María Marco, from Zaragoza in Barcelona (and citizen of the world), has always known that her passion was linked to the creative world. Within this universe, María studied graphic and product design, worked in advertising and also spent many years in fashion, a job she left three years ago to embark on the journey of writing about her experiences around the globe.
Between the pages of her first novel, “Thank you for smiling, Miss”, the new writer collects seven years of travel and conveys in detail the emotions she felt in every experience, in every person and in every corner that has passed in this vital and transformative odyssey. A book that in itself has been an adventure for its writer. The book, now in its second edition, is a reminder to her younger self (afraid to take the bus to the center of Zaragoza) that the world is not so big and that it is she who grows as she discovers it. A song to get out of the comfort zone, to meet new cultures and people and, above all, to learn from situations of despair and embrace those moments of loneliness with oneself.
QUESTION. “Thank you for smiling, Miss” is your first book. What inspired you to take the step of capturing your experiences in a book?
ANSWER. The idea came up because a friend of mine who likes to travel a lot, but has always traveled with people, for the first time she thought about the idea of doing it alone. But she was too afraid of getting bored. Her parents told her “what for”, to wait until a friend was available to make the trip… A series of things that reminded me of the first time I told my parents that I was going to travel alone. If it had happened to me and it had happened to her, I thought that there would be more people and, specifically women, that the same thing would happen to them.
I wanted to write about the whole internal process you go through: from the moment you decide to take a trip alone and you tell your friends, your family; you organize it, you are on the trip and then when you come back. The idea came up and from there everything started to fall into place. After a month I met a person who has been my mentor and who trusted the idea a lot, almost more than me. That made me trust and it took me eight months to write it. I really felt that the time had come to do this and from there things went pretty smoothly.
P.- The book seems to be an invitation to women to “discover” themselves by crossing borders, but do you think many women are afraid to travel alone?
R.- Yes, there is a greater concern also on the part of parents and even among friends. The fact that a woman goes alone has a kind of conditioning, a greater weight than for a man. I felt that way back in the day. In fact, at the beginning I used to make the excuse that I traveled alone because I didn’t have any friends, but at a certain point I actually traveled alone because I wanted to, because I needed that time with me.
P.- Tips on how to start traveling alone?
R.- Start somewhere close. The first time I went far away, it was like shock therapy for myself, but you don’t need to go far away either. The first thing would be to make a little trial trip: go to Paris for example, three or four days and then see how you feel, how you get along, see what fears may arise… With this little trip you realize many things that you thought you could not do, like going to visit museums alone, going to eat alone and be well. Simple everyday things that you can do by yourself and enjoy them, as if you were meeting someone, but with yourself.
P.- Where did you go the first time?
R.- The first time was like a silly trip, because I was going for a reason but in the end I was alone. It was in 2012, in Paris. Then in 2017 I went to Indonesia first and then to New York. I spent a month and a half in each place and that had quite an impact on me because, also, the destinations are super different. That moved things inside me, then the following trips were already sought after. Every time I had a vacation I wanted to go to different places to keep discovering myself, discovering that Maria I had been seeing.
P.- After so many trips, are there any anecdotes that can be told?
R.- Many good things have happened to me, especially meeting people who have helped me in moments of my journey. Last year I went to visit a friend in Mallorca and on the plane there was me, an empty seat, and a girl next to me, about my age. She offered me some cookies and happened to speak English. We started talking and we connected right away, because she told me she was American, living in New York and traveling alone. We exchanged phone numbers and kept talking and from there she, without knowing me at all, told me to exchange our houses. Like in the movie “The Holiday”. [ríe]. New York is a city that I have always loved and it has been very important for me, for my growth and also for everything it symbolizes.
In the end she didn’t come to my house, but she did leave me hers in New York. I went for a week and she wasn’t there because it was Thanksgiving, so we overlapped for two days and when we met there, I asked her why she had left her house to a stranger on a plane. And she told me that she thought I was really nice and that we fit in. I think that when you travel alone a lot you have a different openness and also a capacity to get to know people, to see who is behind that person and I think that happened to both of us. A month ago she came to Barcelona and we saw each other, and now we are in contact.
P.- New York has been a place that has marked you?
R.- The first time I went there I realized that walking around that city I felt very big, like I was capable. In the end it’s a bit like the “American Dream”, but it’s real there. I am from Zaragoza and then I went to Barcelona, which is where I live now, and when you go to bigger and bigger cities you realize that there are more possibilities than the micro-world you know. New York made me see that there were many possibilities and many options, beyond what I thought was possible for me. From then (the first time I went I didn’t know anyone) until now, I’ve been back five times and now I have friends there, but I have them because every trip I’ve made I’ve been meeting people.
“Traveling alone is the only time you really see yourself.”
P.- Being alone in that city for the first time, how did you start making friends?
R.- In the last few years I ask in my environment and in the networks. The first time I went to the United States (which is very expensive), I took a leave of absence from work and as I didn’t have much money I made an exchange. Through a website I offered my work as a designer to a couple my age who had a project. I did the design of their website during the time I was there and they, in exchange, gave me room and board. He in particular is featured in my book and is a person who has helped me a lot and is a super friend right now. You have to ask questions, make connections and be open to meeting new people. I used to be very shy and closed and the travels have made me a lot wiser. You can see what I’m doing with my book. But I have had to live through all this to get to this point and become this person who has confidence in herself.
P.- Traveling has changed the way you look at life….
R.- I travel to grow as a person. The first time I traveled alone I didn’t do it with any objective, my body simply pushed me to do it. In each place I have been changing some part of me, so it is growth, because it is the only time you really have alone in your life and you can see yourself in perspective. Like if you take a pair of binoculars and see yourself living in Barcelona or Zaragoza and ask yourself, what’s going on in my life? At home you are not as analytical as when you are abroad, which is when you see things in perspective. You get to know more cultures, different ways of life… Even when you go back home, even your place becomes bigger because you have a more open view of the world.
P.- Where did the title “Thank you for smiling, Miss” come from?
R.- The title comes from a moment that happened to me in Indonesia that I didn’t remember. When I was looking for a title for the book I looked at my travel notebooks (because I always take a notebook with me to write in) and I found that I had written this moment, which is very nice and symbolizes the change in me. After I came back from some of my trips I realized that I had changed because the sound of my laughter was different. For me that was very symbolic, because I was not a cheerful or outgoing person, not at all. It was something that was said to me and for me it symbolized my change and my transformation.
“Cities have a personality, like a friend that makes you feel good.”
P.- What place in the world do you choose?
R.- I have two cities that connect me a lot: New York connects me with possibility, it makes me believe a lot in myself, and Lisbon connects me with calm. I have returned to Lisbon several times in moments of inflection and anxiety, because it makes me feel calm. It’s like cities have a personality. Like a friend who makes you feel good, because he gives you hugs and is affectionate or makes you laugh, for me cities are the same. In my podcast “Traveling with Me” I interviewed women of different ages and I asked them all about their city, and they all agreed that they have a city that they feel most connected to.
Sometimes I get asked where I recommend going and I say, what is that place that you, for whatever reason, have in your head that you want to go and you’re putting off? My recommendation is, if you want to take a trip alone, stop and think about where your body is taking you, even if it doesn’t make any sense. Maybe it is asking you to go to China, maybe it will awaken something you didn’t know.