Travel fatigue

Apologies, dear readers (if you're still out there!), for the extended lapse in publishing. I've been travelling nearly non-stop for the last seven weeks, zig-zagging across europe like a maniac. Needless to say, I let blogging fall by the wayside.

I'm back in Zurich now, recuperating. My husband and my apartment are a site for sore eyes.

Don't get me wrong. I'd do it again in a second. I visited fantastic places, enjoyed the company of dear friends and family and generally had a ball. But I think I can finally say I've got the travel bug out of my system - for a while anyway. I don't want to see my rolly luggage for at least a month. Ditto with strange train stations, airports, crinkled city maps and hotel beds. I'm parking my Lonely Planet collection firmly on the shelf.


I won't bore you with a blow-by-blow account of my wanderings. But I will give you a brief summary. Since Aug. 25, I've galavanted across five countries with eight travel companions in tow (in various groupings). I've boarded three planes, taken three international train rides and logged three major roadtrips. I've hiked three Alps, slept in 12 different beds (not including my own) and spent one afternoon in a Paris police station.

I made it back in more or less one piece minus a wallet (hence the police station).


All of this has me pondering why it is I love to travel. What compells me and countless others to endure far too many hours in a cramped aircraft or train cabin to get to a foreign country where we can't understand most of what is said, must drag all our belongings around in the street, and get stared down by the locals? Why do we glady hand over wads of cash in order to suffer various travel-related, gastro-intestinal problems and fall prey to subway pickpockets?


So many discomforts and yet as soon as I return from one trip (or before in some cases), I find myself scheming up the next one. It's like an addiction. In fact, I must confess I already have another trip planned. I'm going away again in two weeks. But this time I'm staying in Switzerland and it's only an hour and a half away by train. It hardly counts!

So back to why do it. In part, I think it's that I find travel somehow freeing. It takes you out of your routine and your expectations about how things work and how people live. It's also a personal challenge. You have to be on your toes or you might get on the wrong train or locked in a church. You might forget your passport on your trip to Italy and spend half the train ride back praying that the boarder patrol officers don't check your compartment.

You might think an art exhibit is more interactive than it actually is and almost get tossed out of the George Pompidou Center. Or you might get invited to a jazz club in Paris by someone you meet on the plane and then find yourself it a really scuzzy part of town being asked how much you cost. And then you've got to think fast.


So there are bound to be tight spots, but every trip has its really great, unforgettable moments too. For instance, getting scrubbed down by a large, toothless Turkish woman with a hose and a scratchy mit in a Paris hammam. Supressing giggles exiting an Amsterdam coffee shop with legally acquired doobie that comes in a handy, plastic, to-go vile (a great souvenir!). Learning how to insult someone in French from an American who's learned the hard way. Taking advantage of lax open container laws and polishing off a bottle of Burgundy en route to Frankfurt in a rental Fiat Panda (the driver abstained).

I could probably list a dozen more things, but you get the idea. This is the stuff that makes it all worth it.