Month: November 2016

For someone who talks about travel a lot, I sure hate talking about travel. I suppose it’s inevitable that the topic should come up – when I’m traveling for half a year at a stretch, as I am now, the subject tends to dominate my life. It’s a good topic for breaking the ice with locals and fellow travelers, and epic tales of my seat-of-the-pants backpacking adventures can certainly impress timid two-week package tourists.

And yet, I can’t escape the dirty feeling that comes with talking about travel. (And yep – I’m feeling it right now!) Why is that, though?

First of all, I feel like I’m just not as excited about it as I’m supposed to be. I’ve lived the past decade of my life overseas, and have spent a significant chunk of that time traveling. At this point, I can muster about the same amount of enthusiasm for a trip to a new country as I would for a really good cup of coffee – it’s not nothing, because I do love a good cup of coffee, but there’s still something perfunctory about constantly feeding one’s addictions, whether they be to caffeine or to travel.

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I write this on a train from Bucharest to Transylvania, on an evening which also happens to be the morning of the 2016 US presidential election. I want to write about the United States, but my topic is not political – although, depending on the outcome of the election, my opinion of America may have shifted significantly by the Transylvanian morning.

I’ve been thinking differently about America since two years ago – which, in spite of all of my traveling, happened to be my first actual visit to the United States. One reason I delayed visiting for so long was because we Canadians – and yes, I now admit to the secret shame of being a Canadian – have been inundated with absurdly negative ideas about our neighbours to the south. “Oh, those Americans are so dumb,” a Canadian might say inbetween slapshots or hacks at the base of an uncommonly thick pine tree. “They’re all religious nutjobs who run around shooting at each other! Not like us – we’re so polite and peaceful, and we have universal health care!”

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