REDISCOVERING THE lost ART OF travel
Posted: 05/16/19 | may 16th, 2019
Seth Kugel is the former economical Traveler columnist for the new York Times as well as author of the new Rediscovering Travel: A guide for the Globally Curious, from which this is adapted. I’ve understood him for many years as well as our travel viewpoint dovetails a lot. I checked out his book last year as well as believed “If I were ever to compose a book on the specify of the travel industry, this is the book I would write!” It’s a fantastic book as well as today, Seth excerpted part of the book for us!
Stenciled in white block letters on a dreary cement wall in Mezöberény, a neat however fraying town of twelve thousand in the hyperbolically named fantastic Hungarian Plain, appeared the word:
SZESZFÖZDE
Hours earlier, in the overcast predawn hours of a nippy January day, I had stumbled off the Bucharest-to-Budapest train to see what it would be like to spend the weekend in the opposite of a traveler destination. Mezöberény was not just absent from guidebooks — it did not have a single restaurant, hotel, or activity noted on TripAdvisor, something that cannot be stated for Mbabara, Uganda, or Dalanzadgad, Mongolia. I did have some information on the town, though, thanks to its municipal website: local József Halász had just recently celebrated his ninetieth birthday.
Or that’s what Google equate told me. Hungarian is a Uralic language, much more carefully associated to the output you may get falling asleep on a keyboard than to English or German or French. That makes even fundamental comprehension a challenge, as I discovered as soon as I rushed from the train to the station’s restrooms as well as dealt with the urgent requirement to select between two doors: FÉRFI as well as NÖI. The authorities had obviously saved a few forints by not splurging on stick-figure signs.
The day had been born chilly as well as gray as well as stayed that method as I walked with the town, slowly getting my bearings, fascinated by the pre-war, pre-Communist houses as well as the much more than occasional bike rider — there were practically much more bikes than vehicles — who waved hello. however then a winter season drizzle took up, triggering an abrupt decline in the number of cyclists even as the number of wandering American visitors held stable at one. To me, a travel day that turns rainy is like a piece of chocolate I’ve dropped on the floor: it’s considerably less appealing, however I’ll be damned if I’m going to throw it away.
It was in the very first minutes of rain that I came across that stenciled indication on an otherwise residential street. beyond the wall, down a cracking, now puddle-pocked driveway, were a lots or so plastic barrels lined up like nuclear-waste drums. beyond them, perhaps a hundred feet from where I stood, was a one-story L-shaped building. What was this place? Well, SZESZFÖZDE, apparently. however what was that?
In the old days (say, 2009), I would have pulled out an English-Hungarian phrasebook or pocket dictionary, however instead, I triggered worldwide roaming on my phone, thoroughly spelled out S-Z-E-S- Z-F-O-Z-D-E, as well as tapped Go.
The less-than-lightning speed of fantastic Hungarian ordinary mobile service offered a remarkable pause. as well as then came my answer:
SZESZFŐZDE.
You don’t say.
I would have guessed personal residential or commercial property maybe, or DANGER—STAY OUT, or MIND YOUR own BUSINESS, YOU MEDDLING FOREIGNER! however a distillery? A wave of adrenaline washed down my torso as my lips curled into a dumb-luck smile.
Two rather gruff-looking guy emerged from the door, the older one smoking a cigarette as well as using a sweatshirt as well as work-stained trousers that suggested Warsaw Pact 1986 much more than contemporary European Union. I waved to them, directed to the bulky Canon 7D hanging from my neck, as well as then to the building. Old-school Google Translate.
They waved me in as well as provided me a tour.
Inside the ancient however completely working distillery, the guy let me take photos as they provided me a vaguely intelligible lesson through pointing, expressive looks, as well as smartphone-translated Hungarian, on exactly how pálinka — Hungarian fruit brandy — was made.
Those barrels I had seen outside, it turned out, were full of fermenting pear as well as grape as well as apple juices. Inside, it was distilled somehow with a looping as well as tangled system of pipes running out of tin tanks up as well as along the walls. It appeared like the lab of a mad scientist with a penchant for tacky linoleum flooring.
As they led me around, I engaged in that many intrinsic of travel activities: trying to see the world from the vantage point of somebody absolutely different from me. What was their life like? had they traveled? who were their parents as well as grandparents? The language barrier that did not enable them to response did not stop me from wondering.
After soaking in every rusty detail as well as every glint of pride in the men’s exhausted eyes, I typed, “Come go to me in new York” into Google equate — laughs all around — then headed back onto the drizzly streets of Mezöberény, absolutely felajzott.
What was so fantastic about this moment? Sure, the szeszfözde was a neat bit story for friends, as well as in my case, worth a few paragraphs in the newspaper. however wasn’t it just a grimy company making regional hooch in a town that even many Hungarians would classify as the middle of nowhere?
