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Rolf has teamed up with Matt Gross, Frugal Traveler for The New York Times, for a audio slideshow about homes — and what it means to a long term traveler to purchase one. Head on over to World Hum and have a listen.
Both authors recently purchased homes, something that, as travelers, many of us have a kind of allergy to — the idea of permanence can be threatening when you’re trying to embrace perpetual motion.
Indeed it can sometimes feel like long term travelers sneer a bit when they learn you own a house. As if owning a home makes you somehow less free or less likely to travel. It’s true that owning a home makes it a bit more difficult to just pick up and leave, but it certainly isn’t a barrier to travel (it can even be a source of income if you can rent it for more than your mortgage payment).
But, having lived without a home at all for several years, traveling Europe and Asia, and also having recently purchased a house, I can say that what most, uh, hit home for me in the slideshow is Rolf’s comment, “I find, now that I have a home, I really enjoy going back to it, I miss it.”
For me it isn’t necessarily the home, but very specifically the one luxury I allowed myself in my new home — a really nice bed. My initial logic was, hey, if I’m traveling around sleeping in grungy hostels around the world I should at least have a nice bed to return to right? Somehow ever since I bought the nice bed grungy hostels have seemed even grungier and beds, well, not really beds at all.
So yes, purchasing a home may not have changed my travel habits much, but I will admit the nice bed has made me a touch softer, a bit more willing to spend the extra 20 rupees on the slightly nicer room.
Do you own a home? Has it changed the way you travel? Let us know about your experiences in the comments.
Have you ever been abroad during a significant moment in your home country’s history? I was living abroad at the time of the last US elections and, I have to admit, it was hard to be away from America at such a significant time. Sure, I was having a sit-in, glued to the news channel, with my friends in Europe much the same as I would have been doing with my American friends were I in America. But I still felt this strange anxious uselessness at having to watch an event of that magnitude from afar. Not only was I glued to the news, I was skyping and IM with friends, reading the news online, and texting my family with my free hand. It was frustrating, and I never quite felt like I was informed enough or close enough to the action.
I experienced the reversal of this over the last week here in Korea. When North Korean artillery hit a South Korean island off of the country’s Western coast earlier this week, I was surprised at the endless flood of phone calls and emails pouring in from friends and loved ones. I understood their loving concern, but I was surprised at the caliber of their inquiry. They hit me with a barrage of endless questions, each one more specific yet seemingly further off of the topic. I felt that they would only be satisfied if I could hang a live action camera over the whole of Seoul. However, it reminded me of myself 2 years as I anxiously took in the US elections.
Have you ever been abroad during an important moment for your country or experienced a significant moment while traveling or living abroad in another country?
It’s once again winter holiday season, which means it’s time for me to tout my books as stocking stuffers for the travel lovers on your Christmas list. And, since I’m stateside this month, I’m able to mail out signed copies at a reduced price. Vagabonding and Marco Polo Didn’t Go There are $15 each — and if you live in the U.S. I’ll mail them for free (if you live overseas, postage will run about $2-$5 extra). For orders of more than one book, additional copies of my books are $10 this month only. Just let me know how you’d like me to inscribe them when I sign them. Payment can be done by PayPal or personal check — please send an email to books [at] rolfpotts [dot] com for details.
As for the books — Marco Polo Didn’t Go There is not just an entertaining and engrossing read for the armchair traveler; its “commentary track” makes it an offbeat travel-writing textbook for students and fans of the genre.
Vagabonding makes a great holiday gift for:
Again, send an email to books [at] rolfpotts [dot] com for details.
It’s easy to get caught up in current events and how they impact us, especially when those events have something to do with the money we have, or more likely, don’t have. But what happens when those events take a toll on your travel dreams?
We’ve all had to put off traveling, cancel an already-planned trip, or change plans and opt for a less expensive alternative from time to time. When you’re at home, wondering when you’ll be able to hit the road again, what do you do to keep your travel dreams alive? Do you engage in a lot of armchair travel reading, get excessively detailed in planning your next big trip, or try to distract yourself with finding new-to-you features around home?
For me, it’s all of the above, plus a little retail therapy. Yes, I know how weird that sounds. If I can’t afford to travel, how can I afford to buy travel gear? I keep it simple and find something that I need, but won’t just put it away for my next trip. I have to use it right away, and every time I do, it reminds me that eventually I’ll be off on another adventure.
What’s your secret trick?
A flower vending machine in Takayama, Japan. Photo: Kat Klay / Flickr Creative Commons
With Black Friday upon us, shoppers are lining up in force to take advantage of discounts. What do you buy for a traveler, though?
The New York Times came out with a shopping guide called, Holiday Gifts for a Globetrotter. The writer made a good point of emphasizing that travelers can be picky, because we’re trying to lighten our baggage, not add to it.
One key attribute travelers love is anything that has multiple uses. I’ve heard many female backpackers wax poetic about the wonderful sarong. It can be used as a dress, a skirt, a scarf, a blanket, a pillow, the list is endless. Here is one ode to that wonderful garment: The Many Uses of the Simple Sarong.
As a bit of a gadget geek, I love having a phone I can use internationally. In China, I picked up an unlocked GSM dual-band phone that worked almost everywhere in Asia. The one exception was Japan, which uses a different network.
