Certainly if you are an older woman contemplating solo travel in Europe for the first time, as I was not so long ago, you may want to give a little thought to health and safety issues.
Optimist that I am, I’m afraid that I didn’t do much, if any, of that in advance of my first trip.
I’ve done two long solo trips thus far, and may be on the third one as you read this. For each of the first two trips, I had a health-related issue. I’ll talk about those experiences here in a moment.
As Older Women, We Just Have to Be Alert to Our Own Safety
Several friends who have not traveled to Europe were very concerned that I was ignoring personal safety when I said I was planning to travel alone to maximize the experience.
Before the first trip, based on extensive reading and conversation, I learned that for the most part, I can put violent crime, such as might be anticipated in American cities, right out of my mind. It just doesn’t happen unless people are careless or extremely unlucky. Experienced travelers tell me it’s safe to wander around well-lit streets at night by myself, and after two trips, I now believe it. This is especially so if there are other people around.
If you like to drink yourself into oblivion, it might be a slightly different story, but even then, my young hostel roommates said that the locals would laugh at them but not view their inebriated state as something to take advantage of.
I conclude that while the chance of crime harming your person is very very low, there is a different type of safety concern. Pickpocketing is alive and well in Europe, and those who engage in this lifestyle are extremely skillful.
My roommate in a hostel was a Norwegian woman who worked remotely and thus traveled throughout Europe much of the time. Toward evening she realized she had been pickpocketed. I asked her how and where it happened, hoping to learn something. She said she had no idea.
This reaction is a common one, I have learned, so I have abandoned the notion that I will be able to stop any and all potential pickpocketing or phone or purse snatching) episodes. I will just do my best to avoid being an easy target and take care to safeguard money and accounts as best I can.
In later articles to appear in this section, I’ll talk about some specific prevention and awareness measures I have learned to observe.
Taking Care of Your Health in Europe
Now let’s introduce health into the picture. It seems unlikely you will want to take my advice on this subject, but at least you might be able to learn from my mishaps!
On the first trip, I contracted a nasty virus or bacterial infection. I’ve never coughed like that in my life, except for the two times when I had pneumonia. Finally I had to miss an entire day of sightseeing in Berlin while I navigated the clinic system to get help on a Saturday.
I made the decision not to take any antibiotics, which proved to be a wrong move. The violent cough continued day and night for the remaining 27 nights of my trip. When I got home, my primary care physician prescribed a typical antibiotic, but she said if I coughed even once after that, I needed to call her. After the first round when some coughing persisted, she had to prescribe prednisone to get me back to normal. I’ll tell more about this in a future article.
The “lesson learned” is to be extraordinarily proactive about health. To this day I’m convinced that my body encountered an invader that was not at all familiar.
The second trip was marred by a different health issue. Eight days before the scheduled departure, I landed awkwardly on my knee while furiously weeding a slope in my front yard. Imaging showed nothing, so my doctor said it was a bone contusion and that I could go on with my trip when the pain and swelling subsided.
I did fine for the first two weeks of the trip and then started having issues with the other knee feeling like it was going to buckle. For this article, I will just say that I limped along, literally, for a while until finally having to buy a cane early Sunday morning in Copenhagen. I had missed the entire day of sightseeing on the previous day while figuring out what to do. I might write more about that episode too, because there is more to the story.
In short, I have learned to pay attention to both health and safety. Despite my two significant health issues, I enjoyed both trips thoroughly, and you can do that too.
As Older Women We Have to Take Charge of Our Own Health and Safety
As I write the more detailed stories and anecdotes about health and safety, I will link to those titles below. Or you can simply look for Health & Safety categories and tags, if you speak that language.