Work, money, kids, pets — these variables can be holding you back from taking the plunge and taking a trip, an honest-to-god bona fide vacation, a far-flung journey to another land, preferably a place where English isn’t the primary language. (England’s great; Japan’s better.) I’m not talking the Bahamas or Cabo.
A neighborhood acquaintance and I ran into each other walking our dogs in the fallish cool today. She’s Mary, who I chat with about three times a year and was sporting a red shirt and red sunglasses. Her dog is tiny and hirsute. Like my dog, but bristly.
Niceties out of the way during this affable stop and chat, she asks, “Where are you going next?” I’m sort of known for jetting to some exotic-ish locale a couple times a year. (Jetting? We’re talking United Economy, baby.)
I tell her Budapest and Krakow, leaving in five weeks.
Why Budapest, she says (though, oddly, she doesn’t ask why Poland). I say I’ve been meaning to go for years, but it never quite made my bucket list. But now I’m jacked. After deep-dish research, the Eastern European city beckons. (I didn’t actually use the word “beckons” in mixed company.)
“I wish I had that joie de vivre, that wanderlust,” Mary says, almost contritely.
“But you do,” I say. “I think we all do.”
The dogs sniff each other’s buttholes.
I say that I don’t understand why people don’t travel more, don’t seize the day and make it happen. It’s about priorities. It’s about money. It’s about time. But it’s also about curiosity and interest in the world beyond. How does one not travel? Not harbor the galvanizing urge to move, see, taste, experience?
I don’t say all that — I wasn’t giving a TED Talk — but I do tell her that travel is easier than you think. Once you finance it — travel cheap! It’s great! — the gears churn and plans get made. (I, of course, travel solo, so it’s even easier without the bulky carry-on cargo — i.e., another person.)
Mary seems flustered, like she can’t answer why she doesn’t get up and go. Which I find odd, frankly. She has a husband and a dog, no kids — that latter part is crucial. She’s practically free!
“Where have you gone in the last five years?” she asks.
I think I actually rubbed my chin as I tried to rattle off some destinations: Naples, Rome, Portugal, Scotland, Turkey, Japan, Paris, Bueno Aires … Then it felt show-offy and I trailed off. I did stress Istanbul as an extra special destination, and she seemed genuinely intrigued. She proposed we get together and talk about my trips and look at photos from them (with her husband, of course), emphasizing Turkey.
She was coming around. In just minutes of gabbing on the acorn-cobbled sidewalk, she was getting the bug. Travel: it’s an infectious disease. And it’s almost totally benign.
Except for this little hitch: it will blow your mind.
GNASHING. 