Disconnecting

Let go … and open your eyes. Let go … and relax. Give in … and be free. Leave your smartphone at home. Leave your office behind. Don’t check your company e-mail. Your co-workers, your job, will be fine without you. And you will be better without them for a while.

We live in a world of constant connectivity. We can work from anywhere — and so we do. We work more and more hours, take fewer days off. And even when we do take time off, we check our email, our voice messages. There aren’t people available to cover for us when we are away. In our absence, things won’t get done. We must be available, just in case. And so our vacations are over before they’ve begun.

The Two-week Vacation

For the rest of us who can’t go on walkabout, our adventures are limited by the two-week vacation. A month or so holiday if you live in Europe. But fourteen days if you work in the United States. Sixteen if you leave and return over a weekend. At best three weeks, if your boss is kind.

I envy Europeans. Every trip I run into them on their month-long holidays. They’re always coming from the neighboring country and asking if I’m heading on to the country where they’re headed next. You can see a whole region in a month — Southeast Asia rather than just Cambodia or Thailand; the Middle East rather than only Egypt. And you can take your time if you want.

Why You Should Let Your Kids Backpack Through Europe

Mom and Dad, if you’ve got the means, let your college kids spend a summer backpacking through Europe. It may be the best gift you can give them before you send them off into adulthood.

Your kids will find a way to stretch however much money they have to travel.They’ll have fun. And they’ll grow up. They’ll meet people and see things that will change their lives. They will see a world beyond their smartphone. They will have one last adventure before they settle into careers, car payments, and other responsibilities.

The Teens Who Traveled the World

Lisboa and Sintra, Portgual
May 2003

On the short train ride from Lisboa to Sintra, I meet Jess and Jen, teenaged twins from Calgary. They are several months into an around-the-world trip that has taken them throughout Asia, Africa, and now Europe. For their high school graduation their father bought them One World tickets. “He wants us to see the world before we get too involved with college,” Jen says.

No Walkabout

Most of us don’t have a camera crew and a big television production budget like Anthony Bourdain, Clive James, or Michael Palin, nor a local fixer to ensure an exciting experience. We don’t have independent means, nor a fat publishing advance to fund our great romantic adventure. We don’t have a year to travel around the world. We don’t have three months. It all looks nice on television and the movies: those books about rustic summers in Provence and Tuscany. But we’re not all Julia Roberts falling in love with Javier Bardem in Bali. We’re not Frances Mayes fixing up her villa ruin. We have lives and commitments — and limited bank accounts. We just have two weeks vacation.

Into the Renaissance

Florence, Italy
November 2005

Neptune’s Fountain

Five hours by train from Naples to Florence, south to north. The weather in Florence is frigid, hard drizzle, like a head cold, like Munich last year. Street markets at Santo Lorenzo around the corner from my hotel. Rick’s hotel.

Yes, the irony is the Hotel Accademia is booked full with Americans on a Rick Steves package tour. Mostly middle-aged ladies. Over breakfast two women from Houston tell me what they visited the day before — the Uffizi Gallery and the statue of David, no reservations needed in November. They are all very nice. I’m convinced you could get laid on a Rick Steves tour, not that you’d want to.

Rick Steves

On a train between Naples and Florence
November 2005

Rome skyline

Rick Steves is ruining Europe. Everywhere you go, legions of nice, cheerful, PBS-watching Americans swan about museums, castles, and city streets with their noses in his guidebooks, reading their way across the continent, lifting their heads only to take a quick photo, then on to the next thing. The cult of Steves stays where he stays, eats where he eats, goes only where he tells them to go. They recognize each other in hotel breakfast rooms by their dog-eared books and handy convertible rucksacks (mine is great), chatter about where they’re supposed to go that day, that walking tour they must follow to the letter, the picturesque neighborhood or grand museum, ending up at the recommended restaurant for dinner to hang out with “the locals.” And God forbid if you stray off course.

Citizen of the World

“I am a citizen of the universe and a gentleman to boot.”Anais Nin’s diary quotes a newspaper column she read about Caresse Crosby’s initiative in the 1950s to start a world citizens’ movement. It was a noble concept, particularly the story of the young American man who had renounced his citizenship to become a citizen of the world and then caused an uproar and went crawling back. Crosby’s attempt to create a world citizens’ center at Delphi, Greece, became an international incident when the Greek police arrested her for trying to place a plaque at the house she had bought there.

“I am a citizen of the universe and a gentleman to boot,” said the first Doctor Who. Citizen of the world, I like that. It’s another reason to travel.

Doctor Who

The hero was a traveler, a thinker, like Odysseus.In being an alien in the world, be like Doctor Who. Open-minded and curious. A traveler, an explorer. “A citizen of the universe and a gentleman to boot.”

In those years when I didn’t travel, I’d think about the Doctor. I was a senior in college when I first discovered him. It was the “Logopolis” episode, I think. One of the last featuring Romana, the female Time Lord. I was jobless, too broke to go out. So Saturday nights I stayed up and watched Tom Baker on Channel 8.

Aliens

An alien accepts a new world for what it is.Tourist or traveler: What is the distinction? One keeps to the recommended tourist sights; the other looks down on the tourists while largely doing the same.

When traveling, be like an alien from another planet. Think of yourself as the first of your kind to visit. Keep your eyes — and your mind — wide open. Immerse yourself in the place. Try to blend in. Do what the locals do. Eat what they eat. Accept that you are the stranger. Accept that you are the outsider. Try to learn everything you can. Ask questions. Experience as much as possible.

An alien accepts a new world for what it is. An alien doesn’t expect it to be like home. An alien finds safety in the crowd. He finds home wherever he goes … until home becomes the one place where he is an alien anymore.