A few years ago I read an article on segmented sleep, a sleep pattern that includes two or more periods of sleep, interrupted by a period of wakefulness and activity. There’s a theory that this is actually the natural pattern of human sleep, and the notion that it is proper for us to sleep in one continuous period only came about with the introduction of electric lighting, which allowed us to artificially prolong our day. Some people who possibly retain a strong inclination to segmented sleep may subsequently be improperly diagnosed with insomnia or other sleep disorders, but really they are just doing what comes natural. But because popular opinion tells them that they should be asleep, they stay in bed, stare at the ceiling, toss and turn, wish desperately to fall asleep, and likely fail, which can have negative results like fatigue, stress, and general crankiness. Conversely, someone who is practicing segmented sleep recognizes this waking period as a natural occurrence, and instead of fighting wakefulness, they get up and do something. Read a book, watch videos, do crossword puzzles, practice ukulele, garden, keep a vigil of some nature, star gaze, whatever. Sleepiness will come again naturally, at which point it’s simply time to go back to bed.

When I worked a regular office job with regular business hours, I would sometimes find myself fighting an overwhelming urge to just crash out in the early evening. I suspect that some of these occurrences were a result of having eaten too heavy a dinner, but whatever the reason, my body was telling me it wanted to go to sleep. My brain, on the other hand, and in flagrant disregard of being the seat of reason, was ignoring this message. I would struggle to stay awake just a couple more hours, which was ultimately just a waste of time. My brain was too fuzzy to accomplish anything worthwhile. After reading about segmented sleep, I modified my behavior. I no longer resisted early evening nap urges, or being in thrall to conventional ideas of “proper” sleep, and if I experienced a waking period in the wee hours, I’d get up and putter around. This turned out to be a particularly good time to clean my apartment. I never managed to adopt segmented sleep as a regular sleep pattern, and I’ve never been someone who rises naturally very early in the morning. But when external forces compel me upwards (out of bed,) and outwards (away from the bed), I rather enjoy being up and about in the middle of the night. It’s quiet, peaceful, cooler, dark (I like the dark), a time when familiar things can assume different, unfamiliar aspects, or reveal new ones. It can be a opportune time to reflect on, develop, and have a fresh awareness of new perspectives.

What does this have to do with traveling? A couple of things. Number One, traveling, almost by definition includes exposure to the new and different. Maybe it’s something mildly new, or maybe it’s something that’s really challenging in some aspect; say, emotionally or psychologically, or something that causes one to reconsider deeply-held beliefs. Perhaps segmented sleep is a way to discover new perspectives and experiences on your own turf. But this is all starting to sound a bit serious and high-minded, and really didn’t even occur to me until I started writing this, when really the impetus for this blog post was:

Number Two, sometimes I just land somewhere in the middle of the night. The upwards and outwards of two paragraphs ago is not the bed and away from the bed, it’s a bus seat and out of the bus, into the night in a strange place. It usually happens in a rather abruptly rude fashion, when drivers switch on lights mere minutes before arriving at the destination, and announce over the loudspeaker that we have reached wherever, resulting in a sleepy stumble into a new place. It’s both disorienting and exciting, and also requires that a person stay on one’s toes. In the past few months I’ve landed in five cities at some time between 3:00 and 5:00 in the morning, and most of the time there was nothing to do but sit around and wait for a bit, but in a state of being awake and alert, and therefore observant. It’s perhaps not a true episode of segmented sleep, but it makes me think about it all the same, this situation of being awake at an unconventional time, and taking the opportunity to witness the nighttime world go by. Asian cities were quite lively. The park by Pham Ngu Lao in Saigon, already busy with a random night crowd of partying tourists, commuters, and moto taxi drivers, stepped up the action with an early morning exercise circuit. There was plenty of road and foot traffic around Sanam Luang in Bangkok, but there were also people sleeping all over the streets, sometimes big groups together, as if there were some agreement that a certain section of pavement was the dorm. I never did figure what was going on there. The Mandalay bus station was full of people and tea shops already in swing. Kalaw was an exception, being utterly deserted except for a creepy, yet business-savvy hotelier who clearly had a habit of meeting the bus at 3:30am to scoop up those of us in need of a room. And in Strasbourg…nothing was happening. At 4:30am, that place was barely breathing. It was also beautiful and serene, and I wish I had taken a picture with my smartphone, which is the only way I can post pictures for the nonce, but I didn’t. I had to cut through the old town, and it felt like I had the entire place all to myself, although I was sort of hoping to find an open cafe (I didn’t). I told myself that I should get up the next morning at the same time, just to have another walk through the pre-dawn tranquility, and to take pictures this time. Of course that didn’t happen.

But all that wakey time comes with a sleep debt that may need to be paid. In Strasbourg I could feel the exhaustion creeping in, but inconveniently couldn’t check into my hostel until noon. Caffeine wasn’t helping, and I knew I wasn’t going to make it. It was too cold to take a nap in a park, so I tucked myself into a pew in the Eglise de Saint-Pierre-le-Jeune, and nodded my way through a series of naps. I was trying to be discreet, but I’m pretty sure I wasn’t at all, but no one seemed to notice or care. That’s another aspect of travel. It can require some overextension of resources, a willingness to just tough a few things out, and a recognition that sometimes circumstances require some sort of adjustment to what is normal, routine, and comfortable. 

I started writing this post over two months ago, when I was actually in Strasbourg. For various reasons, including ignoring it for a month or so, it took me a while to write, and then I couldn’t figure out how to wrap it up. There’s no great conclusion here, it’s just another of my brain bulletins from the road. I resolved one evening to just finish it. I was sitting on my bed writing – this current bed being at a small, private horse stable in Upper Austria – when a little girl who is attending a riding camp here sleepwalked into my room, asked Wo ist sie? (Where is she?) to no one in particular, turned around, and sleepwalked out. I don’t know who she was – her mother, our hostess, one of the mares, a dream entity. Or perhaps my elusive conclusion. After all, Zusammenfassung is a feminine noun in German. But even I think that’s pushing it a bit.

Strasbourg, staying tidy during daylight hours