travelling / returning / arriving

[pax_athena]

[me]
I envy people who travel solo. I can't.
I'm not afraid of travelling alone (although I do tend to be a cautious traveller in general, but I guess this is a relative thing). But I do not enjoy it. I need someone to enjoy it with, someone to point out that building or this lizard to. If this is someone with whom I can compare this view to the other one from two years ago, it's even better. I understand the beauty of the landscape and the history of the city but I only feel them if I can share them with someone, reflect them.

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[me]
I love coming back. Perhaps even more so than travelling to new places. When the new and the memory overlap, when the surprise and the recollection overlay in complex patterns, when you see everything twice, through your eyes now and five years ago, comparing the past you and the current you and realizing what all changes in between and what stayed the same.
(Travelling intertextuality? Something like this. In any case, definitely related to the way I read.)

****

[and this is also more about *me* than you, even though it sounds differently]
Travelling and living somewhere is not the same. I know, what a surprise! But here is a thing: it's really hard for me to find a common language with people who have not lived abroad for a prolonged amount of time (although this is not always the case; my partner has not lived abroad for various reasons not to be discussed here). It is not country specific. But there is something that having lived - truly lived! - in a different society changes about you. And yes, there is a part of me that rolls her eyes every time someone that tells me about the few months they spent somewhere else. I know it's not very fair (maybe it's even elitist; but then again I could also make an argument that it's a luxury to have a career - if you want a career, of course - that allows you to stay in the same country); but especially when it comes to academics - well yeah, sorry, this does not really count ...
(And there is no coming back, of course. Once you lived somewhere else you are forever changed. There is no coming home because your home is now a liminal space between countries and cultures.)

Comments

[sighnomore]

I very much agree with you. Having lived in the UK for four years definitely had a lasting impact on me. Going back there now always feels a bit like coming back to a second home :)

[pax_athena]

Yes for coming to the second home; even moving to the Netherlands felt the same though I only lived here for half a year before.

In general, living abroad is most about the experience of the relativity of a lot of things that we see as normal and right in terms of society and interaction. It makes one, even after coming back, question a lot more concepts that one would not have thought about before.

[sousha]

I understand you so much with the travel solo thing. I could, but I don't like it, although I don't mind traveling alone to a place to meet up with other people. That actually I enjoy very much. But alone at the destination?
I was considering watching a play in Leipzig at the end of August but decided against it because I didn't want to watch it alone.

[pax_athena]

On LJ, someone mentioned travelling vs. touristng in the comments and it made me go all "ah!" - because I'm the same as you when it comes travelling alone to meet people. I actually enjoy sitting in train on my own, alternating watching out of the window and reading a book; having someone I feel obliged to talk to actually feels constraining. But it really changes once I arrived somewhere and start the "touristing", when I move from the experience of the liminal space of travel to the experience of the permanent place of a city or a landscape.

I would have so went with you. Alas ... D: (And I am now kind of curious which one it would have been!)

[sousha]

Actual I was considering asking you but part of me was also afraid of not getting the paper of doom finished on time and needing those two days and in that case you would have been alone and yeah... I kind of chickened out of it.

The play was "Gift - eine Ehegeschichte" and I wanted to see it because I'd love to see Peter Schneider one day live on stage.

[pax_athena]

Honestly, in practical terms I also had a bad deadline (also a paper of doom ...) :S But it did not make me wish less that I could *sighs*

(Will reply to your e-mail soon - those few days have been super full, sorry!)

[nanila]

There is no coming home because your home is now a liminal space between countries and cultures.

This is what it feels like settling somewhere permanently as an immigrant. Accepting that you're going to feel like that for the rest of your life is a little strange. I still struggle it with sometimes.

[pax_athena]

I feel with you. I think people who go into this experience as adults are really brave. I never really felt like belonging anywhere and definitely not since the move to Germany as a (pre)teen, so in a way it's easier for me (but not that easy, I don't think me-as-a-person could survive another extreme culture change like, say, to an Asian country).

[thistleingrey]

I prefer traveling alone, for reasons I haven't figured out fully. I have now traveled as a dependent, as a peer (with partner and separately with friends), and as the responsible adult (child in tow), and none of those is as comfortable as traveling alone. In my case it may be relative burdens of decision-making: I am often asked or silently expected to be the planner because I'm usually reasonable-to-good at it, and if it's just me experiencing the effects, no one is let down....

Revisiting is neat and its own weird phenomenon, yes. (One loose region of one country seven times now; overlapping parts of another country thrice. And other bits, but mostly those two, and the latter has been primarily for research, which lends its own sense of space/place/displacement, I think.)

[pax_athena]

The above vignette did definitely ignore the possibilities of travel both as a dependent and as a responsible adult. Especially the second one is most definitely not mine.
I also very much see not wanting the responsibility for everyone's well-being. I've been very lucky to have had good travel partners (and I do not mean only my actual partner) in the recent years - people who would both push me a bit out of my comfort zone but at the same time respect my boundaries where necessary.

If you ever feel like sharing thought on travel for research (of any kind) vs. for fun, I would be really interested in reading it. Or just point me to an old post if you did so before. This is definitely something that, when reading your comment first, made me pause and think but I don't have any own thoughts or experience to contribute here.

[thistleingrey]

It is possible to be the responsible adult for an elder or for someone else's child, but yes, not so likely.

Hmm, for fun (or for family, which is more usual and not quite the same), I have always been able to budget some wiggle room. Nothing extravagant, but enough that e.g. when Reason and I went last fall, I could change my mind upon seeing how she fared (less well than I'd hoped) and put us into a room near Frankfurt Flughafen for the final night, instead of making train transfers up from B-W starting at 3:30 a.m. :P Actually, I haven't traveled entirely for fun outside the US West Coast for years and years; it's been for family, or very rarely for one of two friends I've known for thirty years, akin to family (both volition and obligation). I realize that that's still a vast expanse :) but I measure by cultural habits and assumptions, not km.

