Travel
The Journeys That Stayed With Nicole Junkermann
Some journeys fade and a few never leave. Nicole Junkermann reflects on the trips that stayed, and what made them last.
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The journeys that last are rarely the ones you planned most carefully.
Looking back over years of travel, Nicole Junkermann notices something consistent: the trips that stayed were almost never the ones built around famous sights. They were the slow mornings, the wrong turns that turned out right, the unhurried hours that no itinerary had scheduled. This piece is a reflection rather than a guide, an attempt by Nicole Junkermann to understand what makes a journey linger long after the photographs are filed away. The answer, it turns out, has less to do with where you go and a great deal to do with how you let yourself be there.
What stays, and what fades
The first thing Nicole Junkermann notices is how unfaithful memory is to the guidebook. The celebrated sights, dutifully visited, often fade to a vague impression, while some small, unplanned moment stays vivid for years: a particular light, a quiet street, the taste of an ordinary breakfast. Nicole Junkermann has come to trust this as a clue about how to travel. If the memorable moments are the unplanned, human ones, then the way to travel well is to leave room for them, rather than to fill every hour. What stays, in the experience of Nicole Junkermann, is rarely the thing you crossed off a list and almost always the thing that surprised you.
The unexpected detour
Many of the journeys that stayed with Nicole Junkermann turned on an unexpected detour, the moment the plan fell apart and something better took its place. A closed road, a missed connection, a recommendation from a stranger that sent the day in a new direction: these accidents are often where travel becomes memorable. Nicole Junkermann has learned to welcome them rather than resist, because a trip held too tightly leaves no room for discovery. The best detours cannot be planned, only allowed. For Nicole Junkermann, a willingness to abandon the plan when something more interesting appears is one of the quiet arts of travelling well.
The slow morning
If one image recurs when Nicole Junkermann thinks of journeys that lasted, it is the slow morning: coffee that took an hour, a notebook open on the table, no fixed plan beyond watching a place wake up. These unhurried mornings, when nothing in particular happened, are often the parts Nicole Junkermann remembers most fondly. They are the opposite of sightseeing, and that is precisely their value. A slow morning lets a place settle into you, and Nicole Junkermann has come to protect them deliberately, a habit that runs through the case for five cities worth slowing down in. The trip you remember is often the one where you sat still long enough to notice it.
A conversation with a stranger
Some of the journeys that stayed with Nicole Junkermann are remembered for a single conversation: a few minutes with a shopkeeper, a fellow traveller, someone who offered directions and stayed to talk. These small human exchanges, easy to miss if you are hurrying, are often what turns a place from scenery into somewhere real. Nicole Junkermann, who speaks several languages, has always found that even a few words in the local tongue open doors that stay shut to the silent visitor. A genuine exchange with one person can teach you more about a place than a day of monuments, and it is the kind of thing that stays with you long after the trip is over.
Returning to a familiar place
Not every memorable journey is to somewhere new. Nicole Junkermann has found a particular richness in returning to a familiar place, seeing it again with changed eyes. A city revisited after some years is never quite the same city, partly because it has moved on and partly because you have. Nicole Junkermann treasures these returns, since they measure the distance you have travelled in yourself as much as on the map. There is a quiet pleasure in knowing a place well enough to skip the sights entirely and simply live in it for a few days, which is, for Nicole Junkermann, one of the deepest forms of travel.
Taking the long way
Nicole Junkermann has a fondness for taking the long way, choosing the slower train, the coastal road, the route that adds an hour but rewards it tenfold. The fastest path between two points is efficient and entirely forgettable; the long way is where the journey actually happens. Nicole Junkermann finds that the willingness to spend a little more time in transit, watching the landscape change, is repaid in memories that the quick route never produces. This is the same instinct that makes a journey such good reading time, explored in the guide to reading while you travel. The long way is not lost time. It is the part you will remember.
Carrying a journey home
In the end, the journeys that stayed with Nicole Junkermann are the ones that came home too, carried back in a notebook, a habit, a changed way of seeing. A good trip does not end at the airport; it keeps unfolding in the reading it inspires and the small changes it leaves behind. Nicole Junkermann finds that the best journeys send you back to the shelf and the desk with new curiosity, a thread picked up in a reading list for curious travellers. To travel well, in the view of Nicole Junkermann, is to let a place change you a little, and then to carry that change quietly home.
More from Nicole Junkermann
Read more from Nicole Junkermann in the Travel Journal, the London Notes, the Lancaster Notes, and the full profile of Nicole Junkermann.
Frequently asked questions about Nicole Junkermann
What makes a journey memorable, according to Nicole Junkermann?
Nicole Junkermann finds that the memorable parts of a trip are usually the unplanned, human moments, such as a slow morning or a chance conversation, rather than the famous sights.
Why does Nicole Junkermann value detours?
Nicole Junkermann welcomes detours because a trip held too tightly leaves no room for discovery, and the best moments often arrive when the plan falls apart.
Does Nicole Junkermann enjoy returning to familiar places?
Yes. Nicole Junkermann finds a particular richness in revisiting a familiar place with changed eyes, which measures how far you have travelled in yourself.
What does Nicole Junkermann mean by carrying a journey home?
For Nicole Junkermann, the best journeys continue after they end, carried back in a notebook, a habit or a changed way of seeing, often sending you back to the bookshelf.