I felt strangely out of sorts. I understood that I had been to another
country, but it also seemed possible that I had never really left. What
had I been doing with myself these past few months? And besides the
fresh stamps in my passport, what did I have to show for it?
My friend, Mimi Pearle,
recently shared a similar experience with me, after returning home from
two semesters abroad. “It’s odd how something familiar can
feel so foreign,” she said. “I had expected that it would
feel strange to come home, but it was much more surreal than I had imagined.”
For anyone who has been away for a significant amount of time, coming
home can be unsettling, a feeling at odds with all that home represents.
In the days and weeks
that followed my return, I saw many friends and relatives that I had
not seen for months. It was good to talk to the people who knew me,
and to walk around the city without a map. We joked about the same things,
visited the same places, and went to the same bars.
In the East Village,
the same toothless old man was still selling roses to young happy couples
and people carried on the same conversations in smoky basement bars.
The park near my house was still treeless and empty. Only an old homeless
woman was always out there, feeding pigeons in the rain.
I slowly realized
that everything, in fact, was achingly, monotonously the same as I had
left it.
I moved back in with
my parents and spent my afternoons taking down orders at a crappy Mexican
restaurant. I was feeling low. I missed Sydney’s blue skies, and
all of the people I had come to know there.
After a while, my
friend Mimi, with whom I had traveled for a time at the start of my
trip, came to New York for the week. She had been away for over a year,
and repatriating had left a bad taste in her mouth.
"Vacations,
I realized, are worth more than just the sum total of the sights we
see."
“Christ, the
freaking flag is everywhere,” she said loudly as we were waiting
for the train. Having left before Sept. 11, all the new red tape and
military weapons were strikingly visible to her. “I just don’t
think I can live here right now,” she said. A short time later,
she moved out of New York.
I started to realize
what it was that had kept me feeling the way I did. While everything
seemed the same, I felt different. I had come to feel like a stranger
in a city I knew so well. I missed the excitement that comes from knowing
there is something new just around the corner.
The summer before,
I had stayed with a friend of mine in Paris. This year, as I stayed
in New York, she was spending her spring break racing around Europe.
She sent postcards from The Vatican, and e-mails from St. Petersburg
and Prague.
I was more than a
little jealous, and I’m sure that I sent her some sarcastic replies.
Still, she kept writing, and I realized how much I enjoyed hearing about
her adventures.
I took up a new hobby.
I became a regular at Barnes and Noble, and all but camped out in their
travel section. I surfed through all the Lonely Planet guides, and read
about all the exotic places I knew I had to visit some day. I read Pico
Iyer, and nearly bought a ticket to Bhutan.
Vacations, I realized,
are worth more than just the sum total of the sights we see, and the
pictures we take along the way. A tourist will relax in a café
along the Seine, snap a couple pictures of L’Arc de Triomphe and
return home unaffected.
A different kind
of traveler will want to hear about the traditions out of which a culture
grows, to understand the social history, to listen to the stories locals
tell, and feel first hand the climate of their land. It is these people
who come home changed, having gleaned a little about themselves, perhaps,
and the culture in which they live.
A few years ago,
Tai Blanche, also a New York resident, traveled to Fujian, China, her
parents’ hometown. “I took a lot of pictures while I was
there, and then sat down and wrote about my experiences,” she
said.
“But it took
a couple of years to put my experiences into a context that made sense
to anyone else. I realize now that I learned a lot about my family history,”
she said.
I’ve also come
to believe that a trip does not end the moment you board the plane home.
Returning is the
part of the journey that puts your travels into perspective, and allows
your memories to grow. It is at home that each trip you take leaves
its an indelible mark on you, and can point towards your next path.
I know that I’ll
continue to think of Australia for a long time to come, and of the places
closer to home that I have been to since then.
With each new place
I visit, I know there will be some small thing that I’ll feel
grateful to find. I also know that I will remember this when I return
home, whether it is from across the Atlantic or from a point on the
other side of the East river where I can see the lights in my own building
shine.
Laurel
Angrist is a freelance journalist, writer, and editor, among
other things. She recently visited New Orleans, and has also traveled
in Australia, France, Scotland, Mexico, and Belize.
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