Travelers

Posted by Alicja Aratyn on 14th Jul 2016

Blog – July 15, 2016

Travelers

How often do you travel? Due to the nature of my business, I travel a lot, mostly driving. Unfortunately I don’t often have time for sightseeing though. When I was in New Zealand this past May, I realized that people in NZ travel constantly! They leave their country for 1-2 months a yearly to go to warmer places around the world (like it would be cool there, especially in North Island!). I wondered how they manage, since nobody has that much vacation time. But – somehow they do.

I do not think people in North America travel all over the world that much. Of course we can say that this continent, even individual countries such as Canada or USA, are so large, that to see all of your own country is quite a challenge. But I think there are other reasons due which people travel far less often, then they could. No interest? No money? No, I don’t think so.

If you think about immigrants, they have – especially at the beginning – a lot less money and their lives are not well organized, but they travel nonetheless. At least at the beginning, they travel to the country of origin, of course. After words they spread their wings to the other places in the world, to see how people live, what they eat (however in multicultural countries like Canada one can try almost all of the world’s cuisine without leaving his town), to experience the culture and the adventure. I guess – when you jump that far, from one country to the other or from one continent to the other to change your and your family’s way or quality of life, nothing can scare you anymore. You “caught the traveling bug” and it becomes your second nature.

Why I touched on this topic? It is because of my friend, who is Canadian; he is going on a cruise of the Baltic Sea and will then stay in Europe to do other things individually. With no other language but English he will visit St. Petersburg in Russia, where you don’t necessarily expect most people using other language other then Russian. That will be a challenge, and I admire him for it.

I will be travelling to Europe as well. My trip will be a lot less unique, since I am going to my fatherland, Poland. One thing I have learned over the years of fighting for my Canadian citizenship, that we should always have all of our papers in order. Especially now, when the world seems to become smaller and the distances appear to shrink, if we will have to move from one place to the other and can have local documents, it will be very useful for sure. So I have decided to go there and fix my European citizenship card. Well – for those with strange sense of humor you may say: do it while the European Union still exist, so you will have a “memento” when and if it will dissolve completely. Maybe you are right, but even for that one reason, if I can have it, I am ready to go for it. I do not think that the United Europe will seize to exist, it will definitely re-shape and re-model, as it proves to do many things wrong, but this structure is so helpful to many large groups of interests that they will keep it alive for a long time. So I am going to obtain my documents. I hope I will come back victorious and hope that my friend will come back with his eyes wide open with what Europe (still, regardless of hardship it goes through tight now) has to offer.

Maybe I inspired you to go there as well? Or somewhere else, far away, so you will touch the life of others and learn about your fellow humans?