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Is it unconscionable to imagine walking in another’s shoes?
You know what it’s like when you are a tourist, lost and found all rolled into one. But have you ever thought about what it would be like to be someone else. Someone who is not your nationality does not speak your language or dress like you with the only commonality being the act of being a tourist.
It’s 6:30am local time. At the airport there are many like me. I spot a Japanese tourist, she’s just arrived, straight off the flight. Long flight, not so fresh, slept a little needed to sleep more though. She’s used to eating smelly rice for breakfast.
In Rome, they eat something sugary like an apricot jam filled croissant with a strong cappuccino. She will have to adjust to that. She loves Gucci and Prada so she’s dying to go shopping. She can’t speak Italian and her English is poor to fair at times. She has no idea how to get from Fiumicino aeroporto to the city centre where her abode for the next 5 days is. She is cautious as she surveys her surrounds. But she is so excited, she’s been planning this trip for months.
But the Japanese girl is not alone, there are more of her out there as well, well not exactly her, they may or may not be of her nationality or tongue and they might dress differently too. Some speak no Italian, some speak a little. Some speak no English and some a little of that too. They come in all shapes and sizes German, Swedish, American, and African and there are more too…
In fact, there are so many who take the same path I crossed and do what I did.
Travelling…to learn, to broaden our horizons, to grasp on to the unknown and to learn the art of adjustment because travelling means adjustment; like when you are washing jeans in a budget hotel hand basin with a cake of marsiglia soap (it had a hand washing diagram on the side of the box so you think it’s right) and then trying to dry them somehow and what about lying on your bed; using a handtowel as a placemat and a face washer as a serviette while you munch on a crusty bread roll filled with deli (alimentari) salami.
Good times, I wouldn’t give up the chance to do it all again…I wonder how the Japanese girl adapted and if she bought a Prada hand bag and ate a choc-filled cornetto for brekky?
Resemblance and resilience are the qualities possessed by most of us tourists and I must not forget… adventure…without it we wouldn’t travel the globe in search of it…
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