What to Do After a Terrible First Day in a New Place
Picture a woman named Hannah. For eleven years she has wanted to see one particular city, and on the second day of the trip everything goes wrong. A storm cancels her train, the power goes out in her hotel, the restaurant she booked has no record of her name, and she eats crackers from a vending machine while the rain hits the window sideways.
She texts her sister: this was a mistake. She starts thinking about changing the rest of the trip, and wonders whether the dream itself was a mistake.
Most of us have had a day like this. It tells us something about that day.
A city is a place where millions of ordinary days happen, and most of them look nothing like the day a storm arrives. One bad day is a single sample from a very large number. A single sample is a thin basis for a decision about the whole.
You might say that a place that handles a bad day badly shows what it is really like. Sometimes it does. A power cut or a strike can show how a city copes, and that may be worth a note. How the city is on a Tuesday in May is a separate question.
Hannah gives the city another chance. She stays the full week. By Friday the storm has passed, she has found a bakery where the owner starts to recognize her, and she has watched people go about an ordinary morning. On her last day she writes two notes, one on what the bad day showed her and one on what the other days showed her. The two notes do not agree, and she keeps both.
If a first visit goes badly, you could do three things before you decide. You could stay long enough to have several ordinary days. You could go back in a different season. And you could ask a resident what a normal weekday is like, and what people do when the weather or the power fails.
I have had terrible days in places I now love. A bad day is worth a note in your journal. It is one day among many to weigh.
The numbers on our calculator describe a typical month in each country, not its worst day. For the worst day, you could read about the local weather, the transport and the power, and talk to people who live there.
What was the worst day you ever had in a place, and what did you decide afterward? Tell us in the comments. Someone reading may be on a hotel bed right now, deciding the same thing.
Tell us in the comments