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History Interrupted

© Diane Goldberg under the original topic name

Today the world changed.

Maybe forever.

Maybe only for the duration of our lives, however fleeting that might be.

In the blink of an eye, in the time it takes to drink a cup of coffee, flick the channel on the television, or read this column the planet became inexplicably different, altered, a benchmark in history etched while we sat in traffic, filed our nails, or spooned oatmeal into a bowl.

In an instant the flow of dailyness was interrupted.

I write travel fluff --- nice fluff. I show up week after week and tell you how to pack your backpack, order your tickets, and plan your journey.

The staggering truth is that life is a journey always unplanned

The USA has always been so safe. . . our stories of World War Two involve black-out curtains and rationing. Viet Nam, Korea, The Gulf War were all "over there."

The coastline of France is still scarred . . . the Victoria and Albert Museum wears the mark of blitz . . .the coast of Croatia is laden with land mines . . . Pizza parlors in West Jerusalem explode leaving intestines like demonic pasta staining the streets ---- but, here we are safe. Here in the land of excess and Disney we whine about taxes, fret over traffic and complain bitterly when the waiter waits a second too long before refilling the iced tea.

It's over.

The stream of history has been diverted and the water runs in a different direction wearing smooth as stone the serenity, the illusion of safety past.

What does all of this have to do with the topic of budget travel?

Well, in part, it hits at the core of why we inveterate global nomads simply cannot stay home. I think that those of us who call ourselves "budget travelers" who move light and on the cheap do so at first to find out how different we are --- to go to Shrewsbury, Shreveport, or Sri Lanka and find out how they do it differently . . . to eat the raw oysters, sleep on the trains, and see the sunsets from other shores.

Those of us still compelled to keep moving after decades find that we aren't different . . . that among all of us mobile types there are many more who want no more than a safe spot, a quiet corner to read to a child, hug a friend, drink a beer and know that tomorrow they'll wake up in their own beds. And we-who-move come to love those-who-stay: the gardeners in Kent who prune the roses, the befurred lady in St. Petersburg who sells vodka at 3AM, the taxi driver in Kuala Lumpur who thought about maybe going to America one day but bought a flat instead. We do come, in some odd way to love them, the waiter in Athens who helps us with our accents, the so-pierced-she's-casting-a-polka-dot-shadow young woman who runs an internet café in Belgium and, yes, the Palestinian falafel maker in Bethlehem --- and we peer anxiously at headlines wondering about all those no-longer-strangers around the world who've spent small bright blocks of time with us, drinking a beer in Copenhagen, riding the overnight train to Edinburgh . . . oh, you know how it goes . . .

The copyright of the article History Interrupted in Traveling on a Budget is owned by Diane Goldberg under the original topic name. Permission to republish History Interrupted in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.