Why travel?
Why do people travel? A deep question, answered quite simply – to learn. People travel to learn about the world, themselves, and others. Travel opens up opportunities for people to step out of their comfort zone and experience new things. Whether a new food, a new language, or a different culture, when you travel someplace new you learn something. I think the learning that you do while traveling is the most important kind of learning you can do. The information you pick up along the way is invaluable to everyday life, whatever you do when not traveling.
I personally love learning about the history of any place I go. I already love learning about history in school, but to learn about something when you are actually in the place that you’re learning about makes the experience way more special. Every time I travel someplace new I always make sure to pick up on the stories of the place. Many places of significant historical importance will have plaques that explain some of the history, but oftentimes when you travel to lesser known places (the best kind of travel!) you have to do your own research. I find that the stories I learn about when traveling stick with me much longer than the information I learn in a classroom setting. Learning the history of a place is one of my favorite aspects of traveling. One of my favorite experiences learning while traveling was when I was in Iceland this past summer. We went to the Saga Museum where they illustrated Icelandic history by making wax figures of some Reykjavík residents and setting up historical scenes with these wax figures. It was both really fun and actually interesting. Also, in general, a great thing to do in Reykjavík as it's indoors and it's always raining in Iceland. I remember so much of the things I learned there, just because it was so interactive and special, and the events they talked about in the museum were set in numerous places we had just been to days before. It was a great way to learn all about the history of Iceland and I would recommend this place to everyone visiting Reykjavík.
On a closing note, I do know that I’ve been very fortunate to be able to travel as much as I have throughout my life. My being German-American has greatly helped me in that regard as I grew up traveling back and forth between the two countries. On this blog I would like to share some of my favorite stories from around the world to help share my passion and excitement for travel and learning about different places. I will share information about some of my favorite places in the world and what made them so special for me.
I agree that learning about history in the place it occurred can be very powerful and more engaging than learning it in a book or a class. This summer I visited The Tenement Museum on the lower east side of Manhattan, and I learned a lot about early twentieth-century sweatshops, immigrant Jewish families in New York in that era, and life in the tenements, and it felt like I was really *absorbing* what I learned about. (It's a great museum, and I highly recommend visiting if you're ever in Manhattan. They have different tours that focus on various immigrant communities from different eras of New York's history by relating the stories of the families that lived in the tenement building that houses the museum––Italian, Irish, and German, as well as the Lithuanian Jewish family our tour focused on.)
ReplyDeleteI actually went to The Tenement Museum this summer as well when I was in New York for some college visits! We did the tour on Irish immigrants, which was so interesting. I agree that it was so vivid to actually see the tenements and the space that the tour guide was teaching us about, I felt like I learned much more than I would have otherwise.
DeleteI always love looking at your instagram and seeing all of the beautiful places you've gone! Reading this blog post and understanding the meaning travel has to you and your love of understanding the history of a place makes it so much cooler. Excited to read about more of your adventures!
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