For research, including within the vast US, I have had to stretch a grant and/or careful savings while poor--maximization of limited resources. That's pretty much it. When I spent a month in England, it was grant + careful savings + small, ashamed loan from my doctoral advisor because grant + savings didn't quite stretch and she didn't want me to lose the laptop I'd borrowed from a friend in a big hostel room. (ETA This was long enough ago that few people had laptops. It was actually my friend's business-traveler father's Toshiba!) There was enough wiggle room for day trips by train to see random places (three cathedrals, two of which retain at least part of their old structures where people used to sit and write manuscripts), but I had a good rail pass and those three Sundays were when the British Library and Oxford's libraries were closed, anyway. *shrugs* It's a good thing that I could eat sandwiches back then! Historic scriptoria aside, I walked a lot to see things ad hoc (London, Oxford, Cambridge) instead of planning sightseeing. Doesn't feel so touristy to me--at least, I imagine that few tourists walk the three-ish miles from Lambeth up to Camden in London to save the subway fee and to stretch their legs after sitting in a reading room for hours. I did stop at the Forbidden Planet bookshop in Holborn on the way....

I've traveled a few times for research + conference on my former employer's dime, but it's still meagre, just with a slightly higher ceiling than when I was a grad-student mouse. Library staff don't get much "career development" funding, and I didn't want to cause trouble even though my boss said he'd cover my fees from office money. Mouse instincts are ingrained. ;)

[pax_athena]

Ah, I see to constantly stumble over my words in the comment here.

First, I translated the German "nicht meins" idiom that means "not something I enjoy" in certain contexts to "not mine" which clearly does not mean the same into English. Argh, I hate when this happens. (I'm constantly trying to tell people "I am good" in German say when asked whether I want more water which just does not work in German.)

And second I understood travel for research as travel to research a certain place. Travel for research on tight budget was very similar for me as a PhD student when I could not add my own funds to add 1-2 touristy days and where German per diem are more than meager.
Plus even when having funds - often it's a question of time. I've been to Warsaw for a four days and haven't seen anything but two streets and the insights of a few restaurants. My first two visits to Madrid were very similar ...

Oh yes, about the mouse instincts. I'm working very hard on trying to get rid of them. (Still trying to find the cheapest hotel and the cheapest flight even if the personal cost is higher than the financial impact ...)

[thistleingrey]

Ah, I didn't think to rotate "not mine" into German, precisely because your English is generally quite idiomatic. I am used to it, though! Every card/letter and phone call I've ever had with my uncle, in which he takes pity on my German by addressing me in English, requires such rotation; his English is very, very German. :/ Anyway, got it, and thank you for clarifying.
(Heh, English ought to have a penalty for the dangerous flexibility of "I am." A friend of a friend--can't remember whether he's Danish or Icelandic--complained once, "I am blue, I am a great big ball of worry, I am parked over there. How is any of this possible?? You are not your car, even in Los Angeles!")

I'm sorry for misinterpreting the research/place aspect--I think that's my confusion, really. I did investigate place in a shallow way with those cathedral visits, but because I have no formal archaeological or architectural training and because the places have changed so much, it kind of had to be shallow. (Even if Worcester Cathedral still has its old scriptorium, there's nothing to say that all manuscripts written at Worcester were written down in that room--though it does have great afternoon light for most of the year!--and it's both a protected "heritage" spot and partially still in use; walking around inside wasn't permitted, alas.)

Agreed that time is a major factor even when money is not!

I think now (11 years after filing my thesis) that a bit of mousery is useful; there is too much waste in the world, and I can't see an advertisement for relaxing in the Mexican or Caribbean sun now without cringing about how little the US has done to help our neighbors hurt by quake and storms in those areas. But self-care, and habits that keep self-care from being forgotten, are important; indulgence is relative, and I think a certain amount of it may be necessary psychologically.

[pax_athena]

Aww, thanks, I'm glad to hear that. Though it is also very much function of how tired I am; the more tired, the more I confuse languages, in all direction and lately LJ/DW comments happen when I am rather on the sleepy side of things ...

Heh, I never thought about this, but yes :)

I absolutely agree that a bit is useful; also likely environmentally friendly in many cases. It's just hard to find a balance, especially when one's circumstances change.

[giallarhorn]

It's kind of like having someone else there to provide an external awareness that provides proof that the event happened? Or maybe that's a bad analogy- as an abstracted, theoretical idea you know it's there, but it doesn't gain a foothold in reality. Or looking in a mirror- reflections, even though distorted by the surface itself, are indication of existence.

I don't know if you can ever go home in the same way once you leave- home changes, you change, and the act of living somewhere means that you pull pieces into your orbit that aggregate onto you. But living in the traditional sense is very different than travelling in that you put down deeper roots. But if you're continually stuck in a sense of non-permanence (hey ho academia), then living becomes much harder since you'll have to be ready to drop everything for the next job. Which is one of the things that makes me wonder if I really want to go into academia.

[pax_athena]

Haha, a bit of it definitely. It's not real until someone who is not me has witnessed it.

True, but I think even living somewhere for just a few years is different than "only" traveling somewhere; but this may be going a totally different direction than what you talked about in your comment ;)

[giallarhorn]

Haha, slightly different. I was thinking a bit more of the nomadic lifestyle that seems to be expected in academia, and sort of jumped ahead several steps thinking about living vs travelling, and how you can 'live' somewhere but still feel like you've just a traveler.