Why do we travel?

Vanity | Relaxation | Exploration | Traveling Companions | Takeaways

Why do we travel? What are we looking for when we travel? What do we take away from a place after visiting it? What do we leave there, physical or otherwise? These questions bounced around in my head during a trip with a friend to Kraków and Prague. 

Our dear friend preferred to stay in the hotel while we were eager to get out to explore. While we explored the fascinating "Wieliczka" Salt Mine outside of Kraków, he stayed in bed. Later, he admitted that vacation for him was relaxing and talking. We walked too much for him and spent too much time in museums. He sketched out his prefect vacation as visiting a quaint town (with us), buying a few provisions from the market and going home to cook them and relaxing. Unfortunately, that was not the trip we were on together. How did we even end up on this trip together I wondered.

I realized that my reasons for travel are probably different from our friend. Okay, but what are my reasons exactly? Why do I travel? 

What follows are thoughts on why I travel. I can say with reasonable certainty that in 30 years of travel, my motivation falls into three broad categories: vanity, relaxation, and exploration.

Vanity

When I started traveling in earnest in the mid 1990s (my late twenties and early thirties), it was for primarily for two reasons: vanity and relaxation.  Vanity travel is to say I went somewhere and saw it; checklist travel. Sometimes these trips were inspired because people I respected said I should see a place. I was motived by the vague idea that educated, well-rounded people traveled and I wanted to be part of that crowd. The must-see places that loom large in an western upbringing, like Italy and France, were obvious candidates when it was time to choose where to travel. 

I'm not proud of vanity travel, but it exists to various degrees in my travel habits even today and it can be a powerful motivator to get yourself in shape, learn a language, or get your finances in order. I also admit there is some satisfaction in shocking friends and family with travel destinations, even if they are pretty tame by other travelers' standards. 

My need to shock likely comes from my childhood. Growing up, my family rarely went on vacation, and when we did, it was less than 100 miles away, and to decidedly non-exotic places. There were no destinations I could write a good essay about when the school year started and I would inevitably be asked to explain what I did that summer. I thought the reason my family didn't travel was money related: we were of modest means with more than a few mouths to feed so traveling was not in the cards for us. Later in life, as I saw examples of large families with limited means traveling, I began to realize that the problem was one of desire. My parents didn't want to travel - at least not with us kids. Therefore, when I was on my own and in charge of my own travel decisions, it felt like I was breaking at taboo to get on a plane and travel a great distance. And so was born the urge to select exotic locations (to me that is…) just because it was different than what I knew as a child. 

On a trip in Puglia, we were in Martina Franca eating lunch and the song Just an Illusion came on the radio. The song transported me back 33 years on my high school French club trip to France in 1983. I heard the song while we, a group of naïve high school seniors, a couple of parent chaperones, and one overworked French teacher schlepped around Paris. I was hooked on first listen. The song became part of the soundtrack to my first time out the country, first time in Europe, first major travel on my own (sort of). No matter that the musical group was British and it was a big European hit in many countries at the time, as I would find out much later. I thought it was French and that's all that mattered. I managed to find and buy the cassette on that class trip -- along with a much beloved blue and green-striped Yves St. Laurent shirt. I felt worldly, I had seen Paris! This falls under vanity travel. 

The cassette outlasted the shirt, and I only recently did a final purge of cassettes and gave one last look at the three post-disco-warriors on bright red background. I can't remember much about what we did and saw back in 1983 in France, but I sure remember that song and the shirt. 

Thankfully, today the vanity motive to travel is not a large driving factor for most of my travels. Or perhaps I am deceiving myself?

Relaxation

When I started my life as a working adult, besides vanity, travel was largely for relaxation - a counterpoint to work. It was what I was supposed to do with the precious few days my job offered me each year. Companies call it "vacation time", not exploration time or learning time. And like many good employees, I tried to interpret it literally. I took vacation and came back to work relaxed, or so I hoped. On average, I estimate I spent about 2-3 weeks a year on vacation during my working years.

I remember the days of work leading up to vacation and those of when I came back. I worked extra hard to get everything done before leaving. I stressed over projects that were launching while I would be away; I felt like my absence was letting down my managers and team. Then, when I got back, it was days of playing catch-up. Maybe it was just my character, but I'm guessing most people have felt at least a little of the before and after effect of a vacation: paying the price for taking the vacation. (And who hasn't fought the urge to take their work with them on vacation or stay in contact just to lessen the pain when getting back?) Is that relaxation?

Recently, I came in possession of my grandparents' travel diaries from their two trips to Italy in the 1970s. As I read the diary of their first trip, 25 days in 1973, I was struck by their nonstop, frenetic trip north to south, from Zurich to Palermo. A night here, an afternoon there. A few days with relatives in Rome and Ceprano. A day in Capri. A night in Bergamo, Orvieto, and Reggia di Caserta. A night in Naples. A few days with relatives in Palermo and then back home. It made me remember my urge to pack as much in as possible during my time off from work, at the expense of seeing anything in a more nuanced way, let alone relaxing in a spot for more than one day. 

