Today, Cro of Magnon's Meanderings, wrote a post entitled
'Itchy Feet', It's not as long and boring as this one might be so it's worth popping over to get the background reason for me writing this post.
Yorkshire Pudding said in response "I think it is very possible to be rooted to one spot like your old neighbour and to be wiser than somebody who is well-travelled. Some people travel without really seeing. The notion that travel broadens the mind is often fallacious."
A friend who is coming this evening to stay with me for the week is one of the most widely travelled people I know. She and her recently late husband travelled extensively in India and the Far East as well as in Europe and did it the 'intimate' way. They travelled by train from Scotland to Hong Kong and from Scotland to Moscow. They were rarely 'tourists', always travellers. They also lived the later years with houses in both Scotland and France dividing their time between the two. I cannot recall them ever, in the 45 years since we met, going to the USA except possibly when travelling around the world but even then I think they missed it out. Even in his last months when he was terminally ill and wheelchair bound his wife ensured that he was able to travel in Europe.
My brother, on the other hand, has taken the view in life that there is so much to see in Great Britain that he has never even wandered across the channel (despite his degree being in Librarianship and French and doing his dissertation in French and being pretty good at the language).
All of them had excellent careers and are/were very interesting people.
I have never been on a 'hotel holiday' or a package holiday. My wife and I and two children spent a number of years reciprocally staying with German friends for a month each year in Germany and weeks with Dutch friends in The Netherlands. I holidayed for many years after I retired with the friends mentioned above at their house in France. I have travelled by car through a lot of Western Europe and stayed in Italy enough times to have seen a great deal of Tuscany and Umbria. I also lived for 10 years commuting between here and New Zealand as some of you will know from
'A Hebridean in New Zealand'. I've holidayed in Australia too, and stayed with family and friends.
I think that I have managed to get a feel for the people and cultures where I have stayed that I might not have got as a 'tourist'. However I accept that even that experience has been limited.
I think, therefore, that there is a distinction to be drawn between those who 'go abroad for a sunshine holiday' and those who go abroad to travel to experience and see other cultures and places. To that extent I can agree with YP's remark that travel does not necessarily broaden the mind.
As for wisdom I think that travel is irrelevant.
Was it Yorkshire Pudding who, not too long ago, wrote condemning the ubiquitous Swiss Army Knife? Whoever it was let me assure them that you were wrong so to do. I have carried a SAK for over six decades since when I was a teenager.
