On Travel, Expectations, Arguments & One Orange

It's a common belief that travel broadens a person. Taken on the surface, this is a blanket statement that can often be tested empirically, which I find quite satisfying.

But it's also readily acknowledged that the kind of travel one embarks on determines if one is truly broadened. How could a person visit a foreign city or country and digest and appreciate all of the differences in a short period of time?

If one goes to Europe on a packaged tour, seeing 4 countries in 10 days, whisked from place to place in an enormous tour bus, scheduled for all monuments, museums & historic places in finite bits, and fed in extremely specific restaurants catering not only to groups but to foreign groups, how much really can one say one has seen? Of what value is that experience? How much of the sights have really penetrated one's consciousness?

Mightn't there be a corner glimpsed outside of the bus window that could lead up a winding lane into the city that, if one takes that turn, would change one's life forever?

I've always believed that to be true.

It's the small, unscheduled and unplanned events that are usually remembered most fondly - on my first trip to Paris, it was the pleasure of finding the Place Vendome on my own, simply by turning a random corner and wandering to the end of the street. For my sister, it was as simple as giving an orange to a child in the street of one of the poor sections of Casablanca and receiving a blindingly beautiful smile in return. (For her husband, it might have been the annoyance of trying to order ketchup in a country that doesn't know what ketchup is...but that's another story.)

I eschew even guide books these days - the authors write about certain things with authority, and include most certainly destinations of interest - but it seems to me that reading about a place in a guidebook can't compare with the thrill of personal discovery. Or conversely, the disappointment of having read a glowing description of a momument or museum in a guidebook and then going there to find the written word quite far off reality's mark.

I have found that traveling as a couple is a recipe with ingredients both comedic and tragic, especially if there are romantic components involved in the trip (there are always romantic expectations involved in one way or another and it's not always the female half of the couple that harbors the expectations).

Expectations of the romantic depend on the other sharing one's definition of romance. A person could be aching to wander with their beloved over narrow cobblestoned streets, window shop for hours, and finally linger over a light supper in a candlelit restaurant, lacing fingers across the tablecloth over glasses of superb local wine while enjoying a panoramic view and glorious sunset.

While the other half of the couple simply can't be arsed to wake up in time to savor the sunset or the view, and once dragged to said romantic destination, remains jet-lagged and uncommunicative or simply surly.

Not that that's ever happened.

Mr. Fresh Hell and I have found that dramatic shouting matches and furious quarrels in each foreign country we've found ourselves in are quite a lively tonic, perhaps even an impetus towards future romantic bliss. I say this only because we've fought in every foreign country we've ever visited. I can't say for sure why this is so, but it is nonetheless consciously unexpected and subliminally understood, and the arguments usually involve us attempting to find our hotel in an unfamiliar city in the wee hours of the morning, after strenous partying in a raucous dance club or charming local tavern.

These are often very public fights (really, who cares if people see you on the street screaming at each other in the pouring rain? They aren't your neighbors, after all, and will never see you again. Why not provide a little entertainment to the locals? Hello Spain!).

I believe it is just those public quarrels that endear us both to the place - we've owned it and made it peculiarily ours, if only for a short explosive time. For us, it seems that one fight per foreign country is the limit - subsequent trips are calm and ordered, the only arguments consisting of a few minutes of tight-lipped silence and sighs of exasperation, dispelled within a moment as hardly worth the continuance of the grievance.

There are many more countries out there we've never been to together, yet I look forward to visiting each one...so if you see us tusseling on your charming thoroughfare around 4:00 am or so, don't be alarmed - we're fine, just either trying to find our hotel or putting down roots.