The art of travel - Javier Reverte
Today's El País Sunday magazine(EPS) includes a terrific article by Spanish writer Javier Reverte, titled Un Adicto a Los Viajes.
His last two paragraphs, quickly translated below, resonated with me this morning, 2 days back from a wonderful, mind-stretching journey with a companion traveling outside North America for the first time in her 37 years:
The art of travel, in any case, supposes an act of permanent humility, because you discover that you are wrong more than you could have thought. Your prejudices disappear one by one and your principles become fewer, although they become stronger in quality. A good journey is the one that changes something inside you, and that teaches you, through the eyes of others, something about yourself.
And more than anything, travel requires a good dose of humor. You have to learn to laugh, particularly at yourself. Because if you learn the value of making fun of yourself, you'll have something to laugh at for the rest of your life.
His last two paragraphs, quickly translated below, resonated with me this morning, 2 days back from a wonderful, mind-stretching journey with a companion traveling outside North America for the first time in her 37 years:
The art of travel, in any case, supposes an act of permanent humility, because you discover that you are wrong more than you could have thought. Your prejudices disappear one by one and your principles become fewer, although they become stronger in quality. A good journey is the one that changes something inside you, and that teaches you, through the eyes of others, something about yourself.
And more than anything, travel requires a good dose of humor. You have to learn to laugh, particularly at yourself. Because if you learn the value of making fun of yourself, you'll have something to laugh at for the rest of your life.
Labels: travel quotes
posted by Erin at
5:33 PM
7 Comments:
Ahhhh, that would have been Friday ... the laughing at self in a strange land. Long story, tried blogging it but still in process.
Suffice to say, I was the foreigner whose bike pedal kept falling off in catastrophic ways, almost unseating me ... a foreigner because I wasn't carrying the bicycle toolkit a real Belgian would carry.
And the laughter, a scream of laughter as the pedal fell off and I almost followed ... followed by slightly hysterical laughter as the Belgians quietly passed me by.
By
Di Mackey, at 9:20 PM
True.
By
Alex Castellá, at 10:34 PM
much of those two paragraphs could be applied to sailing as well. :D
By
Anonymous, at 4:03 PM
Video, w-w, we want VIDEO...
Dan, I hadn't thought of how true his words are for sailing but you are so right......They don't call me Splash (did I mention that was in the middle of the Verve cup in Chicago) for nothing. :) Weird, Dan, today I was walking back from the store, it's a warm fall day and a big wind came up and for some reason I wished I could feel that wind on a boat today! How's the Pretty Gee?
By
Erin, at 4:09 PM
Love this!
Hey, I've e-mailed you a couple times and one came back to me and the other I didn't get a reply.
Just wanted to tell you I'm back and check if your e-mail is working okay for everyone but me...
Miss you, love you, and all that mushy stuff...Got you a cool present in Toronto...
By
Laura, at 10:42 PM
My favorite traveling quote, oddly, is from a Polish-Canadian that I met while studying in Salamanca. She has a wonderful way with words, and one day this appeared in my email, intermixed with a thousand other glorious and scattered thoughts:
"We may learn more when traveling than under any set circumstances - but the trouble is that once we get a glance of somewhere else, we become restless and our new open eyes bring not only wonder, but the plague of constant restlessness of flight."
By
Joel, at 7:52 PM
Oh that's lovely Joel. I've come to love the restlessness. (Nothing else to do with it, eh?) As long as when I am somewhere, I am there, learning and soaking, I am okay that next day or next week a newly undiscovered place ---or a new corner of a known one-- will call me.
Thanks for posting this here. Her mails must be delicious.
By
Erin, at 11:57 PM
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