“But that’s the glory of foreign travel, as far as I am concerned. I don’t want to know what people are talking about. I can’t think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything. Suddenly you are five years old again. You can’t read anything, you have only the most rudimentary sense of how things work, you can’t even reliably cross a street without endangering your life. Your whole existence becomes a series of interesting guesses.” – Bill Bryson, Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe
Who doesn’t love to travel abroad?
Famous people do. “The world makes way for the man who knows where he is going,” said Ralph Waldo Emerson. “Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world,” Gustav Flaubert pointed out.
The fun is doubled if you travel with someone. “It doesn’t matter where you are going,” someone quipped. “It matters who is beside you.” Another one stated, “Go the distance, couples who travel together are more likely to stay together and feel more connected.”
Hollywood actor Leonardo DiCaprio admitted, “I got a friend to travel with me. I need somebody to bring me back to who I am. It’s hard to be alone.” Izaak Walton also said, “Good company on a journey makes the way seem shorter.”
But travel has its liabilities, too. “Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things: air, sleep, dreams, sea, the sky – all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it,” Cesare Pavese said.
“Travel isn’t always pretty,” said Anthony Bourdain. “It isn’t always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that’s okay. The journey changes you; it should change you. It leaves marks on your memory, on your consciousness, on your heart, and on your body. You take something with you. Hopefully, you leave something good behind.”
