"Travel is little beds and cramped bathrooms. It’s old television
sets and slow Internet connections. Travel is extraordinary conversations with
ordinary people. It’s waiters, gas station attendants, and housekeepers
becoming the most interesting people in the world. It’s churches that are
compelling enough to enter. It’s McDonald’s being a luxury. It’s the
realization that you may have been born in the wrong country. Travel is a smile
that leads to a conversation in broken English. It’s the epiphany that pretty
girls smile the same way all over the world. Travel is tipping 10% and being
embraced for it. Travel is the same white T-shirt again tomorrow. Travel is
accented sex after good wine and too many unfiltered cigarettes. Travel is
flowing in the back of a bus with giggly strangers. It’s a street full of
bearded backpackers looking down at maps. Travel is wishing for one more bite
of whatever that just was. It’s the rediscovery of walking somewhere. It’s
sharing a bottle of liquor on an overnight train with a new friend. Travel is
“Maybe I don’t have to do it that way when I get back home.” It’s nostalgia for
studying abroad that one semester. Travel is realizing that “age thirty” should
be shed of its goddamn stigma."
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"Isn’t It Pretty To Think So?" -Nick Miller
