Wherever you go there are we
Here is something nobody tells you before you book the solo trip: the loneliness doesn't arrive on the plane. It waits for you at the destination.
It's there at the restaurant when you say "just one" and the host removes the second fork like a small, efficient funeral. It's there on the walking tour when everyone else is laughing at something their partner said. It's there at 4pm on a Tuesday in a city where you don't speak the language and the museum closes at five and you've already seen it twice.
This is not a complaint. Solo travel is one of the better inventions. You go where you want, eat what you want, stay as long as you like, leave when you're done. Nobody is tired when you aren't tired. Nobody wants to go back to the hotel when you're just getting interested. It's freedom, real freedom, the kind that has some teeth to it.
But teeth and loneliness are not mutually exclusive. You can love a thing and still want someone to share it with.
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It is said that we are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. I've been thinking about that in the context of travel profiles. On chickenlist, nobody is pretending to be very busy or very important or very over the idea of genuine human contact. That's the whole premise. You post your listing. You say who you are and what you're after. You mean it.
The result, if we're doing this right, is something like a global index of people who are interesting and willing to admit it.
Picture it: you're in Lisbon for a week. You pull up chickenlist. There's a 34-year-old from Edinburgh who's also in Lisbon for a week, who likes obscure cinema and good wine and will absolutely argue with you about whether *Andrei Rublev* is the greatest film ever made (it is). There's a 51-year-old from São Paulo who lives there and knows the restaurant that doesn't appear on any list. There's a 28-year-old who is also just saying hi, which is honestly enough.
You are not alone. You were never going to be alone. You just needed a place to find your people.
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The world is very large and also surprisingly small. People who read books show up in airports. People who think carefully about things tend to travel somewhere eventually. The curious and the restless and the slightly-too-much-for-the-room have been migrating since before there were rooms.
Chickenlist is not a dating app, though romance is one of its categories. It's not a networking tool, though you will occasionally meet someone who changes the direction of something. It's not a tour guide or a concierge or a group chat.
It's a bulletin board. A very honest one. Posted on the wall of every city where someone decided to put themselves out there.
So go. Book the trip. Eat the solo dinners. See the museums twice. And when 4pm on a Tuesday starts to feel a little too quiet — check the board. Someone nearby is probably also wondering what you're wondering.
That's the whole secret, really. Everyone is a little bit looking. Most people are just too proud to post it.
You don't have to be.