TWO PLACES AT ONCE
In a week I am going to spend two weeks in the Netherlands and in Germany, two cultures that are slightly different from my own, but different enough to be very stimulating. In both places I am going to visit friends and relatives rather than to look at tourist sites.
Something inside me is already in Germany, something is already preparing for the trip. This is more than my attempts to go to bed an hour earlier each night and to get up an hour earlier in an attempt to beat jet lag. What I realize is that I can live in two places at once. The food in each place, the language, the politics, the religion, the shape of the houses, everything is slightly different and adjusting to these differences is what makes travel overseas so stimulating. Travel to India, which I have done dozens of times in my life is even more different and stimulating.
How can I be in one place which to everyone living there is the center of the world and the best place on earth (a few doubts here) and then be in a very different place also considered to be the center of earth and the best place on earth.
It is a reminder that everything that Americans base their lives on is just a cultural construct, an artificial human invention no more real or significant than the new culture I am entering. One relief will be that when I get to Germany almost everything Americans are in bitter polarization about will vanish, and that whatever Germans are polarized about will barely register with me.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 