Tourism, traveling, and busses

I write often on this blog about my travels. I write even more often about feeling out of place and learning about a new(ish) place. 
This time I am writing about the idea, and the act, of travel in general. It's at once an escape, a hobby, and an education... depending on what you are looking for.

While sitting on the trademark pink couch in the staff room at school the other day, I read this quote that our friend and English teacher Andrew had just passed out to his class:



"Whether you travel or whether you tour is, I suspect, all a matter of your attitude to time. That's why, from my point of view, it's the young and the old, rather than those in the prime of their lives who make the best travelers. Everything depends on your answer to this question: What does it mean not to waste time?. And in my experience it's when you're young and think you've got oodles of time, and when you're old and regard it more judiciously, that you're likely to come up with the best answers.
You come up with the worst answers, I suspect, at the age of thirty-six when you still believe you're actually 'going somewhere' (like a bus) and still think your life will eventually 'add up to something' (as if anyone were counting). Beliefs such as these encourage tourism rather than travel."
- Robert Dessaix

I like this quote because it gets me thinking about ideas that seem relevant in my life right now...
There are a lot of odd and funny travel situations that have happened to me since we've moved, like when a boy hit me on the butt with an Easter stick in Prague, or when we danced in a conga line with Romanians on a Nile Cruise ship, or when we took a ferry to Asia to drink beer. There are also the frustrating experiences of getting lost, of boarding the wrong train, of knowing that you got the "dumb foreigner" price in a taxi or a cafe and being unable to do anything but pay it.
Were these experiences a good use of time? I'd like to say yes but am not sure I could give you a reason why. They are certainly not things that would have happened if I'd stayed where I belong or where I at least know how to find a train station and can pour my own bowl of cereal in the morning.

I am not yet thirty-six but I am not far away. Is my life going somewhere, like a bus? Like a German bus that runs incredibly, reliably on time? The thing about busses is that they only follow the same routes every day. I'd like to think that at least mine could take a left turn now and then. Maybe it could be more like a non-official minibus blasting music and full of old ladies holding chickens...

I like tourism too. As a good traveler maybe I am not supposed to. But I like warm weather escapism and swim-up resort bars, and walking around with a map and not being embarrassed about stopping on the sidewalk to take a picture in the middle of a foreign city. I like watching how people in different places behave when lining up at a store or a train station - do they push ahead? crowd around? stand in single file? And is watching all of this a waste of time? Maybe noticing those things is traveling too.

A lot of conversations happen on the pink couch. I can't say we found any answers to the issue of tourism and wasting time. I can say that I think traveling, like so many other things, is a skill you have to practice. To do it well and really appreciate new places, I will have to keep trying.