The Romanticism of Travel

Do you dream of traveling through Europe and living your dream while you see the famous cities and culture? Most people seem to have this desire and long for the opportunity to go.

I was not one of those people.

However, I did go and this is what I learned.

Travel is so strongly romanticized and sought after. It's spoken of as if it's this mystical phenomenon that the luckiest people get to encounter.

I find this so odd and a little ridiculous!

Perhaps the reason for this is the way I grew up and experienced life pertaining to this subject. I traveled a lot around the country as a child with my family and it became more normalized for me than I'm discovering it is for many people (I am thankful). Taking a couple weeks to drive through multiple national parks and hike many many trails, going on road trips to visit far away relatives and being able to see the country, I learned that the United States is huge and very diverse. From culture to landscape it is constantly changing. It really is incredible and it's all so close!

Along with those experiences I found that its also very normal to experience the struggles that come with traveling: the discomfort, excessive amounts of time with the same people or excessive time alone, car troubles, stressful bus transfers, not knowing how to fill time, being crazily bored, dealing with weird sleeping arrangements, awful weather, and so on. And you say "but there's also so much good!" Yes, obviously that is very true.

I found in my trip to Europe that the good certainly outweighed the bad but the trip was nothing at all like what you see in social media posts. Travel is something people long for like I stated and perhaps how you strongly feel. Therefore when people do travel they want to appear as if it is all sunshine and rainbows because 'the world's watching.' Social media gives us the opportunity to be whoever we want, and it's dangerous to set expectations based on what we see in it. But it happens cause we look at it all day.

So, with my attitude of disliking the romanticism of travel, I chose to go to Europe with a raw lens. Perhaps it put a bit of a damper on my trip but it was very interesting. I do feel as if I was very much myself and the 'giddy traveler' side of me was nowhere to be found. I realize that the 'giddy traveler' is a mindset to have while traveling to enjoy it in a different way, and that can be very fun and good. I am therefore talking on the side of truly enjoying the culture and place as who I am through my own lens, not as being excited to be a tourist and go crazy! I do agree that it would be very fun to travel with such a mindset. So I found that no matter where I go culture is different and the scenery is at least a little different, and in Europe, this is also true and obviously a more drastic change. People are still weird and unique, they are kind or angry, creative or simple, wild or composed and everywhere in between and beyond. This allowed me to view things much differently. I think I saw the joy and the hurt in people in a way I wouldn't have if I was a giddy traveler. I loved that. The times I did share on social media was rarely expressing solely great joy, excitement, and fun, but more of the real emotions I felt and the struggles therein. Which did include joy, excitement, and fun!

I do not say all this to crush your image of travel but to throw questions into your mind, like these:

• Is it possible to have the same enthusiasm you feel towards traveling simply when you go out in your own city?
• Can you better experience a place when you try to connect with it in a personal way?
• Do I need to travel far away to be impacted by culture and new things?

Traveling is surely a wonderful thing to be able to do. I encourage you to go and experience what there is to see. Even if it means driving fifteen minutes away.