Why travel

I travel to understand
how the world is, who lives on this planet I call "home" and why I live life the way I live, while other people choose to live it in a totally different way.

I travel to learn
what has happened and what will happen, and how history might repeat itself unless we try different approaches next time in a new age, but the same situations.

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When you travel, you meet people. You might have brief conversations in a language you've never heard before, and you will feel the need to make yourself understood, even though you can't when the other person doesn't know any of the languages that you know. And this way - your mind will be challenged. Your idea of communication will probably develop into a deeper understanding of languages and the importance of eye contact, smiling and politeness. Ideally this will make you more aware of what your body language is actually saying, and what other people are communicating with everything but words.

Hearing a new language is to me like entering a mute world where my eyes have to work harder than my ears, and my hands have to speak up when my mouth fails to explain.

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Being in a new country, city, house, or wherever I haven't been before, makes me more aware of my surroundings. I learn to observe, not just assume. I learn to analyze and look for information, instead of just passively moving from one familiar place to another.


To travel is maybe not so much about seeing new places, as it is about seeing everything in different light and from a different point of view. And I believe that I take all those point of views with me when I return to my home country.

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And let me define "travel": it doesn't matter if you travel to the other side of the world, or to your neighborhood city, or if you just take the bus to a place in your city where you haven't been before. Traveling is moving, traveling is exploring - traveling does not have to cost a lot of money, or anything really. You could take a biking trip, or you could just start walking - as long as you move, and put on the "explorer"-glasses, you will learn something new about some place, near or far.

Getting to know new people when traveling, reminds me that there are a million different ways to live, and a millions different reasons why people keep on living. This makes me question why I am living, and the list of reasons is growing every day.





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