The Spirit of Travel

When lecturing, travel writer Rick Steves likes to recall his first experience in Europe at the age of 14 and how, at first, he resented traveling with his parents to Scandinavia to visit relatives. All he wanted to do during his summer vacation was play with his friends back home in the States. As the days and weeks passed by, young Steves’ teenage angst diminished and he came to love the Europe he initially loathed. He then recalls the realization he had when he saw a group of backpackers not much older than he was hopping on a train without a parent or guardian in sight. He remembers looking at his parents and thinking, “My god, I don’t need you! Those kids have all of Europe as their playground and I can too.” At that moment, Steves vowed to make annual pilgrimages Europe and has been keeping his vow ever since.

While my teenage self loved Europe straight away, I can relate perfectly to Rick Steves’ dream of a self-led European adventure. Always striving to exert my travel independence from my parents, I recall at age twelve pleading before the parental judges a case that I was convinced was devoid of logical flaws and was sure to meet their approval. Like a good lawyer, I acknowledge the weak parts of my argument and admitted that, yes, twelve years old is a young age to be traveling alone to Europe and misadventures were bound to happen. “But,” I added with presence, “we learn from our mistakes and think of how proficient a traveler I’ll be if I start making those mistakes at twelve rather than at age eighteen when most ‘normal’ people start traveling independently.” To my surprise, the logic of my case failed to sway my parents and the motion was never carried.

Feeling as though the battle had been lost but the war was still up for grabs, I switched strategy and pressed for incremental travel emancipation rather than total freedom. Citing differences of interests, I petitioned for and received more and more “free time” on our trips. In London, for example, my parents were interested in learning of the history of Westminster Abbey while I preferred learning more about the history of the iron maiden at the Torture Museum. I was granted an hour or two of independence to gawk at horrible torture devices and they were free to stare at stained glass and stone-cut tombs.

As I accumulated more and more free time while traveling with my parents, I realized that the travel “misadventures” I predicted at age twelve were more than mere rhetoric for my argument, I realized that misadventure abounds when the young and naïve travel. If this blog was a movie, right now there would be a montage playing that would start with me getting horribly lost while trying to find Abbey Road and winding up in the London suburbs. The montage would then go to a shot of me spending way too much on a crappy knock-off watch in the streets of Bangkok after being convinced of its authenticity and would cumulate with a scene of me spending hour after paranoid hour trying to find my hotel in Amsterdam after visiting a “coffee shop.”

The weekend before last, Lisa and I took quick a trip up to Amsterdam. Despite my teenage misadventure there, I was very excited about returning to the city. The Amsterdam I remembered was a progressive, exciting, and beautiful place. I kept telling Lisa how much she’d like it, how laidback the people were, and I probably added a political comment or two about how enlightened their policies are. Returning this time, however, a funny thing happened. I realized that while the city itself was exactly the way I remember it, I had changed. Suddenly the cool, progressive, and enlightened young travelers I recalled had turned into retarded slackers who were too loud, too high or drunk, and there was far too many of them.

As difficult as this is to admit, my parents were right. If my parents had by some strange twist of fate let me loose to gallivant through Europe at age twelve, the European pilgrimages I would have made most likely would not have extended beyond Amsterdam’s Red Light district. And I would have been worst off because of it. As a relatively older traveler, I have only one gripe with the youth who flock to places like Amsterdam merely to experience debauchery in a foreign country. That is that while they are traveling and experiencing adventures and misadventures alike, they are missing the point. They are traveling but going nowhere. They are the younger versions of the people who travel to Japan and immediately look for the nearest McDonalds. Now, I’m not saying eating at Mickey D’s in a foreign country is any worse than eating it at home. I am saying that traveling a long way to do the same old thing you do at home is counter to the whole spirit of traveling.

While the “spirit of traveling” has been captured by artist since ink was first laid on paper and its praises are timeworn, a music group that Lisa recently discovered has the best rendition I’ve heard in quite some time. I believe the first two verses of Future Island’s song, “Give Us the Wind,” captures the “spirit of travel” well:

We set out to find something to hold

When seeking truth the answer is the road

When seeking wisdom the journey is you home

Fight through the wind, fight through the rain, fight through the cold

We left ourselves behind on dancing wires

The love ones we’ve left back home will be our choir

Let the doubters be the stick, the thorn, the brier

Fight through the wind, fight through the rain, dance in the fire