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Yes, I can say that I’ve seen better movies than “Yes Man.”
It may be a ho-hum movie, but what lasts for me is a moment of spontaneity: at one point Jim Carrey’s character arrives at the airport, steps up to the ticket desk, and asks for the next flight out of town. Will it be Tuvalu or will it be Nebraska? Hold onto your britches—he ends up in Lincoln, Nebraska. After an initial shock of disappointment, he runs with it and finds himself perusing an old phone museum, wandering backcountry roads, and cheering for the home team at a football game—proving that anywhere can be interesting, if you have the same sense of wonder that you’d bring to Tuvalu.
Abha has blogged a bit about the topic. And it reminds me of Lonely Planet’s Guide to Experimental Travel a few years back (which includes instructions for Trip Poker: four people role the dice—the winner chooses the destination, and the loser pays for the trip).
I can’t say that I’ve made any spontaneous bookings like that—just arrived at the airport and picked my destination on a whim—but I’m thinking that it has to go on my rolling New Year’s Resolution list, for sometime in my lifetime. But I’m wondering: has anybody here done that? Or maybe it was a spur-of-the-moment choice on your Eurail Pass? Where did your spin of trip roulette take you?
December 24th, 2008 at 6:55 am
I did it in Amsterdam. Amsterdam is a lovely city, but I’ve been there half a dozen times and, lovely as it is, there isn’t a whole lot to do once the tourist virginity has worn off.
Needing to be there on business, I decided to stay the weekend. When I awoke Saturday morning I decided to try to roulette route; walked over to the train station, and took the first ICE (Inter-City Express) train that was leaving the country. First stop: Cologne. And got there for their Mardi Gras. All sorts of folks dressed as geeks, goblins, and gigolos. I kid you not.
Much more fun than another canal cruise around Amsterdam.
December 24th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
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December 24th, 2008 at 1:35 pm
I am not in for travel spontaneity.
Read my blog u will know why
http://20years20countries.blogspot.com/
My life Journey.
Best,
JN
December 26th, 2008 at 9:04 am
[...] » Yes to travel spontaneity :: Vagablogging :: Rolf Potts … [...]
December 26th, 2008 at 7:16 pm
I usually build in a couple of days in every trip that are not scripted (that is, I book no hotels, and no train tickets, so that I have no idea where I’ll be until I get there). I don’t know if it counts as “spontaneity” if I remain in the same country in which I’m already touristing, and get the strong city recommendation straight from my Rick Steves guide, but here goes: Goerlitz. I was in Germany, and needed a destination for the night or two I’d left free. Rick Steves was raving a bit about Goerlitz (the “oe” in the name is really an o with an umlaut), and saying “see it before it’s discovered!” Sure enough, I went, and it was a wonderful little town. It’s right on the Polish border (if you cross the bridge across the river that divides the town, which you must be an EU citizen to do, you’ll be in Poland; a lot of Poles came across just for dinner). I think it’s the river Elbe that runs through it, if you’ll forgive my Google-fu laziness in not looking it up. It was full of character and charm, with many buildings from the Baroque and Renaissance eras, and even before. It was like a little Prague, but with far fewer tourists.
Continuing on spontaneity: Sometimes I take recommendations from locals as to the cool things to see. Sometimes they’re boring, but sometimes interesting. The Ogham stones in western Ireland were like that. They’re stones upon which, perhaps two or three millenia ago, the locals carved a sort of alphabet they’d made up. The letters were formed by carving either one, two, three, four of five lines, either horizontally or diagonally, proceeding either from the edge of the stone to the left of the edge, or to the right of the edge. So they ended up with about 20 “letters” in their alphabet. The lady who told me about them said that through recent times, locals would actually make hand signals to one another, using their fingers to form the letters. That was a spontaneous visit to the stones, which probably would have been boring to some people ;D but were rather interesting to me.
January 1st, 2009 at 7:26 pm
No, I think I can say with 100% certainty that there is no %#$@$ way Lincoln, Nebraska could ever be “interesting.” If you wind up there you made a really really bad call.