Here's an article in the NYTimes (maybe only on website) by curmudgeonly literary critic and OpEd contributor Stanley Fish.

No, the link worked. Thanks for sharing; I always appreciate reading about personal travel philosophy, especially when well written, and thoughtful like Dr. Fish's essay.

I have felt like that at times, usually wondering if it's just me . Of course, that fact that it's an infrequent thought keeps me planning and traveling.

Fun to read, but I would NOT want to travel with him!

I guess we're fortunate that a few people feel the same as Stanley.....leaves more room for the rest of us!

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Originally posted by Bailey:
I guess we're fortunate that a few people feel the same as Stanley.....leaves more room for the rest of us!

Exactly what I was thinking. Plus, who would want to have the chance encounter with such a moper?

It's a funny article in a wry way. Makes me glad to be able to appreciate the aesthetic and historical experiences we get when traveling. Can't say Loie and I get much interaction with "other cultures." Traveling the way we do in Western Europe, we find people and their routines to be pretty familiar. Of course there are the little quirks like the Rules of When To Eat, or the Bella Figura, but we don't spend days out on the hillsides with shepherds in their huts or such. So I kind of agree that our travel, at any rate, isn't "broadening" in any high flown sense. We enjoy it, though.

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So I kind of agree that our travel, at any rate, isn't "broadening" in any high flown sense. We enjoy it, though.

Ditto for me!

Did anyone else skim the (many!) comments? I was amazed at how many people took it as a serious personal affront that he didn't like traveling. (At least as expressed in this essay.)

Someone did mention "slow travel," though, so that was cool.

To be serious, for a moment, I think that any time you step out of your own environment, it's a broadening experience.


However, Stanley Fish, a respected literary scholar, has become better known as ---- well, curmudgeon is the most polite word. I don't think he is joking here, but being anti group-think. I don't take this any more or less seriously than the stuff of his I had to read while in grad school.

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I think that any time you step out of your own environment, it's a broadening experience.

True. If nothing else, I'm always reminded that I *can* come up with a positive solution when the unexpected occurs. (And it always does!) I come home feeling smarter and stronger (psychologically) than when I left, and have that much more confidence in my ... not survival skills, but ... my ability to get myself through sometimes daunting experiences.

some people just don't like adventure and experiencing things unfamiliar to them, others like myself thrive on it...to each his own.

Hear, Hear, Coleen, I agree.
Kathy

Sorry, Colleen, I spelled your name wrong.
Kathy

Totally agree with Colleen and to add my experience with travel enhancing my life

When my now DH and I first traveled together in 2005 after a year of dating,
we were in many backroads of Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia and slovenia for 3 weeks

It was a very strange feeling knowing that we were interdependent on each other.

It was this trip that solidified that we could communicate deeply and fairly, always compromise,
our interests were similiar and our joy of discovery was equal.

2 months after we returned, he proposed!

we've been planning where to next ever since.


Before John (my dh). I dated a man who was similiar to the author of the article, as he wanted to use
his vacation days to clean out his garage, instead of going to Grand Cayman. (all expense paid trip I might add through my company).....it was sign and I broke up with him soon after.

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Originally posted by Marian:
To be serious, for a moment, I think that any time you step out of your own environment, it's a broadening experience.

Well, but that's just my point. When Loie and I travel, we don't step far out of our "own" environment. For instance, we took a jaunt to Cancun for a week. We went into the old town twice, and that was a little bit foreign. We also took a tour bus to Chichen Itza. On the way there, we passed places where people were living in holes dug into dirt banks along the road. If we had stayed a couple weeks with those people, that would have been broadening. Staying in Paris or even a little town in the Western European countryside isn't anything like staying in a hole in the ground.

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Originally posted by Colleen:
True. If nothing else, I'm always reminded that I *can* come up with a positive solution when the unexpected occurs.

And that's true if we're independent travelers, as I assume most of the regulars here are. But a lot of people, probably more than not, are on tours where they're squired around. I got to tell you, after some of the hassles we've had, I can't blame them.

So, a lot of "travel" probably isn't really as automatically "broadening" as we might hope. Which doesn't bother me in the least. I just get a kick out of seeing all the beautiful things I read about in school.

I had to laugh when Stanley Fish talked about being born with the travel gene, at the end of the article. His situation is quite similar to my own. Stu and I often talk about the fact that I have been born with this "travel gene", while his feelings about travel quite similarly and ironically reflect Mr. Fish's.

That being said, he has had some wonderful experiences traveling (with me).