, clicking my smartphone – I don’t wear a watch anymore) and deciding that I had plenty of time to make it across the Harbor Bridge and back before dark. I walked into a gusty wind on the bridge and felt the occasional rain drop and cold spell wafting up from the water. When I made it across I encountered a bus of young children in their uniforms ending the school day. I maneuvered around them, determined to continue my speed walk towards Luna Park and check it off my sightseeing list when a couple stopped me to ask for my photography skills at a spot where you could fit both the Harbor Bridge and Opera House into the backdrop. I snapped a couple shots for them and without my asking they motioned for my phone to take a couple of me. We thanked each other and as they walked away I unlocked my phone to swipe through and see how the photos had turned out. Of the hundreds of pictures I had taken in the past couple of weeks, I could count on one hand the pictures I had of myself. I sat down on a nearby bench to examine the photos. The Opera House was just a fleck in the background and the sky was an unpleasant, smoggy gray. And despite an exhausting morning of things that felt like they couldn’t go my way, I looked happier in that photo than I had in a long time. I looked across the water at the Opera House and that’s when the tears started falling. At first it was a few silent ones that I tried to fight, but finally they fell freely and I didn’t bother wiping them away. The Harbor Bridge became a metallic blur in the distance. “Why are you crying?” I asked myself. “I love Sydney. I love it here” I said, continuing the conversation in my head. It was true. And in retrospect, I had never been so taken so quickly by a city as I had with Sydney. But thinking about that moment even more as my trip ended and I assimilated back into everyday life in Chicago, I think I cried the way I did because after an exhausting morning and at the culmination of a trip that I was two weeks into with no one but myself, when I saw myself beaming in that photo, I was so proud for being brave enough to take a solo trip to the opposite end of the Earth and for enduring this far. Solo travel is hard; it’s exhausting, challenging, lonely and makes you question yourself and your decisions like never before. But it is also rewarding, an unbeatable learning experience and the disconnect we all need in today’s world. Travel often. Travel solo. And take a break to sit on a bench before a rainstorm to slow down and digest how your experiences have changed you. I hope that the photos I took of the couple who asked me first meant as much to them as my photos did to me.