The Daily Diary of a Wandering Restaurateur
May 13 - The Long Road Home

Today is more about mechanics than anything. Drive two-and-a-half hours to Nice. Turn in the car. Catch a flight to Paris. Spend the night at the airport (and don't even try to go into the city). Catch a morning flight back to Seattle via San Francisco. Not much more to tell. Not much more to show. However, this is the time in a trip when I tend to get a bit philosophical, so stand by ...

We have been out of the country for three weeks with virtually no news at all from the US ... and you know what? We didn't miss it at all. Just as the US media seems to forget that anything meaningful ever happens elsewhere in the world, the folks in Europe also do very nicely without our daily drama as well. Despite the self-imposed news black-out, it appears that the world continued to turn and life went on as it always has ... in many other languages ... and it went on quite nicely, thank you!

Perhaps it is just ego that makes us think that the world revolves around our own petty intrigues and squabbles. Perhaps we have reached our limit as to the the amount of information we can absorb and so subconsciously limit our intake to just local concerns. Perhaps the French or the Italians think that theirs is the only news that matters, too. I don't know.

But at least here, the rest of the world -- or at least other cultures -- are a lot closer. I think that creates more of an awareness that there are others who share the planet and that you need to be conscious of them and how what you do affects them. Living in isolation tends to create a false sense of omnipotence ... rather like breathing your own exhaust but more dangerous.

I recall hearing that only something like 20% of Americans even own a passport ... and that scares me. From my perspective, the biggest value in travel is becoming immersed, at least for a few days or weeks, in another culture. To meet people who are like us but very different and to do all that on their home turf where they make the rules. I think that if more of us traveled, we would not tolerate some of the stupid things we do as a country. We would have more of a sense of our place in the larger scheme of things ... and that could only be good.

Travel is very humbling. Tourism is usually not ... and there is a difference. As someone once pointed out to us in New Zealand, we are travelers and not tourists. It is not just our aversion to tour busses. It is because our interest is in connecting with the people and their culture, at least as far as that can be done without a common language, rather than simply seeing the sights.

The sights can be worth a look, of course, but we at least approach our visits with curiosity, humility and a high level of respect for the people and their culture. We travel more slowly than most and always with the idea that someday we will be back ... whether or not that actually happens. Sometimes when you try to see less, you end up seeing a lot more of the really important things.

This part of the world has been inhabited for thousands of years ... and even with that, it is far younger than civilizations elswhere. To travel in Europe is to be enveloped by history, to see where events unfolded centuries ago and to start to understand how those events have shaped the current thinking of the people. It really provides a perspective on the evolution of our species over time ... and in a geological sense, relatively recent time at that.

By comparison, we in the "new world" are cultural lightweights. We have virtually no history by world standards and what we have we tend to disregard. Granted, we have had an amazing impact during our short reign as the Masters of the World. But from here it is more possible to see that, like the Roman empire, our days as the leading power in the world are slipping away due to the same almost adolescent arrogance that ultimately destroyed Rome.

Like it or not, in a global sense we are truly the new kids on the block and we would do well to pay more respect to our elders ... at least until we all have to start learning Chinese!

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