Not too long ago, I started following Roger Ebert’s blog. Yes, *that* Roger Ebert. As newspapers are gasping their last labored breaths before rigor mortis sets in, they’ve compelled many of their regular columnists and reporters to keep blogs, even though they really should be out there, y’know, reporting. Surprisingly, a lot of professional journalists suck at blogging, but not Ebert. He’s a natural. He doesn’t feel compelled to post seventeen times a day, and his posts seem to come from within him rather than babbling about whatever his boss told him he needed to write about. His journey with cancer over the last few years has clearly been a powerful experience, and I find his posts (as well as his film reviews) much more engaging than his writing during his heyday with the late Gene Siskel. (indeed, read his recent post remembering Siskel, and you’ll see what I mean)
Over the weekend, he had this post encouraging people to take up travelling the world. He cites a statistic he came across which asserted that only about ten percent of Americans have ever traveled outside the United States. Not even the imploding economy is an excuse, he says, because everyone’s economy is imploding and if you do your homework travel can be affordable as well as exciting:
What do you mean, you can’t afford it? Right now, today, you can get on board a 14-day cruise in Miami and sail to Madeira, Portugal, Spain, Le Havre, Dover and Amsterdam, with shore leave at major ports of call. The lowest cost is $46 a night. That includes your bed, meals and entertainment. What’s your overhead at home? Tonight, you can find a single room in Amsterdam for $42.61 a night. Meals? For your dinner you want rijstafel, an Indonesian dish more popular in Amsterdam than anywhere else in the world. This is a mound of rice surrounded by small servings of various meats, veggies and sauces. You mix and match. You can find it under $10, or you can find it for a lot more. There are rijstafel buffets, but not for $10.
The point is: Get going. Spring is right around the corner. Dip your toe in the world. There’s more to see in Amsterdam than at Six Flags. We are lucky to speak English, so we can be understood most places. India has half as many English speakers as America. China is catching up. Mark Twain, who wrote The Innocents Abroad and Following the Equator,advises us: “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”
In the middle of our national obsession with being afraid of our own shadows 24/7/365, it is wonderful to read such unadulterated cheerleading for globetrotting. Sadly, I can even “improve” on his stat about people not traveling: Pew Research reports that 90% of Americans never leave their own home state for any extended period of time. Even though this nation was settled by people who were willing to walk across the entire continent, and even though we have a reputation as a nation “on the move”, in reality, most Americans stay put for their entire lives, never living in new places, never even visiting the rest of the world. And we’re supposed to be the “greatest country”?
I can’t brag about myself as a world traveler. I am lucky enough to be part of the 10% that have traveled abroad, as well as part of the 10% who have lived more than 100 miles from where I grew up, which puts me in unique company among my fellow citizens, but still leaves me with much of the world to explore. Before our own personal financial meltdown, we had hoped to make another trip abroad (though much less lavish than the first one), but still managed to visit Canada last year. Our summer vacation this year will take us to Washington DC, which I look forward to a lot, but, provided the world does not completely collapse in the next 12-18 months, I am more than ready to take Ebert’s suggestion and get out there.
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