What does travel teach people?

There is no ATM in the railway station in Bruges (in Belgium). Fortunately, it’s not a long walk to the centre of town. Unfortunately, it’s a long enough walk that you and your backpack will get very wet if it’s raining.

Don’t believe the woman in the train station in Lyons when she says there are no seats left on the 10:30 train to Paris.

You can swim with freshwater crocodiles and not get eaten. It would be fairly unwise to try the same thing in salt water.

You can get very cheap, very good seats to lots of classical music, including the New York Phil and the Opera-Bastille in Paris, if you are a student and are prepared to queue for an hour or so.

Beer really is cheaper than (bottled) water in Prague.

If you have to take the tube anywhere in London with your backpack, try not to do it at peak hour.

20 blocks in New York is a long way to walk if it’s late at night, and you’re carrying a backpack, and you just got off a plane from Sydney.

Cattle stations in the Kimberleys in North-Western Australia muster on horseback, with helicopters.

Budapest is actually two cities, one on each side of the river.

In one year (June 1998-July 1999) I spent time in 9 counties on 3 continents. I learned a lot. Mostly that the world is a very beautiful, but bewildering, and sometimes sad, place. People are people, but what shapes them in other places is not the same thing that shapes them where you are.

I had the worst insults you could imagine hurled at me on a holy day at the holiest of places.

I rode on a bus with double-paned windows, in case people wanted to throw rocks at us.

A bomb destroyed one of the two bus stops I used at my dorm.

I bargained for strawberries. (And got a good deal!)

I heard children arguing about politics so fiercely you’d think their lives rested on who won the election, and you’d be correct.

Italian is the most beautiful language to listen to, but Arabic has the most beautiful script.

A brilliant time can be found in tiny villages in Wales and huge cities in England.

I got 72 mosquito bites in one week in Puerto Morelos, Quintana Roo.

Swimming with wild dolphins in Egypt, with the mountains of Saudi Arabia just visible across the Red Sea, is an incomparable experience.

There is no ice cream like gelato in Florence, not even the delicious stuff at the Ile d’St. Louis in Paris.

I have sipped water and studied the bouganvillea at the oldest city in the world. Think on it. The place where humans first thought “You know, I think I’ll stop wandering about now, and perhaps build a house. That nearby lake, the one that’s so salty you can’t even swim in it? That seems a good place to live by.” I sat on a bench and smelled the salt and drank my water and looked at the bougavillea and thought of those people, 10,000 years past, who settled down for the first time.

There is no web site, there is no book, there is no anecdote that can subsitute travelling, and the seeing, and the smelling, and even the crying and the remembering.

It is different for everyone, some learn nothing, some change their lives, others just look at the world through different eyes.

One of the bigger things I learned was just how lucky I am. The headstart I have, just by virtue of having my health and living in a country with a high standard of living, is enormous and I try not to take it for granted.

Cathedrals at six in the morning are different places than they are at noon. It is worth walking a mile at six with a heavy backpack to find this out.

When people walk into the room with Picasso’s Guernica in it, they go absolutely silent. All of them.

In parts of New Zealand, you can see penguins and sheep in the same field.

Many foods you have never heard of taste good. Some of them taste foul. There is only one way to find out which are which.

Just about everything we do is governed by unwritten rules that seem logical to us, but are completely arbitrary. For instance, when people in America get on a bus, the first person usually sits in the back and the others try to spread themselves as far apart as possible. In Fiji, they fill every seat in neat rows beginning at the front. Both ways make sense, but are a bit off-putting if you’ve never seen anything else.

More people than you would think are very, very nice to strangers, especially apple-sellers in Ottawa.

Shy, 110-pound girls can travel by themselves, and should.

No matter how critical you may be of your own country most of the time, there will come times when you feel obligated to defend it. No matter how proud you may be of your own country, there will come times when you feel deeply ashamed of it.

I think it all depends on the traveler. I have met people who have been around the world, but saw no more than they expected to see. They came home the same as they left.

And I have met real life Miss Marples- people who never physically left whatever state of village they started out in, but are filled with insight and wisdom.

In Paris, France, folks ain’t snooty, they generally genuinely love and are proud of their heritage, and they get an attitude with ignorant folks who come in there and can’t respect French culture and language. There’s a real communal sense there. Folks are genuinely polite and courteous and helpful to each other. They have some kind of balance in their lives in that they work hard, but they also take time out to enjoy life, whether it’s just sitting in a park and watching the sun shine, or sitting in a cafe and watching folks walk by, or sitting down to a meal they take the time to savor the food and the company.

New Yorkers are really nice folks who care about their city and who can be courteous and helpful to visitors. Though they are jaded and can be rather foul-mouthed and rude, they are this way to make themselves less vulnerable in an over-crowded city where folks are constantly running scams.

Doesn’t matter where you go, you’re going to meet some cab drivers who’re absolute nuts and who shouldn’t be driving.

There ain’t nothin’ like good ol’ Southern hospitality. :smiley:

I’ve found that traveling has really made me appreciate my home. It’s so nice to know the cultural codes and understand the language that folks in a given place use.

Being pissed off at someone who pussyfoots around and gets you to the airport barely in time to catch your flight can take your mind off being nervous about flying. It really is possible to sit and fume for a couple hours on a plane and not notice or really care that a fussy baby is sitting next to you and be surprised when it’s time to land. :slight_smile:

I often had this thought, and as strange as it may seems it depresses me each time (the “you wouldn’t even scratch the surface in a thousand years” part…so many things…so little time)

I strongly second the comment about travel giving you perspective, about yourself as an individual, and about the society where you’ve grown up. (This probably applies more to a) travel outside the developed world, and b) longer stays abroad, as in study or work abroad, than to a 2-week Eurail experience, but any travel can be mind-expanding if you go into it without preconceptions.)

A couple of weeks after I got back from a semester in the rapidly dissolving Soviet Union in 1989, I was in line in a bakery. It was morning rush hour, and there were 3 or 4 people waiting at the checkout to pay for their muffins. A guy started screaming at the cashier, “What’s taking you so Goddamn long? This is America, and I shouldn’t have to wait in line to spend my money!”

Having just come back from a place where many basic food items were either rationed or simply unavailable, I didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, or go up to the register and deck the guy. And yet, in Russia, where people had so little, your dormmates would share their last scrap of bread with you. I learned a lot about friendship and priorities that semester. It’s just not the same to read about it in books. I’ve long thought that everyone should have to spend a few months, at least, in another country, but I certainly think it should be a Constitutional prerequisite for running for President.

Wow, my travel resume is pretty short compared to many of you people; I’ve never been outside of the Western Hemisphere, or south of the Equator. Most of the out of the country trips (besides to Canada) were confined to touristy areas, with a few exceptions (those were often pretty interesting, BTW). Still, there are some rather memorable lessons I’ve picked up, beyond the obvious one to pack most of the things you expect to need. Some of the more memorable (although usually not profound) lessons I’ve seen are as follows, some from other countries, but some from within the US:

  1. Don’t assume that the locals drink the tap water.

  2. The stereotypes about Californians apply more often to ones who live in the city than in rural areas.

  3. If you look at a piece of food on your plate and find a stray tentacle dangling out of it, don’t make a big racket about it. Luckily that was not anybody I knew, just another tourist who made quite a scene over finding that tacos in Mexico may contain ingredients that are nearly unheard of here.

  4. Destinations that are commonly on official tours may be more accessible, but may not be the most beautiful or worthwhile places to visit in town.