My Philosophy of Travel

When you go abroad, the one thing you must not do is judge another country by your own. You have to accept each place and each culture as it is, not supposing it deficient if it is not like yours. (It’s only deficient if it fails to meet the perceived needs of the people living in it.) Americans often make this mistake, and so do Englishmen.

There’s a television program programme here in which English couples are trying to decide whether to buy property abroad. Often one of the specs they give the presenter is that they are eager to become involved in local community life. Does that mean they want to meet the French, or the Italians, or the Spanish? NO. It means they want to meet other expatriates, other Brits!

When my friend Sylvia and I, then airline employees, took our two daughters to London and Paris the summer after their high school graduation, the girls made the same mistake. It very nearly ruined the whole trip for them.

Erin wrinkled up her nose to see a very well-behaved poodle sitting at its master’s feet in a restaurant. She was appalled at how people dressed in Paris, where she had expected everyone to have stepped right out of the House of Dior or something. “Grungy” was her word.  (I personally couldn’t see any difference between the way the Parisians dressed and the way she (and Sondra) dressed, but they said they did.) The only place they wanted to eat was the Hard Rock Café. Might as well have been in America!

But if I ever go to a place where the natives live in grass huts, then a grass hut is where I want to stay! If the locals eat something called “Toad in the Hole,” then I want to sample it, albeit with trepidation. If they wear togas or saris, that’s what I want to wear.  Okay, so i stop short of a grass skirt with nothing above that; nevertheless, when you come to a foreign country, my philosophy is, it ought to be to share their life as much as time and other circumstances permit. Not to carry around your own life, like a turtle with its home on its back. Because coming to know something of another way of life is the most interesting, most enriching thing of all.

That said, there’s a new television series on here called something like “Holiday Hijack!” in which vacationers actually do share the lives of the people in the countries they are visiting. And sometimes that way of life is impoverished, unsanitary, diseased, and all around difficult and the holiday-makers find themselves miserable. I’m not talking about that, but I still think so long as you are well vaccinated, participating in a very hard lifestyle, sharing in the privations as well as the joys of others’ lives at least for a while is a priceless experience.

Travel won’t broaden you if you don’t let it.