Getting Lost is Fun

Travel has changed since the invention of the smartphone. While it's definitely considered an advantage to have a little gps right there in your hand to tell you where you are and that yes, you did make a wrong turn about three blocks back, there's something I miss about getting absolutely, irrefutably lost while in a new country.

My first backpacking experience took place when I was a shy, sheltered 18 year old fresh out of a one-year performing arts program. I had never been outside of Canada, I had never travelled without my family, but somehow I managed to convince two of my good friends to traipse around Europe with me for a couple of weeks.

By the time we got to Munich, about half way through our journey, we figured we had this whole travelling thing down pat. We left our hostel in the morning to take a walking tour of the city led by a Handsome Canadian. (Canadians, I have found, are like bluebells. They spread out as far as they can go and they are often found in the most unlikely places.) Our Handsome Canadian tour guide told us that somewhere in the city we could find the factory used in the 1971 Willy Wonka movie, and because we could not resist a treasure hunt (and because I begged my friends) we got Handsome Canadian to point out its location on our map and set off.

Our search lasted four hours and took us way outside of any tourist-ridden area of Munich we knew about. It involved a lot of stopping to check where we were, and turning of the map to make sure we were where we thought we were, and stopping at tiny little German shops, and asking for directions in muddled English/German hybrid language, and probably not a small amount of walking around in circles.

And despite the fact that we didn't actually find the factory, we did get to see the side of Munich that not everyone gets to see. If we hadn't gotten miserably lost, we wouldn't have had the joy of bonding with kind old ladies who don't speak English. Try getting your iPhone to do that.