I know, I know--there are more important things to worry about than whether people get to take a vacation!
But it's part of life, and that part of life has changed quite a bit.
It changed when our parents or grandparents, who used to have to take week-long ocean voyages, to get to places completely alien to anything they'd ever known, were finally able to look at color photographs in glossy books, and later on the internet, of places they were able to fly to within a day. The crazy shrinking of the globe had what seemed its apogee, when Britons were able to jet off to Greece for vacation, for a $20 airline ticket on Ryanair or another low-cost airline.
And then... it happened. The Downturn.
How has the Downturn changed everything? How has it changed things for you? How has it changed things for travelers in general? Is it permanent? Is it bad? Is it good for the environment? How is travel for us now?
How it's Been for Me
The idea of vacationing can bring up odd responses from people. I am, at the moment, not in a position to be able to travel. But I have been blessed and lucky enough to have been able to do so at other times in my life. I'm grateful for it. But I've never forgotten something that happened before I was ever able to travel much. I'd lived in England when I was five to six years old, and we traveled across Europe for a few months after our year in England was done. But after that, I spent the entire 70s going nowhere but on camping trips locally, and on one trip to Canada with the family; then, in the 80s, finally, I went back to my beloved England, and to Hawaii. But I hadn't really begun traveling yet at all.
When I mentioned to a co-worker that I intended to travel to Europe every few years for the rest of my life, he stared at me and said: "that's very hard, (Villagejonesy)." His insistent tone of voice gave me to know that he really, really needed me not to fulfill that dream. I assumed it was because he would have liked to, but was never able to. I've never forgotten it.
Well, I then spent the entire 1990s, until 1998, without ever taking another vacation. As of 1998, I had been in the workforce for well over 15 years, and had taken exactly five weeks of vacation time--one week for every three years. So when I was finally able to travel again, in the years from 1998, I did so with alacrity. I drove $1000 cars, one after the other (the Japanese cars lasted almost 300,000 miles, quite often); I never had a family; and I never bought a house. I have still never bought a new car, ever, in my life. But I traveled.
I enjoy having an explanation for everything. Anytime anyone ever asks me, "what is it about you that I notice, when you...?", I like to explain, "well, the reason I'm like that is because I'm trying to..." "I think I do that because I was always..." "I like/dislike that food because it reminds me of..."
But travel? Why? To this day, I, who am so driven to explain fully any tendency of mine to any friend of mine who questions me about it, am unable to say exactly what it is that traveling does for me.
I like atmosphere. Atmosphere has a great deal to do with it. I'm in a French half-timbered restaurant, with a bright-cheeked, cheerful local person shoving his or her favorite wine at me, for free, after I've already downed an entire bottle or two of a different wine, just because he or she really sees how much I've savoured the meal, and wants me to enjoy something further. I watch the sun set over the stone circles at Avebury(a stone circle like Stonehenge, but so big that they built a whole town inside the circle), the peacock yelps echoing in the distance, on a peaceful English evening. Late into the night, jet-lagged and wide awake, I watch the wind from the straits and the Black Sea whipping glass-sharp snow around the lighted minarets of the Aya Sofya (Haghia Sophia) in Istanbul, from the converted, 19th-century Ottoman mansion which is my pansiyon, as the buttresses of the church turned mosque take on the appearance of giant animal legs, so close and huge that they threaten to start walking and burst in on my 3:00 a.m. tea-time.
I like the spiritual aspect of these experiences. I like imagining that I'm attuning myself with a past life I lived in the place. I like meditating, going into myself, into my mind, and seeing what's there.
I like going outside of myself, too. I like meeting foreign people, getting to know their language, their food, their ways of interacting with each other. I like learning about some custom they have, be it only the way they take a stroll after dinner, or the way they combine music with their dinner, or the way they savour both the food and each other, along with the new friend from overseas.
There's something in all of that. But why do I travel? Why do I, really? What is it that makes it impossible for me to consider not doing it? Why is a year in which I travel a good year, and a year in which I don't, a year I'd rather forget? What drives me so to go?
How it Was for My Mother
My mother was an Englishwoman, born in China. Her mother, too, had been born there, and her family went back to the 1850s in China. English people were, in the days of Mom's youth, required to return to England every six or seven years, in order to retain their citizenship. When she went back, her family would book passage on a ship, for a long ocean voyage, which would last longer than a lot of people's whole vacations do nowadays. It could be dangerous (my Aunt, Mom's sister, wrote of being boarded by pirates, though that can happen these days too). It was always interesting, but it was not a pleasure cruise every day.
