The why

Aha--sage question, broad readership. Hm. Well, to begin, in a purely logistical sense, the answer’s easy: I’m quitting one job and leaving another, leaving me with a rare opportunity to do some extended traveling. These chances don’t come along often, so it’s not something I can miss.

But why not? That is, why should I travel at all? I’ve got plenty of work to do--a long-term writing project that I need to distribute for publication this fall remains a (charitably speaking) work in progress--so one alternative (perhaps the smartest, certainly the safest) one would be to stay in town and work on it. Yet it never crossed my mind that I wouldn’t use this time to take a trip (not a vacation, mind you, a trip--perhaps more on that later). The term “travel addict” gets thrown around a lot, thanks to the endless hilarity found in making light of grave afflictions, but I think it may be the best way to describe my approach to the issue.

Viz., an addict is a person whose proclivity for a given substance or experience is such that they crave it all the time, and rather than finding themselves sated when they have some of it, in fact find themselves only wanting more. This could describe, with worrying accuracy, my approach to travel. I’ve been a fair number of places. In addition to having been all over the U.S., I’ve visited spots throughout Canada, Mexico, and Costa Rica; spent extended periods working as a travel writer in both Australia and Holland; and done an extended non-working tour of western Europe (Spain, France, Holland, England, Ireland, then Spain again--long story) that lasted about seven weeks. When most people (well, most Americans) hear this, they say “gee, you’ve really been all over.” Whereas the travel addict in me reviews the list and thinks, “My God, I’ve hardly traveled at all--and I need to remedy that right now.”

To an extent, of course, I exaggerate, in large part for the merriment of the broad readership, but the fact remains that for whatever reason, I feel compelled to see as much of the world as I can, as soon as possible. I’m not convinced that this is normal. Most people I know (and, again, we’re talking mostly about Americans) seem content to have traveled, as though it were a milestone to be passed like a professional exam or a bat mitzvah. I suppose it would be easier to approach life in that manner; it would at least be cheaper and involve far fewer spectacularly uncomfortable trans-oceanic plane journeys. Yet wanderlust is, for reasons unknown, a condition from which I suffer, and thus I wander.

So that explains why I’m going on a trip, but doesn’t say much about why I’m going to Central Europe. The reasons are many, and obscure, especially to me, particularly since I said to a friend over lunch some months ago that I have no interest in Central Europe, and in Germany in particular, and thus had no particular desire to go there. Now I’m going there.

Rather than try to give a coherent, linear explanation, I thought I’d instead just do a stream-of-consciousness thing, in the hope that the broad readership will simply find itself confused and cease to seek an answer that possesses a degree of reason that I cannot provide:

I have a friend who just moved to the Hague, so thought that by going there I could cut costs by staying with her for a few days at least, so Holland needed to be on the trip (hell, I like it there anyway and Amsterdam is as good an embarkation point as any, especially since I’m so familiar with it), and I also have been in touch with the girl who was my roommate when I did a language course in Barcelona back in ’02 and who lives in Berlin, so that made me think, “Hey, Berlin”; it also reminded me that I like to incorporate language school as a project when I’m traveling (it gives me something to do, is useful, provides a way to meet people, etc.), and that was the kernel--language school in Berlin--that I’ve been working with since, but didn’t want to spend the whole time in Berlin so thought I’d begin with the language school there for a couple weeks and then wend my way throughout nearby countries that I’ve never really thought about visiting (and which seemed like good targets for a visit because a loved one with whom I’d prefer to be traveling cannot join me and has no particular interest in Mitteleuropa), hence ticket to A-dam + Tandem Berlin course + Eurail pass, and voila.

Make sense? Yeah, me neither. And that, after working for lawyers and judges for the past three years, may well be just the point. Tschuess for now, broad readership.