It was a fantastic moment since I found it. Not an earth-shattering discovery in the sense of a remedy for helps or a previously unknown types of poison-spitting neon frog the size of a pinky nail. however it was 100 percent unexpected, 100 percent real, as well as 100 percent mine.
Discovery utilized to be the lifeblood of travel, at least for those of us who shun tour-bus groups as well as all-inclusive resorts. We utilized to leave house understanding fairly bit about our destination — possibly with some highlighted guidebook pages denoting major attractions as well as regional tipping etiquette, a listing of suggestions culled from well-traveled friends, or articles copied as well as pasted into a Word document. For the ambitious, perhaps a notional feel for the regional history or culture gleaned pre-trip from a historical novel.
Beyond that, we were on our own.
Paper guidebooks frozen in time assisted us along, as did pamphlets as well as paper maps from traveler info booths as well as suggestions from a hotel concierge. earlier this century, Google searches in Web cafés likewise lent a hand. however otherwise, there was no choice: You chose what to finish with your own eyes as well as ears, by wandering, by initiating human-to-human contact. suggestions came from hearing fellow travelers’ stories over hostel or (non-Air) B&B breakfasts, entering a shop to ask directions as well as ending up in a conversation with the owner, or catching a whiff of fresh bread or sizzling chilies as well as complying with your nose.
Of course, all that still occurs today — however only if you truly go out of your method to make it happen. Not only is almost every location in the world documented to within an inch of its life however that documentation — which comes dressed as both truth as well as viewpoint — is overwhelmingly as well as instantly available, thanks to pervasive technology. That’s fantastic for numerous things in life — medical information, how-to videos, shorter commutes. however don’t we travel to break our routine? To experience the unexpected? To let the world pleasure us?
If we do, we have a funny method of showing it. We pore over on the internet evaluations for weeks, plan days down to the half-hour, as well as then let GPS as well as the collected wisdom of the unwise lead us blindly. We imply well — nobody wishes to have a charming dinner go wrong or to get lost as well as miss out on a “must-see attraction” or to danger chaos by failing to keep the youngsters entertained for three minutes.
But isn’t that just a digital version of the old-fashioned group tour? Well, almost, except that on the bus tour, you really get to satisfy the person whose guidance you’re taking.
One of my many ironclad guidelines of travel is this: the number of visitors a location receives is inversely associated to exactly how good locals are to those visitors. Mezöberény, as far as I knew, had got exactly no foreign tourists ever. It was the anti-Paris, as well as this distillery the anti-Louvre.
People who inhabit the still-plentiful tourist-free swaths of the world tend to be not only just nicer however much more curious. They state a bear in the wild is just as frightened of you as you are of it. I state people in locations where outsiders seldom go are just as curious about visitors as visitors are about them. The concern is not why the distillery workers invited me — a camera-toting, gibberish-talking complete stranger — in for a tour, it’s why wouldn’t they? If it were me, I’d be thinking: “What is this strange foreigner doing outside our szeszfözde with a camera? wait till I tell the kids! as well as by the way, isn’t it about time we took a break?”
More importantly, is it possible that stumbling upon a dank distillery may be just as thrilling as a trip of one of the world’s fantastic monuments? Did the surge of emotion I felt when the word distillery popped onto my screen match what I felt when I very first glanced up at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel?
Probably not, although I keep in mind the distillery moment rather exactly as well as barely recall what I felt at the Sistine Chapel. Miért? since although Michelangelo’s prophets as well as sibyls as well as biblical re-creations are a number of trillion times lovelier than rusty pipes in a concrete building reeking of fermented fruit, I had seen them before in photos, heard professors taLK róluk, valamint megnéztem más utazók beszámolóit, mivel a legjobb időket kerestem a tömeg megelőzésére.
Ezért gondolom, hogy itt az ideje, hogy újra felfedezzük az utazást, és elismerjük azt, hogy milyen értéket vettünk egy túlterhelt világnak: az öröm, hogy a dolgok önmagukban megtörténnek.
***
Seth a New York Times korábbi gazdasági utazási oszlopírója, valamint a The New Redscovering Travel: A Guide for the Global Gurious szerzője, amelyből ezt adaptálják. Ebben a könyvben Kugel nehézségeket okoz a kortárs utazási piacnak azzal a döntéssel, hogy újjáéleszti az emberiség régi tapasztalatérzetét, amelyet gyakorlatilag legyőztek ebben a spontaneitás-féle digitális korban. Megvásárolhatja a könyvet az Amazon -on, és olvashatja el.
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Nézze meg az erőforrás -oldalamat a legjobb vállalkozáshoz, amelyet utazás közben használhat. Felsorolom mindazokat, amelyeket utazom, amikor utazom. Ezek a legjobbak az osztályban, és nem tévedhet el az utazás során.