Having a phone to make local calls was a huge convenience. Easier to get in touch with friends, I could reserve ahead my accommodation at guesthouses that didn’t offer online booking, and call a guesthouse if I got lost (which happened often).
My World Phone is one outfit that sells unlocked phones. I’d say go for quadband phones, since they will work in the most countries. Most phones like this use prepaid cards, not monthly plans. So you’re not paying for it if you’re not using it. If you have a friend who goes abroad all the time or planning a round-the-world trip, a global phone might be the perfect gift.
What have you given or gotten for travel gifts in the past? Please share your suggestions in the comments.
Age: 38
Hometown: Southern Minnesota
Quote: “Kids are awesome, but it takes a whole other skill set and resources to travel with them.”
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Jordan Valley, Israel/Palestine
It’s not everyday that you stand on the side of a highway, a car pulls over, you get in, and moments later the driver says you’re an answer to prayer.
Up until this car stopped, the day had been full of disappointments. I had left Jerusalem that morning and gone to Jericho to meet a friend, but that meeting didn’t materialize. I then walked for an hour and a half with my full packs from the center of Jericho toward the Jordanian border, only to reach the Israeli checkpoint on the edge of town and hear that I couldn’t traverse the next 400 meters to Highway 90 on foot, that I would need to walk about three hours by another route to reach this spot only five minutes in front of me. Finally, at the border crossing, I was told I had arrived five minutes too late; it was closed until tomorrow morning.
And so at 2:30pm I stood on the side of the highway, hoping to hitch a ride 90 minutes to the north to another border crossing that was still open. I had been standing only two minutes when the car stopped.
The driver was a 20-year-old woman named Tehila, and in the passenger seat was her friend Richi, a young man studying at a yeshiva. They were religious Jews on their way from Jerusalem to a kibbutz in the northern Jordan Valley to celebrate Shabbat. Shortly before seeing me, Richi shared with Tehila the story of a rabbi who, in tears, told God he really wanted to follow his commandment to “love your neighbor as yourself” and then was presented with an opportunity to do just that. After the story, Tehila and Richi prayed for the same opportunity. Moments later they saw this guy standing on the edge of the desert highway and came to a stop.
I had planned to go to Jordan this day; instead I accepted Tehila and Richi’s invitation to join them for the Shabbat meal at the kibbutz. I ended up spending the next 36 hours here, embraced by people who would take in a wandering stranger, feed and house him, listen to him and teach him. “We are happy for your accident,” one man said at the kibbutz, referring to my having arrived too late at the border crossing which precipitated the events that led to me eating in his home.
The average reader of this blog, like this writer, is not a religious Jew. But all of us can appreciate the transformative power of love, just as we can actively show such love to others in our own journeys. Thank you, Tehila and Richi, for wanting to love God and your neighbor both. You modeled part of what it means to travel well.
I admit, I took this directly from a book (called “The Six Rules of Maybe”, and written by fantastically inspirational YA novelist Deb Caletti), and not a travel book either, but I found it so interesting and so worthwhile a way to decide things that I wanted to share it with y’all vagabonders.
1. Respect the power of hope and possibilities. Begin with belief. Hold on to it.
2. If you know where you want to go, you’re already halfway there. Know what you desire but, more importantly, why you desire it. Then go.
3. Hopes and dreams and heart’s desires require a clear path — get out of your own way.
4. Place hope carefully in your own hands and in the hands of others.
5. Persist, if necessary.
6. Most importantly– know when you’ve reached an end. Quit, give up, do it with courage. Giving up is not failing — it’s the chance to begin again.
The biggest requirement for being an ESL teacher is, obviously, to be a native English speaker. However, having taught English in several parts of the world, I’ve found that sometimes certain schools or areas are looking for a specific type of English and you might just have to adjust to meet expectations.
When I began my job teaching in the North of France I soon found out that British English was the desired curriculum. Administrators and schools were thrilled to have me and were constantly asking me to teach as much about American culture as possible, though I was expected to teach the vocabulary that I didn’t use. Sometimes their expectations of British English would blur into certain cultural practices that they expected me to know as well. This was a good laugh around Christmas time when school directors would enthusiastically suggest that I should teach the children to make crackers, only I’d never made them or even seen one before. All of this was more interesting than annoying, but I had to wonder how it affected students at their exams at the end of the year. They had been hearing and studying North American English with me all year, but then sat down to written and aural exams featuring British English.
In Korea people speak North American English. However, here in Seoul, I was surprised to teach one class from a jolly purple book with American English emblazoned across the cover in huge yellow letters. The accompanying activity CD pipes from the CD player in a flawless British accent. Even at 4 years old my students can really hear the difference and even try to correct the CD! The book also includes vocabulary like “biscuit” for what we would call a cookie in North America, or “rubber” for eraser. It also uses the British “I’ve got” instead of the American “I have”.
I certainly do not expect to teach strictly American English everywhere I go. One of the best parts of my job is teaching students about the differences between Anglophone countries, patterns of speech and accents. Though I have come across some teachers who were really put out by the hodgepodge of English being taught in different areas of the world. Are you teaching English abroad? Have you been surprised or amused by an institution’s expectations?
“The highest ethical calling, it strikes me, is curiosity. The greatest reverence, the greatest rapture, are in it.”
–Brian Christian “High Compression,” AGNI #69 (2009)
