CB - Blink is fascinating, and "trust your gut" is great advice.
Rocka - if you have the street smarts to be safe in your hometown or a nearby biggish city, you'll be fine. And I'm not talking about rough and tumble life on the streets, I'm talking about knowing when not to talk to strangers, when not to accept that free drink, where to go when you're feeling uncomfortable. Obviously you don't know the neighbourhoods to avoid in strange lands, but that's what guidebooks are for. Know to go into a hotel, restaurant or other public and generally busy place when someone's showing more interest in you than you like. Know not to tell every stranger you meet in a bar where you keep your passport and cash...
Basically, the whole world is full of regular people doing more or less the same things, just with different soundtracks. Once you discover that, it's much less intimidating to take those first solo steps.
Chances are that the people filling your head with horror stories are not actually telling you their own experiences, but rather, relating half-remembered hearsay about "a friend's uncle's cousin..."
Someone who has actually travelled will be more likely to bore you with tales of their adventures, favourite destinations and recommended eateries. Check out these boards if you have any doubts about that!
Of course, bad things happen - even crummy, rotten things, sometimes. But the cool thing is that, most of the time, after you've survived the rotten crummy thing, you realize that you are capable of dealing with the rotten crummy thing, and you're less worried about it happening again, because you know you can cope. The more you face, the more fears you conquer, the more confidence you gain. It's a virtuous cycle. That, I think, is the source of the traveler's high that comes from seeing the world, especially solo.
I think, too, that those horror stories you hear do have their roots in truth - well, some of them, anyway. The problem is in the interpretation. Travelers swapping stories inevitably turn to those challenges they've faced, and, as anyone who has been to a t'punk meet-up can attest, we tend to revel in those tales. Someone who has traveled before can imagine themselves in that position, think about what they would do, and appreciate the sense of accomplishment in dealing with the problem. Someone who hasn't been in a similar position can't capture that feeling, and so sees it only as a nightmare to be avoided at all costs.
Just a little example. A friend of mine originally planned to travel with me but didn't, so I went solo. When I showed her my pictures from early independence era Poland, she dismissed the entire experience in one sentence. "It all looks grey." Where I saw rebirth after communism, moody, rain-drenched early spring scenes, and buildings and streets exuding a thousand years of history and struggle and survival, she could only see cloudy skies.
Fortunately, by then I knew that was her loss, not mine.
:tumbleweed:
