How quickly we become comfortable and safe. Just a month ago I was travelling around the Balkans, regularly turning up to bus stations with no idea of which country I was headed for, let alone where I would be staying that night.

Fast forward a few weeks and I find myself in Germany lamenting over whether to go to a festival because I’m not sure how to get back. “Just go for it and be in backpacker mode. The Universe will bring you back” asserted a friend as I debated my situation, providing a well and truly needed reality check.

How could I, just six days into a two-week stay in Berlin, have gotten so comfortable? And so quickly?

It was truly scary. This was why I started on this journey in the first place. To shake off the comfort that was keeping me safe, while slowly killing me. Food for thought indeed.

This festival had plagued me somewhat for the last few months. I bought my ticket while I was back in the UK planning my European summer. At the time it seemed ideal. I would be in Berlin, I love techno and I’m a fan of a random building. It was a techno festival taking place in an abandoned DDR bunker in a forest no less. Tick. Tick. Tick. The only thing was, this time I would be going on my own and the timing wasn’t really ideal.

Now I’ve been known to go out on my own a fair few times now. Rave for one, anyone? But this time it was different. I’d just been to a festival (with said universe-loving friend) the previous weekend, was super tired from two months of none-stop travelling and half-way through an intensive German course. It really wasn’t the sensible thing to do. Plus I’d left it so late I didn’t have a shuttle ticket or a tent booked, so I was going to have to figure out how to get there and last all the way through to the morning on my own with no friends to prod me when I fell asleep under a tree (as per the previous weekend, with my friend, and not the universe on this occasion, providing the wake-up call).

What to do?

Well… what I really should have done was sell the ticket weeks ago. I should have gone to a cultural exhibition or read the German novel that my flatmate had loaned me that weekend. I should have been resting after a busy week and getting an early night.

But this was never about ‘should’. It never is any more.

What I actually did?

I cooked a large meal and put the leftovers in the fridge, did my German homework in preparation for next week, grabbed a couple hours sleep, dressed my most “German techno” and headed for the U-Bahn. I was going to find this festival and I was going to befriend as many Germans as I could, and together we would work out the rest. And so off I went…

Quite quickly I made it to my target destination, a town on the outskirts of Berlin. Despite the lack of signage or shuttle bus, pockets of random-looking people sprinkled around the square suggested I was in the right place. Not long after, the pockets merged into a corner and conversation started to flow. In German. Soon I was welcomed into a group and settled on a bus heading through the countryside chatting away in my new tongue. It came relatively easy and my fellow ravers seemed surprised that I could speak their language.

We arrived at the most surreal festival entrance I’ve encountered. There was no queue. It was quiet, except for some Duran Duran floating across the 80’s holiday camp vibes. I wandered up to what I presumed to be the entry desk and eventually someone checked my ticket waving us casually in the direction we needed to go. We headed off down a path, weaving our way amongst empty communist-style buildings and random airstreams serving German sausage. It was all rather Deutschland 83.

And then I heard it. A deep booming sound coming from around the corner. The hardest techno I’ve ever heard beckoning us closer. As we made our way down the path, what I can only describe as a car park flanked by shipping containers opened up before me and to its left a strange building built into a grass bank – the bunker! In the middle of it smoke and mist cloaked a sea of bodies moving back and forth to the hypnotic beat. I was in love. If I had to leave now I had already seen enough. I was in the middle of nowhere. I knew no one. All there was, was music. Randoms. And a bunker. Techno heaven. And so, I threw myself in and got lost in the crowd.

Hours later I emerged. Elated and exhausted. I managed to find some respite on a pallet in a corner, accompanied by a couple from the group I had met earlier who kept an eye on me while I caught up on some much-needed sleep. By the time the sun started to rise I was awake and back to the party. We carried on for a couple more hours, before deciding it was probably time to return to the city. I really needn’t have worried. The Universe totally had my back. This was living at maximum volume. I was loving every moment of this madness. I didn’t want to leave, but I had another week of study ahead and I needed my bed. So, home I went.

As easily as I had made it there, I headed back. Excited to share what I had experienced with my friends back home. I had found more than another new festival. I had found courage, not only could I travel solo and rave solo, but I could now festival solo. Be completely fine, and more so, have an amazing time. I really was capable of pushing myself out of my comfort zone and indeed I needed to, for I’d already seen how easily it could shrink.

I felt like I was capable of anything on that train home. It was so worth it. If 12 of the craziest hours of my life taught me one thing, it was that you never know what you are missing out on. Yes, I know you can’t technically miss what you don’t know, but maybe you can. Maybe doing what you ‘feel you “should” be doing’ is exactly the opposite of what you should be doing. Maybe just take the risk. Push yourself. Get out of your own way and go for it.

Someone once told me that fear is a compass. Whatever is plaguing you, tempting you and scaring you. Head in its direction. It’s telling you something. Throw away that safety net. For there is magic and self-belief to be found on the other side of discomfort.