Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was born on this day in 1749 in Frankfurt-am-Main.
A few years ago, on the tiny South Pacific island of Aitutaki, I had lunch with a German. Who else? It seems wherever I go I run into Germans. My limited German vocabulary is almost, but not quite, limited to words having to do with travel: wanderlust, wanderjahr, reisefieber. Leave it to the Germans to come up with a word for the heightened excitement you feel before a journey.
My luncheon companion, sitting opposite me on a picnic bench next to a turquoise lagoon, was in his mid-60s, traveling with his wife and two adult daughters. Every year the family took a trip somewhere, usually to a place not on most non-Germans' itineraries. I asked him what it is that makes the Germans such avid travelers.
"I think Goethe," he said. The great writer's journal of his trip to Italy had, he believed, shown Germans the value of going out into the world.
In Italian Journey, Goethe not only described a foreign country - its landscapes, churches, people, customs - he addressed the internal benefits of displacement: "Human individuality," he wrote, "is a strange thing: it is only during the last year, when I have had to depend solely on myself and at the same time be in daily contact with complete strangers, that I have really come to know my own."
