Friday, March 22, 2013

The Joy and Fear of Travel

This post is coming to you from a random cafe in North Carolina and it's been something that I've been ruminating over in my head as I've been walking all morning. I'm in North Carolina so Kelsey can visit a grad school that she might be attending next year and she's spending all day doing an admitted students program so I am on my own to check out the area until 5:00. So far I've had only one biscut, which my twitter followers know already, I am disappointed in. I must find more biscuts and eat them as fast as possible.

But the real thing that I noticed as I walked around the area, and area that I have never been to before, I noticed just how much joy and fear one can get while traveling. Even when you are only a few hours from home, there is still that feeling in as you see a place for the first time.

For the most part it's a feeling of joy. It's that feeling when you are wandreing aimlessly around a new place and you go around the corner to discover something out of nothing. When it seems like the Main Street of shops that so many towns have ends...but you keep going only to find the next stretch around the corner. To people who live in the area, it's a given to them that this happens. Instead of a new discovery around the corner, they know this as the normal occurance, their everyday. In face you see it in their faces, they are here for that cup of coffee or to lunch with a friend at their favorite lunch spot. The blip on thier radar represents just something out of their routine. For you...it represents something different...it represents a new shop, a new coffee, a new food dish, a new culture to discover.

You think of how you go through your regular day at home without much thought to what's around you...it's old...not in a bad way, but in a way that makes it not shocking and exciting as the first time you saw it. Think of the first time you found your favoite coffeeshop, your favorite restaurant, clothing store...anything in your town that you had previously not discovered. That feeling at first was like you were a tourist in your own town. That's the part of travel I can't get enough of.

But there are times where travel make you a bit fearful as well. Even when you are just a few hours from home there are differences. There is a natural flow of life for everyone in the area that is used to how things work. They know where the roads go, they know when to cross the street against the signal, they know which restaurants to avoid at certain hours. This makes you feel like you stick out and look silly. For me it's always standing in the exact wrong place in a shop or on public transit and feeling like I should know better, when I would have no possible way to know where to stand. It's that weird circumstance of feeling like you are an alien in your own world...but one that still blends in. It's this feeling that I both love and hate at the same time. I don't like to stand out, but I also recognize that in a new place it's unavoidable...part of the process.

But then there's that moment where you just have the pure joy of knowing that you are in someplace new...that joy of discovering that new site around the corner and stepping into a cool coffee shop to write a blog post and catch up on e-mail. That moment where that fear in your stomach is crunched down and the joy takes back over. It's those moments I love, and those moments that keep me traveling near and far from home.

I know this doesn't do much to "add" to the miles and points conversation...but I think it's something that we travelers all have knowledge of, we all have that unique joy of being in a new place and the fear of it at the same time. We are all united and packaged around the love of travel and the more we share our experiences and read the experiences of others, the more we want to travel to somewhere new. So for now...I'll just enjoy this cup of coffee, set off into the new city and try to find the joy in every moment of something new.









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