Girl Travels Globe

I feel at home even when I’m away from home.

It seems like such a contrary statement, but I don’t know how else to describe what I feel when I’m traveling. I know that being away from the grind of daily life frees up your mind to see the ordinary as extraordinary. I get that. And I know I’m not alone when I say that there’s nothing more liberating than a restful vacation. About waking up early, not as a slave to an alarm clock and a day of looming tasks, but out of sheer excitement at the prospect of optimizing every minute of your day exploring new landscapes. Meeting new people. Learning new cultures. It’s the stuff that dreams are made of. Well, at least my dreams.

My first time leaving the country, apart from when I was a 19 year old eager to enjoy Canada’s younger drinking age, was 10 years later, in 2000. I still remember landing in Germany and queueing at passport control. The exhilaration of being in a foreign land and only knowing some common phrases to bridge the language gap. The wonder I felt staying in a medieval walled city dating back to the 13th Century.  I couldn’t wrap my head around being in Roman ruins that were 2000+ years old. Driving from Munich to Venice in one day using only a map so that we could attend Easter Sunday Mass at St. Mark’s Basilica, and being nearly trampled by a swarm of elderly Italian women on my way to take Communion from the Cardinal. My utter disbelief at the sight of a Turkish toilet and not knowing how to answer nature’s call without falling over. Staying in a renovated stable in France’s Burgundy region, where Brad and I found out the hard way after an afternoon of wine tasting that most restaurants didn’t open for dinner until after 8:00 pm, causing us to drunkenly forage for food at the local market. Marveling at the beauty of Paris, even though the rain and fog that persisted obscured the top of the Eiffel Tower and soaked us to the bone.  I was officially bitten by the travel bug.

The next years were spent planning trips from the moment that I returned home from one. I bought countless Rick Steves tour books and tried to follow his philosophy of trying to immerse yourself in the culture of wherever you travel by staying in small, family-run inns and homestays and by eating where the locals eat. By making an effort to learn a bit of the local language, I found that a combination of knowing a bit of the local language, pantomiming and smiling can bridge any communication gap and is usually more appreciated than you realize. Through travel, I learned that people, regardless of their differences in language, religion and ethnicity, all share the common denominators of wanting happiness, peace and prosperity for themselves and their loved ones. I came to realize that as global citizens, we are far more alike one another than we are different.

It’s been said by many that home is where your heart is. I guess that means I’ve left a piece of mine at each of my favorite destinations, and if I continue to follow my heart, I will find infinitely more.