My grandmother was the main income source for her family and I imagine that time off from work was hard to come by. She had to mind the time and be back to work at Waring, shipping blenders: "This is Julia in traffic" was how she answered the phone at work. 

I wonder what the answer would be if I could go back in time and ask my grandparents how much time they would spend if time or money wasn't an issue.

To be honest, there isn't a trip (travel in general) that I think back to and say "that was the most relaxing time I've ever had." Travel is always associated in my mind with descriptions like: an enjoyable trip, a trip we ate well on, a trip we learned a lot about XYZ, a trip where we clocked a lot of miles, a hectic trip, a trip I couldn't wait to come home from, etc. Why relaxation isn't part of my vocabulary for describing trips could be a defect in me. Does it mean that I don't know how to relax? Perhaps. In defense, I would counter - somewhat weakly - that my relaxation (really closer to satisfaction) is knowing that I planned, enjoyed, and returned from a trip. 

Exploration

Over time, my reason to travel has become less vanity and relaxation and more exploration. I guess exploration as a motive was always there, just masked by vanity and relaxation motives, at least initially. Exploration means exploring other places, cultures, and ultimately yourself. Only when we see something different from us or our everyday world can we hope to see clearly what we are. Experiencing the other helps define us and change us for the better. 

In a the article: How a Bit of Awe Can Improve Your Health - The New York Times (nytimes.com) - the quote by Dacher Keltner, a psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley, stood out for us.

 “Awe is the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your understanding of the world."

The exploration motive for travel makes more sense when put in the context of looking for awe. Now, that's a bit heady but hey, it's my travel reason.

A key event when exploration became a primary reason for us to travel is when we made the commitment to take our first sabbatical of 2007 - 2008. We quit work, disrupted our comfortable, if not slightly boring and ironically stressful, lives to take a bit of risk.  At that moment, we wanted to explore something more than what was in front of us. The standard 2-4 weeks of vacation on our jobs were not enough. Even the sabbatical leave of absence programs available to us were limited -- at just a few months -- or inaccessible, being typically only for very long term employees or executives.

The first sabbatical succeeded wildly, so much so that not long after returning a plan for a second sabbatical was in the works. Sabbatical II took place from 2015 - 2017 and I can say that we would not have changed a thing. For more information, see Sabbatical Lessons: Thoughts and Stories from our Italian Sabbaticals.

On a trip we took to Puglia in 2016, we were based for 4 nights in Lecce and took a day trip to Otranto. In the Castello Aragonese di Otranto, we saw the exhibition "Steve McCurry Icons".  McCurry is the photographer who took the famous 1984 photo Afghan Girl. The exhibition in Otranto was a selection of his photos and commentary  about them. As I hogged an overworked air-conditioning unit trying to cool off, I thought: now there's someone who's been around. The thing that stood out in the exhibition explanations is how many times McCurry said he would go back to the same spot to get just the right photo. What a great way to see something. Keep visiting a place at different times, for different outcomes. Our nod to this idea is our informal travel rule of no less than 3 nights in a place, if we can. (And more if we can.) Our goal is to return to the same café at least twice if not more, loiter in the main piazza at different times of the day, and start to know the shortcuts and back alleys of a place. And always: talk to people. Ask questions. Listen.

It takes time and patience to travel this way, a luxury that many may not have like my grandmother during her 1970s Italy trips. I wonder what it might have been like if my grandmother had to travel with Steve McCurry.

Traveling to a place may satisfy your curiosity of the place. Sometimes it might even diminish your curiosity, or, in the best case, stoke your curiosity more. Iceland was like that for us. We visited once because we were fascinated with its smallness, remoteness, and position straddling the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates. Off we went one November, and despite the less than 6 hours of light daylight we had, we were hooked and immediately thought about a second visit. During our first visit we planned a second visit a few summers later when there would be 20+ hours of daylight. During the second visit we drove the ring road around the island and worked in a few spectacular hikes. A third and more in depth visit is in our future. 

Traveling companions

Almost all my travel has been in the context of traveling in a couple (significant other), which is my preferred way to travel. I've noticed that the travel-dynamic changes significantly when a friend or another couple is added. Another couple is easier than a single friend for a variety of reasons, not least that breaking into pairs (however the arrangement) is easier and natural.

When traveling, everyday habits that you might not notice from a loved one or friend can become more pronounced and intolerable, especially in close quarters. I have developed traveling habits and rituals for sure. (Of course, my habits are not the problem; it's the habits of traveling companions which are the problem!) We've seen: the morning constitutionals, the superstitious rituals, the dos and the don'ts. Let's not forget the pills, ointments, and prophylactics, and the increasingly inward focus on body and self that seems to come out in force when traveling. 

