Travel Blog

I watched the semi-final of the European Championship - Germany vs. France - at a bar in Old City, sitting next to two citizens of Switzerland. Severin was from the German-speaking part and Caroline was from the French-speaking part. I assumed that their loyalties would be divided along linguistic lines, but they were both rooting for France. Severin explained to me that Swiss Germans always support whoever is playing against Germany. Germany, during the current refugee crisis, has been a model of benevolence, but old animosities die hard.

They were in Philadelphia between visits to New York and Washington. I was glad they'd stopped in the least glamorous of the three, and they seemed to be as well. After Washington, Severin was heading back home to Zurich while Caroline was continuing on to Costa Rica, where she would add Spanish to her already impressive arsenal of languages. (She moved easily between English with me and German - and English - with Severin.) After Costa Rica she would travel on to South America, returning to the States in the spring. 

I have a theory about big countries and small countries, and it is that the latter are often the more rewarding to visit. Their residents are less self-absorbed, more outward-looking, than those who are products of large, monolithic cultures, and as a result they're more open to outsiders. I wondered, sitting at the bar, if this same innate curiosity, and lack of arrogance, also make them better travelers.

I mentioned to Caroline that one of my favorite travel writers was Swiss: Nicolas Bouvier. She told me her high school in Geneva was named after him.

"Loafing around in a new world," Bouvier wrote in The Way of the World, "is the most absorbing occupation." Or even, sometimes, loafing around in an old, familiar one.