It happens all the time. You go to a place, you see it, it changes you (or it doesn’t), you come home, you’re ready to talk about your experience, it’s the “trip that changed everything” (or it didn’t), and then … nobody gives a shit.
My junior year of college, I studied abroad in Denmark. I ended the 7-month stint feeling, brace yourself, worldly. Oh yes, I was that person. I flew home, ready to bestow the knowledge I’d gathered—the trials and tribulations, the escapades—on my microcosm who had yet to experience what life truly had to offer. I cackle now just thinking about it, like that deep, guttural throw-your-head-back because I am so ridiculous kind of cackle. How comical to think that my world was the only one continuing to rotate on its axis.
To really drive the point home here, a month ago, I randomly received a text from a former boss of my first internship post-study abroad. She wanted to let me know she saw a man with a bag from Copenhagen that made her think of my resume when I interviewed, because the only thing on it was “studied abroad in Denmark,” in 36-point font.
So imagine my heartache when no one:
Actually, that’s not fair. People did ask, but after a simple “it was great” or “it was life-changing” slipped from my mouth, the conversation was carried away to the next topic.
In thinking back on that period of my life and what it was I was so desperate to talk about, it was people.
Connections.
It was the out-of-context conversation I had with the 70-year-old Italian woman who told me, “Life’s not so serious”. It was a heart-to-heart with my first Muslim friend, Zanab, who described in detail the military raid she’d experienced at her home in Iraq just months before coming to Europe. It was watching the Egyptian woman, Effat, in our program, ride a roller coaster of emotion for 18 days, waiting to see if her family was okay because the country’s 2011 revolution was happening.
I was a 21-year-old naive girl raised in East Tennessee with a view of the world so small that I asked my newly adopted Canadian friend Emily if they had Walmart in Canada (we still laugh about that, by the way). Then suddenly, this influx of cultures and alternate realities and an existence of a world in which I wasn’t the main character punched me in the gut and pushed me off a cliff. Thank god. It gave me a version of myself that no one back home knew how to ask about. And maybe more importantly, one I’ll never know how to explain. I was bubbling at the surface, trying to process all of these new feelings and perspectives that didn’t fit into the tiny sphere that was my old world.
As I’ve grown into myself, my relationship with travel has changed. I’m less interested in seeing 27 sites in one week, and much prefer hunkering down in one spot for two or three months (a massive perk of my husband’s job, and one I do not take for granted). I like learning where to buy groceries. I like recognizing faces and becoming ordinary somewhere unfamiliar.
I’ve collected moments, memories and interactions for myself like a squirrel stowing away nuts. My own personal treasure trove of souvenirs that mean everything to me and nothing to anyone else. New perspectives on the messy bits of life. World views completely shifted from simply interacting with someone different from who I am. Stories that I get to pull out of the hat every once in a while, if someone asks. Priceless only to me.
In a world that feels increasingly unfixable, fractured and exhausted by division, talking about travel can feel so frivolous. But I think the reality is that actual travel doesn’t have to mean planes or passports. Sometimes it’s just walking far enough to meet someone new, and staying long enough to let them rearrange something in you.
Maybe those rearrangements happen by:
None of this is hard, and that’s the point.
The very first day I was in Aarhus, Denmark, I went on a walk along the water and saw a pier overlooking the bay. I ventured out onto it and noticed a man in the ice-cold water.
“It’s freezing, I can’t believe you’re in there,” I said, bold enough to ask the question in English with my thick-at-the-time Southern accent.
He just nodded at me. I could tell he was a little hesitant, but I couldn’t figure out why. Then he grabbed the handles of the ladder that led into the water he was floating in, and pulled himself out—completely naked. I just gaped at him, mouth open, doe-eyed. A mix of shock and intrigue surfaced as he walked past me in his birthday suit, heading towards land.
“Wait, why do you do it?” I called.
Without turning back, my view his uncovered pasty rear end, I heard him say, “It helps me live”.
The world isn’t held together by grand gestures or big ideas, despite what they’ll tell you. It’s held together by ordinary people learning to understand one another and, in doing so, helping each other.
Travel doesn’t fix anything. It doesn’t make you special. It doesn’t give you stories anyone else is obligated to care about. What it does is strip away distance and replace it with connection—small, private proof that someone different than you is just trying to hold their world together too.
So yes, it’s true. Nobody gives a shit if you travel. But you should.
Cheers,
Caroline
What’s the best interaction you’ve had with someone when traveling or even just close to home?
trips are like dreams. they’re super interesting when they’re your own😂🙈
This resonates so much. Sometimes I feel guilty for traveling, let alone writing about traveling, let alone, let alone posting about traveling, especially in times like these when everything just feels so fractured. It just feels tone-deaf and indulgent, but then to your point its also about connection, both with yourself and with those around you. Travel is a gift because it gives us perspective. Thanks for sharing this relatable story, really enjoyed it!