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Ordering Coffee in a Foreign City
In the handful of hours that I’ve been back in Europe (last time was 23 years ago), I’m wandering around in a bit of a daze. Partly it has to do with jet lag, but I’m also trying to catch up with an older version of myself and the things that excited me during my last trips here.
When I traveled before, I really had no interest in tourist locations or experiences where an English speaking guide would explain to a group of Americans what was important about some historic location or event.
I objected to the idea of travel as some form or Disneyland adventure or spoon-fed attraction. I wasn’t interested in a manufactured experience or photo op. I had no interest in eating a hamburger with a Coke in Paris.
What I really desired was something authentic, though I couldn’t necessarily tell you what “authentic” meant given that I was actually a tourist who desperately needed others to speak English in order to survive my trip.
The closest I could figure was that an authentic experience was to do something that locals did away from the tourist sites. I didn’t have much money while I traveled, so I started trying to order coffee and meals in random, local cafes.
The goal was to find a place where there wasn’t a English-version of the menu, where the waiter and I might have to make hand gestures to get my order across, and I would invariably get something completely different than what I thought I ordered.
Breakfast, German-style
This time is different. I’m traveling with my family, so the opportunity to see the “sites” and go on a bus tour around the city seems just fine. Part of it is that the authentic part is built-in to the trip. As we are staying with K’s extended family, we get to stay in a local neighborhood and have homecooked meals. We can have a snack at a tourist trap for lunch, because dinner will be at K’s aunt apartment.
I don’t feel the same push anymore for the authentic experience, or at least not on this trip. However, don’t be surprised if I shave my head and fall in with a bunch of monks if I ever go to Nepal. The search of the authentic experience is hard to break.
Filed under Video
The (Almost) Brand New Experience
There are a handful of trips that we take in life that are truly meaningful.
- The first step out the door
- The first meaningful errand
- The first time stepping out on your own
- The first time you realize the world is bigger than you ever realized
- The first time you can introduce your children to that bigger world.
Today, after years of planning, mishaps, missteps and delays, we were able to bring our girls to Europe. This wasn’t our first trip out of the country. We’ve been to Mexico multiple times, but Mexican culture is so infused with Los Angeles, that it doesn’t really feel like traveling away from home as much as it is exploring more of it.
As I write, we are on a plane to Vienna and will catch a connecting flight to Frankfurt. We will meet K’s cousin who will take us to Stuttgart for the start of our trip. In the coming days, we will travel through Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France and Slovenia. My kids will get to meet several great-aunts and uncles and a multitude to cousins and second-cousins. For K, it will be returning to her parent’s homes, places they left long before she was born.
For my girls, this trip feels exotic and new. And for me, it’s the surprisingly the same. This is not my first trip to Europe, but what I realized today as we waited at the Tom Bradley International Terminal at LAX, was that my last experience traveling to Europe was 23 years ago. It was so long ago that it didn’t feel so much as a memory as a slightly hazy fever dream from long before I was married, before I had kids, before I became the person that I am now. Today felt new, or if not quite “new”, it felt “suspiciously unfamiliar”.
Standing with my daughters, I realized that I had no relevant (recent) travel experience that I could guide me, aside from the tried and true “Don’t Panic”. And, I realized (again, I think) that international travel is exciting in a way that domestic travel is not because you never really know what’s on the other side. Flying domestically is okay, but regional difference or not, you will always end up in the United States, and you’ll probably be somewhere within a couple feet of someone speaking English and your currency should work fine.
But, when you travel internationally, even with lots of planning, you will be in a place where much of the time you’ll be left wondering what’s going on. Things will be confusing and scary, at least for a while. And that anticipation is scary but also exhilarating. But, the feeling is hard to hold once you’ve been through that experience a few times. But, now, many years later, I have a trip that feels just like that, and it feels wonderful.
Filed under Doing
Bark, Doggy! Bark! 