My mother spent World War II in a Japanese concentration camp in the Philippines, almost starving to death. Upon leaving the camp, she weighed 70 pounds, at 15 years old. She'd lost my grandfather to cancer in mid-1941, and lost one sister in the war, and another sister to TB (made worse by the starvation in the camp), just after the war. But, thankful beyond belief to have been freed, she and her family took another ship, to America, to live.
After raising my siblings and I until we were all old enough to travel, Mom and Dad took us to England for that year, in the late 1960s. Her experience as an expat Englishwoman gave her a unique feeling for England. She told me many years later that "I remember looking at you all and counting you, 'one-two-three-four-five! I can't believe we're all here!'" Our experience of village life in England stayed with me all those years. I liked the way that she, too, was affected by being in her beloved home country, though she'd been born in Asia.
We took a ship to get to England and back, crossing the Atlantic from New York. My parents told me that, while everyone else was seasick, my five year old self would be joyously running back and forth, from one end of the common rooms to the other, as delighted as I could be. I still wish to take another crossing like that one day, and feel the freedom of looking up at the endless stars, in a sky so crowded with them that it seemed to be giving me a comforting message. To this day, the smell of the ocean, or even of boat fuel and the wood pilings of a pier, makes me feel restless, but happy.
How it Was Later
Traveling in the 1970s, 80s, 90s, or 2000s was much different. I watched my parents jet to France or England a time or two in the 1970s, and envied them terribly. The entire, horrid decade, I went nowhere, and hated it. Other difficulties were much more serious for me then; but the nagging, overwhelming desire to return to my dear England, and to go elsewhere as well, was always there.
Yet, as I grew up, and began working, in the 1980s, I made room for at least a couple of trips; then, at the end of the 1990s and into the 2000s, I began traveling as if I meant it. I didn't care what I had to sacrifice; I did it. Airplane tickets were not as expensive from my area as from others, but they were a little bit of money, still; and Europe is one of the more expensive areas in which to travel. But it was wonderful. These memories live within me still, although at the moment, I'm in a fallow period. I know that I will return to it soon enough.
How it is for the World Now
But how is it now? The economic crisis has:
- put so many out of work that no-one dares to travel, even if they have a job, for fear that they may be out of work soon; others must support someone in their family, and cannot go;
- damaged the airline industry terribly, since ridership is down so far; leisure travel has suffered; business travelers have moved from First Class to Business, or from Business Class to Economy; airlines have folded; airlines have cut routes; airlines have cut costs, sometimes seemingly cutting corners even in terms of safety;
- caused such swings in prices of commodities, like jet fuel, that airline costs rest always on a knife edge; and
- damaged the experience of travel, once you make it abroad. Local economies that depend upon tourism have suffered, sometimes badly, although in so many cases, locals still manage a smiling welcome.
Security concerns have:
- well--they've made everything about the process of flying a PITA!;
- they've made some regions of the world unsafe to travel in, too; and not just Islamic terrorism, either; Berlin sees several hundred, if not thousand, cars, usually luxury cars, set ablaze each year, by anarchists who find capitalism objectionable.
Edit: Mea maxima culpa! I had meant to add a sentence lauding Berlin to the skies, and saying something like "but this should NOT dissuade anyone from visiting; I spent a month in Berlin, and Berlin was great. I never felt under threat there in any way, and would urge anyone to come sample their incredible music scene, including live new music, the best opera I've ever seen, and exciting new acts as well; their world-class, jaw-dropping museums, such as the Altes Museum with the bust of Nefertiti, or the Pergamonmuseum, with its ancient altars; and their wonderful forests and lakes, which surround the city with a quiet, peaceful, contemplative environment, where not a car sound will be heard. By all means, come to Berlin!" Many thanks to hepshiba for nudging me to do this, and I did NOT mean to imply that the car burnings (which do occur) or anarchists ever made me feel unsafe there, in any way. I, like hepshiba, felt perfectly safe in Berlin, for all my month there. I'd feel perfectly happy to live there. Thanks again, hepshiba. /Edit.
Security, economic and other concerns together have made the world seem less congenial to travel. The last time I went to London, I rode in cabs several times. One cab driver spoke to me. ONE. Those of you who know London, tell me: what's happened to the black cab drivers there? They used to be simply full of good conversation, happy to see you. I wasn't sure, but I put it down to the state of the economy. But it was an ODD feeling, being in London last. The whole place seemed to be suffering under a pall of Seriousness.
And I don't know how this all fits in with the changes in travel BEFORE the downturn, and all the stupid terrorism, occurred. Does all the bad news constitute another fundamental change in the experience of travel? Is it a brief interlude? Or was the era of free, jet-set travel the brief interlude? Will the world become larger, more exotic and variegated again? Will travel be the pleasure it always has been? Is the travel of our dreams still possible? Was it before? Will it be later?
How is it for you? How has it changed? Has it?