Travel-Jaded
As I skip across three continents and several countries (Slovakia, Austria, Belgium, U.S., and Nicaragua) in the span of four days, I realized that I have become very jaded when it comes to travel. Gone is the excitement I used to experience as a child when we would set out on a trip with my parents and sister. The time when I couldn't wait to get to the airport and board the plane. I was probably more excited about the act of traveling than the actual destination. Today, as I flew from DC to Houston (en route to Managua), I was reminded of my first unaccompanied trip. I was 8 or 9 and my parents sent me to visit my aunt and uncle in Berlin (East Germany at the time). As my mom sent me off with a small handbag that contained my ticket, passport, and some money, she warned me to make sure I don't let the handbag out of my sight. I followed her instructions so meticulously that I even took it to the bathroom with me while on the plane. An airline staff member escorted me on the way to and from the plane. She communicated with me mostly through body language since I spoke nothing but Bulgarian at the time, drawing a rectangle with her hands to signal I had to hand her my passport for passport control. As I remember this, I smile, because I am reminded of how excited I was about the trip and all trips that followed.
Sometimes, for just a moment, I wish that traveling had not become so easy or ordinary. Then I remember all the hassle of waiting for visas, getting invitation letters, having no money to travel, etc. and I quickly discard that thought. However, I think we have started taking for granted the distances we are able to skip and the places we are able to see. Somehow, I feel that seeing a foreign place just doesn't mean as much as it used to. The novelty has worn off to an extent. Of course, I still love traveling and am always excited to see some place new, but I think it is a more "toned-down" sort of excitement and very different from what it used to be.
2 comments:
Describing that first trip to Berlin and picturing little D girl taking meticulous care of her bag....heh....sooooo sweet.
Funny, my first trip abroad alone was to .bg, 14 or 15 already and i remember feeling shameful that on the one hand i felt deep inside convinced that i was the person who would like travelling and one day i will travel a lot, on the other hand, hadn't travelled at all yet.
So I planned it all out, told my parents that I will only get on the bus and my .bg friend's parents will pick me out when I arrive.
Truth is that .bg friend was near Nesebar and I all I had to do was get off the bus, exchange money, find someone to show me where the bus for the coast leaves and take that bus. As the story went on, my bus from .gr arrived late and I missed the bus to Nesebar, I also probably got the worst exchange rate exchanging money from someone on the street, so even more poor I had to find a way to call my friend -no cellphones era of course, who then had to arrange with her uncle to come pick me up and we went to one of these huge apartment buildings that i had never seen before and sat with his wife on the table and noone of them spoke english or me speaking bulgarian and we were staring at each other for a while, then they somehow found out an all night bus that goes to the coast and took me there and wrote on a paper 'Slanchev briag' or however it is called in bulgarian -sorry i cannot write it, so that i can give it to the bus driver, and early morning I found my friend..
...no big deal all of this and definetely since then I have found myself in awful or fussy or simply hectic situations upon arriving on places, but the excitement of this first trip, the actual travelling tiny bits of not finding a bus, exchanging the money, trying to find a phone, ending up at a random family's place etc. before meeting my friend, oh it was pure excitement :)
sorry for long post
no need to apologize at all. i love long comments. and i loved this story! the part about you sitting in your friend's uncle's apartment and just staring at the aunt and uncle is like a movie-moment :) pretty amusing. i guess we will always fondly remember our first travel experiences and even the later ones that had complications at the time because they are the most memorable. the "easy" and problem-free travel is easily forgotten.
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