About two weeks into my semester in Glasgow, I received a notice from the post office saying they had tried to deliver a package and that it was now waiting for me at the station. I found the address on the back was in Cambuslung, ten miles away. I couldn't figure out a good way to get there, so I just wrote it down and the next morning went to the subway, affectionately nicknamed the "Clockwork Orange."
There, I asked the man at the desk the best stop to get there, and, after a lot of confusion, he explained to me that I needed to take the metro to a train station and take the train from there. I made it to the train station, somehow got confused and missed my train, and finally after waiting for what felt like forever, caught the right one.
The train took me to a nearly deserted station in the middle of a neighborhood with no one at a desk that I could find. I set off wandering at random, asked directions from a stranger, wandered a bit more, and then got directions from another stranger...who sent me in the opposite direction.
After a few miles of walking in the miserable weather and turning around to retrace my steps several times, I found the place. No one was there. I called the number on the card only to find out that I was in the wrong place. At this point I gave up and called a cab, which didn't show up. After 30 minutes of waiting, I determined to walk to the new destination. It took almost as long, and I finally made it to the place only to discover that my package was at the local destination, a convenient 1 mile from my flat.
It was getting dark, I had no idea where I was, and I still had to make it back to the train station to get back to the subway and make the twenty minute walk home from there.
When you travel, sometimes everything goes right. But sometimes, everything goes wrong and you question your decision to leave the safety of your hometown. Even when that happens and you're lost after dark with no resources but your shoddy memory of the route you took to get there, somehow things always seem to work out.
I made it home that night in one piece, and gained some confidence in my abilities to survive abroad. I reevaluated the card and realized the correct address was also there, circled for me. I was really embarassed and didn't tell anyone, but in the end no harm was done. I got my package, and I had a slightly better understanding of the city. The feeling of familiarity and relief upon getting back to Byres Road was incredible, and that was the first time I really started to think of Glasgow as home.