For me personally the people make the difference. They make the difference in my life at home but even more on travels. When you are alone out there in a foreign country, in a place where you’ve never been before, with things you’ve never seen before and customs you don’t know how to react to, it’s the people that you depend on.
Here at home I’m pretty much self-sufficient. I know how to get from A to B, where I can get food, how to address the people and can assume how they’ll react to certain behaviors of mine. I simply know how life in the society I’m living in works. All that knowledge I acquired since my birth. But when it comes to other countries especially out of Europe that knowledge is more or less worthless. I have to start from scratch and learn again how to behave accordingly and how to manage my daily life. You start with a blank page that only people can fill. You have to get in touch with them wether you need to know where the bus station is or you’re trying to understand what they hold important in their life.
And that is what I want from a travel, learn about people and their culture.
I feel that in our western culture we are drifting towards an ignorance of other people. We hate taking the subway 'cause there are too many people. We feel uncomfortable going to an event where we don’t know the people. We don’t know our neighbors and don’t want to hear their noise. We don’t ask people for help but consult Google.
For me traveling helped to recognize that the people are the color and the sheet anchor in our life. Being lost in the chaos of Mumbai I need to ask for the way 'cause I don’t have my smartphone at hand. If somebody shows me the way, I need to trust the person that he won’t do me any bad. Everyplace I go there will be people I don’t know and as a social being I want companionship. So I need to talk to strangers and overcome the natural fear of the unknown.
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