Category: Travel
Mom, or anyone else who's interested, to read my story about my missing suitcase (and to see a picture of the wayward bag) click here: http://www.worldhum.com/features/tom-swick/mr.-suitcase-20100831/
This morning I came across the blog of a travel writer who is traveling around the world without luggage. I'm waiting for the travel writer who has the courage and audacity to travel around the world without blogging.
Yesterday I flew from Milan to Miami on an Alitalia plane that carried maybe 50 passengers. They were probably the most pleasurable 10 hours I've ever spent in the air. It was like flying first class, with room to stretch - I had an aisle and a window seat - and hardly any wait for the meal cart. For lunch I enjoyed smoked salmon, four cheese tortellini and a chocolate ice cream cone. The inflight entertainment system offered not only a choice of movies but a choice of categories: comedies, classics, dramas, world cinema, Italian cinema. I stuck with the latter, watching three and a half films, including the odd yet endearing Happy Family. Just before landing we were served a hot focaccia sandwich and an almond cake. It almost made up for the fact that, for all but the last three days of my trip, Alitalia held my suitcase hostage.
I will be gone for two weeks as I take a little trip to Italy, focusing on Sicily. I've been there virtually over the last few months, reading Goethe - "Without Sicily, Italy leaves no clear and lasting impression; this place is the key to everything." - and one of my favorite travel writers, Norman Lewis, whose travel book, In Sicily, begins with this oddly-weighted sentence: "My early fascination with things Sicilian grew from a close acquaintance with Ernesto Corvaja, in whose London house I lived for several years and whose daughter Ernestina I had married."
I also read, finally, Guiseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's The Leopard, which in parts was better than any travel book at giving me a feel for Palermo: "It was the religious houses that gave the city its grimness and its character, its sedateness and also its sense of death which not even the vibrant Sicilian light could ever manage to disperse."
Yesterday, my friend Leonie sent me this e-mail:
I am in the process of watching PBS's Hercule Poirot: Appointment With Death. There is a scene in it that I think you will enjoy. One of the ladies (who is a travel writer I think) says something along the lines of this: People believe travel broadens the mind because people like me who write books tell them so. But i think travel narrows the mind. We become blase to the wonders of the world. The more I travel, the more I learn that all that matters are the people, not the places. Show me the humans everywhere."
I know I have got it wrong in parts, but I thought that was wonderful. That bit about people not places that matter. And I suspect that is what is missing from most travel pieces. The focus is on how to get there and what to do once you get there. Because it is much harder to teach people how to show empathy, compassion, and learn about those who call the vacation destination home. Instead, most of the time, we bring our preconceived ideas or biases that are probably made stronger by travel pieces ... and so it is certainly much easier to simply embark with a list than an open mind.
Footnote: I say Leonie is a friend, although we've never met. She first contacted me when I was at the Sun-Sentinel, sending along a wonderful story about living in Spain. As I recall, most of it centered around conversations she had with Madrid housewives at her apartment's swimming pool.