Then there are the traveling companions (excluding significant others) who give you a complement and subtle insult at the same time, continually during the trip. Traveling companions who talk about their previous trip or their next trip but never about what's in front of them in the moment: the trip they are on with you. Also maddening: long faces, no smiles, dull surprise at the marvelous, and constant talk about home matters and work.

Some memorable travel companion episodes that come to mind:

• A friend worried about his bowel movements would update us every 10 minutes on the state of his system. 
• A friend who insisted on touching everything in a museum we were visiting together, knowing she wasn't supposed to. Even our glares didn't help.
• A friend who could not eat bread without wine and interpreted bread on the table without wine as uncivilized. She would huff and puff until wine showed up.
• A friend who was perfectly able to but didn't want to climb a belltower in Prague. On our way up we saw folks 30 years his elder making the climb. From the top of the tower, we saw him slumped in a bench in the piazza below.
• A friend who washed clothes in the hotel all day rather than going out to see the sights.
• A friend visiting us in Bergamo who rarely left the hotel room.
• A friend visiting us in Bergamo who talked glowingly about the days before arriving in Bergamo so much that we felt like we were failing to provide a good time.
• Friends with dietary restrictions so complex that each meal is like negotiating a mind field. Said friends, no matter what they choose seem to inevitably have a "problem" the next day.
• Friends who could not leave the hotel until their morning constitutional with Coca-Cola and yoga was complete, which meant around noon. The best part of the day is over.
• Friends arguing in a car, in the front seat. Then, turning to us in the back seat and they asked us to take sides.
• A friend who decided to use our Bergamo house as a combination B&B, tech service, travel agency, and spa. Trying to save money, the friend shifted his costs to us. 
• A friend who visited us in Bergamo but expressed desire about seeing this or that but who we could hardly get moving for a walk around the city. We were confused about what we could or should do.
• A friend who visited us with COVID (staying outside our house) but spending time with us and then expressing worry for visiting friends in other cities because he didn't want to expose them to the virus. And, us? Later said friend stayed in our house and bellowed and coughed for days on end.
• See Visitors to Bergamo - The Things We Wish They Would Notice

I know people would think of me as inflexible as a traveler; I'm a stickler for exact timing and scheduling. My partner is much more open to allowing serendipity to enter into travel and less planning. Slowly, I have learned to accept this as well. We have arrived at the point that planning is great but we don't get fixated on the plan. The plan gives options not constraints. 

Traveling with a significant other is one thing. We've learned to iron out our traveling differences. But, traveling with friends is increasingly more difficult. I find I am less willing to spend time with those that don't share my travel ethos or style. Alarmingly, we are getting more requests from friends to travel together. I suppose I should look at this as an opportunity for personal betterment.

Takeaways

I have to write these words for myself in order to internalize these hard-earned lessons. Hopefully, they may help you:

Traveling with people requires grace. 

• You can't practice grace enough, so why not during travel? 
• As Maya Angelou said: “I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” 
• Never berate visitors or travelling companions for not knowing something that seems obvious. When people are travelling they are often discombobulated.
• Laugh. A lot.

Set limits and expectations.

• When people are visiting you and even more so when said people are staying with you. Be honest and conservative (ruthless?) with you need for own space and time. 
• Limits and expectations also apply when traveling with people. You might need a few hours to break away from the person or group.

Being someone else's travel agent is tricky. 

• Sure, help organizing logistics especially in country you might know better is helpful. But do not try to interpret their expectations (unless you know them well) or interpret their whims/dreams/half-baked desires. It will lead to frustration.
• If helping friends, give them the tools to do it themselves. Don't be the bottleneck in their travel such that they are dependent on you.

Don't try to control (too much) what visitors or traveling companions do and see, and ultimately what they "should" enjoy.

• Don't expect that if someone comes to visit you that they'll see your location (town, city, or wherever) as you see it. The may walk away with very different impression. And that's okay. They may be fascinated (or disgusted) with aspects you don't notice. They may talk about aspects that make a huge impact on them but seem banal. All okay. Use these as a point of departure for discussions. 
• The important thing is that your visitor or travelling companion is happy. 
• Why they are visiting you or traveling with you might help understand what to do/show with them. However, a large part of your visitors or travelling companions happiness is out of your control.

Look for awe.

• Even in the smallest of things and the dreariest times of travel.
• Look for the awe through the eyes of your visitors or travelling companions to help understand their point of view. 
• Cultivate a little more "freudenfreude" - joy derived from others' success, and in the context of travel, others' travel discoveries or marvels no matter how significant or insignificant they may seem to you.
• Look for something beyond your own thinking and understanding.