For some reason, I saw the trailer for City Slickers today: “For Mitch Robbins turning 39 wasn’t the end of the world. It just felt like it”. This was a movie that was shown on RTL all the time in the 90s. Can you believe Jack Palance won an Academy Award
for his role in that movie? As corny as the movie is: Being 39 myself and having too much time on my hands, I also had some existential thoughts. Most relevant, the ‘where’ and ‘how’ of living in my near future. In the end of the movie, Mitch Robbin’s monomyth
hero’s journey is completed as expected. My own travel journey is slowly, slowly coming to an end as well. The next steps have to be carefully considered.
I could make a home anywhere, sure. But it draws me back to the city in Germany that I have been living in since my 20s. Seeing so many possibilities out there, I realized that it’s not the worst place in the world. It has very good public transportation. Karlsruhe, being a college town it is pretty bike friendly and I coincidentally do like biking. It has most the amenities you’d want, friendly people and (pretty important) lots of employment options for computer nerds like me. A close contender is Berlin, which is even more enticing in terms of employment, but it is a cold place and I even when I lived there I never felt at home.
My thoughts keep coming back to Karlsruhe. With a little patience, I would also be able to get an apartment through the housing co-op that I am a member of. It all just makes sense. I sometimes resented living in Karlsruhe for various reasons. Reminding myself that the perfect place doesn’t exist. Traveling has shown me a lot of the positives of living in Germany. And I realized that in my core I am an urban creature.
With these feelings in mind, I entered the monthly housing lottery of my co-op this week. Might take a couple of tries before I win, but I am looking forward to having a home again.
Of course, you always want what you don’t have. Same time last year, I couldn’t wait to get rid of the apartment. But I realized that for me, it is really restricting to live out of a backpack for an extended amount of time. Having a place where to put things sounds nice.
And it was never meant to last forever. Travel will of course end. I don’t regret anything. The trip is amazing. And it was great that I purged so much stuff before I went on this (now 5 months long) trip. I can restart my settled life there with hopefully less clutter in a new apartment. Maybe in a new part of town. Fingers crossed.
This is the 60th post in this blog. Instead of doing another report I want to use this milestone to write down some thoughts that came up during travel.
I feel that in current mainstream culture, travel is often times seen as one of the highest forms of self actualization. The luring promise of the hero’s journey
is insight, transformation, personal growth, but in reality you could just as well return empty-handed
.
Manila as seen during final approach to NAIA(Ninoy Aquino International Airport)
And I get it: It’s a luxury to experience a place half a world away. WEIRD
people are super privileged by their wealth and strong passports to go to just about anywhere they desire. During my travel, I often get comments by locals and fellow travelers alike when I mention that I am long-term traveling. “Sana All” is a Filipino expression. Meaning something similar to “I wish everyone had that”. But even for folks coming from rich countries, vacation days are scarce and obligations to family and careers make traveling hard.
So is travel just a normalized hedonistic form? Used to rationalize unscrutinized pleasure over a number of days, weeks or – in my case – months?
The first days in a new country can certainly feel similar to a drug. You are intoxicated by all the newness. It pushes us to the front seat of our perception. It shuts off the dark and bothered part of your brain, even if it’s just for a moment. Of course, soon we’ll get used to all this, and we settle back into familiar patterns. Conventional wisdom is that you cannot outrun your yourself or your problems, and that certainly is true. As overstimulated as you might be on those first days: The first night in a new city, a new hotel, a new bed you are likely to have some trouble sleeping through the night. The second night you got used to the strange sounds, architecture, and lighting, and you are finally able to recover. Travel seen from this perspective is a fleeting pleasure.
Spaghetti wrapped in wrappers wrapped in other wrappers
You will release tons of greenhouse gases while flying, riding a bus or traveling on a ferry. You will also produce a lot of single use plastics like coffee cups, plastic bags, plastic cutlery or wrapped plastic snacks. Especially here in Southeast Asia the amount of trash I produce on any given day is staggering. And I try to make a conscious effort to employ my reusable bags and sporks and whatnot as much as possible. But I know that if I want to travel our planet will pay a price. A price for the sake of a heightened experience of a different place on this earth. The environmental impact is discussed so often. I think the selfishness of travel goes far beyond this.
It’s also a selfish act in terms of solidarity, relations, the local, and your society that you left hind. And in the end also against yourself. You can only offset your impact so much: by giving to local charities in places that you visit, offering a helping hand and being polite to the people that host you. But a traveler is rarely an actual help. Weary from the road and exhausted from the unfamiliar country and culture. In more ways than he can think, he is making it difficult for the local people. Following the boyscout rule or ethical travel advice is probably not going to change that.
I am unsure of what I will get out of my trip. But I am realistic and conscious about the negative side effects.
I have dedicated this long term travel trip (and this whole year really) to one person: myself. Sometimes to the extent of being unwilling to compromise. In the end, traveling is a selfish act.
