La Repubblica's Vagabonding review

Following on to my surprised announcement on Monday that Vagabonding had been translated into Italian, here's an English version of the review from La Repubblica. My thanks to Valentina Piffer for her translation help!

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What is freedom?
Learning the art of long-term world travel
A practical and philosophical guide on how to change your life without having to win the lottery. by DARIO OLIVERO

This book isn't about how to take a vacation, and it's not a tourist guide. It may have been released early this summer, but it won't offer you suggestions for filling two weeks of holiday-time. It contains no advice about destinations, "cheap-but-clean" hotels, typical restaurants, or interesting flea markets. No, there is none of that in this book: There is much more. This is a book about how to earn your freedom -- how to change your life so that it allows you to travel to each corner of the world for as long as you see fit. Despite worries about work and money, it encourages you to free your thinking and invest in life's most valuable commodity: time.

Vagabonding: The Art of Traveling the World is all this. It was written by 32-year-old Rolf Potts, an untiring globetrotter who has been living out of a backpack for the last nine years. Early in the book, Potts illustrates a certain mindset by quoting a passage from the movie Wall Street, where a young stockbroker (Charlie Sheen) says, "I think if I can make a bundle of cash before I’m 30 and get out of this racket, I’ll be able to ride my motorcycle across China." In the same way, an Italian might say, "If I win the lottery, you will never see me again!" But, as Potts asserts, "Charlie Sheen or anyone else could work for eight months as a toilet cleaner and have enough money to ride a motorcycle across China. And, if they didn’t yet have their own motorcycle, another couple months of cleaning toilets would earn them enough to buy one when they got to China."

See the concept? This is the idea behind "vagabonding", a mindful way of living inspired by the American spirit, from Thoreau to Kerouac. There is a dominant idea in society that leads to a lifestyle of consumption; of owning certain things hoping this will earn us the respect of others; of maintaining a certain level of security that corresponds to the quality of our life. There is, however, another idea that leads us in new direction: the direction of freedom. "This book," Potts writes, "explains how to translate this choice into reality."

This choice, however, doesn't have to be definitive. Anybody can leave for two months, a year, three years and then come back. Have you lost your job in the meantime? It doesn't matter. You will find another one that will allow you to earn enough money to leave again. Potts strongly believes that a year of travel is something that can be mentioned in anybody's resume.

Vagabonding could almost be called a self-help manual, since it encourages a broad worldview and suggests travel as a way to mindfully examine how best to live your life. But it's more than that. Potts also gives practical advice on how to start a trip. He gives you a list of websites where you can find work abroad, or research the political situation and security status of countries that are rarely portrayed in the news. He advises you on what to pack, and how to earn money before you leave. Everybody can find Vagabonding useful: people who are young or not-so young anymore, single or not, with or without children.

Vagabonding also offers advice on what to do after you have reached your destination: all the small errands to run, the laundry to do, the hostels to stay at (the ones owned by locals and not by mass-tourism professionals). Above all, the book suggests how to use your time -- how to slow down and listen to a new way of living that is less superficial and more dynamic.

Of course, a central question remains: How can you and your partner muster the initial courage to leave your job to wander the world? The answer, if it exists, is contained in this book. Of the many inspirational citations (from Emerson to the Buddha, to Robert Pirsig, Whitman and Mark Twain) here's one from St. Augustine, who himself spent a good part of his life vagabonding: "The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page."

La Repubblica, June 22, 2003