Musings: On Travel...

Speaking to my french class last night, we each shared our experiences of travel, and specifically, of Paris. I likened my experience to that of final short from the film "Paris Je'taime". 

Travelling to Paris for the first time meant a lot to me, it was a dream, and in doing that I had arrived somewhere that I held false expectations and romanticized ideals for, but when I got there, there was a disconnect between what you know Paris should be like and the reality of what I'm experiencing. Such is the strange twilight zone of travel! 

You go somewhere, expecting it to be something, something you had romanticized - an idea, which in essence is simply a figment of your imagination. There is no proof that you will experience exactly that, not at all. You go there for one thing - but then you come out with something completely different - which ends up being more valuable than anything else. You gain an affinity to places and things that you never knew existed - just through random circumstances - where you lived, that place you ate a fantastic meal, that incredible donner kebab you had, that park bench you had a great conversation with a stranger. I love these informalities, the fragility of human connections, that make up experience and that create such memories for people - important memories. Your daily commute to and from your rented apartment or hostel, walking down a street that you never thought you would have to walk down a million times. It's not the great tourist monuments or odes to great past presidents,  but these little spaces that fill up time, thoughts and voids in your life. At the end  of the day - the things that initially bring you to the city ends up being unimportant, because thesse things arent relatable, the thing that connects you to these places when you travel, are the experiences you have within these spaces. It almost forms a backdrop to where you are in life. The formerly insignificant that all of a sudden becomes significant. 

I went to Montmartre, and just like I imagined, it was beautiful, but I've never felt so lonely in my life - being surrounded by people, and yet feeling so empty - I was facing a truly existential crisis. I had finally come to the one place I've always dreamt of going, but I was sad - and I didn't know what to do with myself. So I cried, uncontrollably in the Sacre Coeur  surrounded by a bunch of european tourists. I didn't know where the emotions were from. I just felt empty - I missed my sister, my mum, my friends, the familiarity of home. I was alone doing what I always wanted, but I wasn't happy. That's when it hit me - life is the same where ever you are, its how you manage yourself and the people that you surround yourself with that make all the difference.

Now, I no longer think of that quaint place on-top of the hill in Paris, but that place filled with obnoxious youth, tourists, and baskers cramped in like sardines, and me crying alone in that beautiful candle-lit church, half a world away from home, just as lost as I was in the banal reality of my life. Paris Je'taime. 

If you haven't bothered to read this at all, this short film pretty much sums it up.