Yes, I'd find that pretty if I drove my car out into the Wisconsin countryside and got back home the same day, but imagine going all the way to Albania and finding your way out to a farm just to look at that! Is that some kind of joke?!
Looking at some of the other 10, I'm thinking: Imagine going all the way to Morocco and getting a view that's like a toned downed version of Zabriskie Point in Death Valley. Why would you do that?!
Is it the mental experience of beating yourself inside the head with I am in Albania! or I am in Morocco! Morocco, I tell you!!? Do you go alone or do you drag along a companion whose inside-of-the-head you hallucinate as We came all the way to Albania/Morocco for this? We could have visited the wineries of Wisconsin or gone back to Zabriskie Point?
"Idyllic" means "Forming a suitable theme for an idyll; full of natural simple charm or picturesqueness. Also used trivially" (OED). Also used trivially — ha ha. I love that.
What, exactly, is an "idyll"? It's a poem (or poetic prose) describing "some picturesque scene or incident, chiefly in rustic life" or "An episode or a series of events or circumstances of pastoral or rural simplicity, and suitable for an idyll."
1873 J. A. Symonds Stud. Greek Poets x. 306 The name of the Idyll sufficiently explains its nature. It is a little picture. Rustic or town life, legends of the gods, and passages of personal experience....The literal etymology is, indeed, "little picture."
Is any place really idyllic in itself, such that you can go there and experience the idyllic, or is the processing through the human mind what is necessary? The original meaning of "idyll" is a piece of writing. It's not the place itself but the poet's description.
So is it not more idyllic to read the poet's idylls? If you go to the place that might have inspired the poet to write an idyll, you'll have to perform the mental magic yourself. Maybe you should. Maybe that will expand your mental powers. But if you don't find the idyllic when you take a day trip to the countryside near your home, is it at all likely that you'll have the mental wherewithal to perform that brain labor after 15 hours of air travel and finding your way to a farm near Tirana?
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It was a hard thing for me to admit to myself that value isn’t objective, it’s subjective. If a person thinks being in an exotic place is valuable then for them it is. If a person thinks a certain brand name on a pair of jeans is more valuable than the exact same jeans but with a Wal-Mart label, then it is. Value, like beauty, is all in the human brain.
I like the idea of touring Wisconsin wine and cheese farms.
I'm with you on this 100%, AA.
If you want to READ an idyll, here's "Snow-Bound: A Winter Idyl" BY JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. It begins:
The sun that brief December day
Rose cheerless over hills of gray,
And, darkly circled, gave at noon
A sadder light than waning moon.
Slow tracing down the thickening sky
Its mute and ominous prophecy,
A portent seeming less than threat,
It sank from sight before it set.
A chill no coat, however stout,
Of homespun stuff could quite shut out,
A hard, dull bitterness of cold,
That checked, mid-vein, the circling race
Of life-blood in the sharpened face,
The coming of the snow-storm told.
The wind blew east; we heard the roar
Of Ocean on his wintry shore,
And felt the strong pulse throbbing there
Beat with low rhythm our inland air.
Much, much more at the link. Enjoy (if you can!).
"I like the idea of touring Wisconsin wine and cheese farms."
When I was a schoolchild in Delaware, the main "field trip" they inflicted on us was a visit to a dairy farm.
I'm good just seeing a dairy farm from the car. I prefer it. And I even have no sense of smell.
As for wineries. I did that in Napa Valley about a half century ago. It's not that great.
I had a Visit Poland by Rail poster, with two opposing trains sharing one of the rails, from Nat Lamp. The flip side was "If Ted Kennedy Had Been Driving a Volkswagen, He'd Be President Today."
I remember the first time I went to Europe, seeing the coast of France out the window and thinking, “That is the coast of France!” I still love being in France. But for the people, not the scenery. OK, maybe the scenery, but for what people have done to it. Maybe I will head over there for a couple of weeks. In the spring I went to the UK and the Netherlands, Belgium [Bruges], and France for cup of coffee and a pastry in Dunkirk in a nondescript café, and I realized that I liked that part of the trip the best, and maybe I will just go live in France. The rest was kind of a touristic overload. Though I really liked the horses pulling the carriages in Bruges, and took a lot of pictures I wish I could find a way to print, of just the horses. I just couldn’t get into all of the purportedly amazing sculpture everywhere. You had to tell yourself that it was centuries old or whatever to work up any enthusiasm.
I have this joke queued up for whenever it becomes appropriate but I despair that that moment may never come, but it has to do with Adolph Hitler and the movie “It’s Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium.” I think it has to do, in my mind, with childhood memories of my mother relating the way the Nazis took her country, Holland, in a day. My dad was there on D-Day, but well behind the lines, in an aircraft. He never once talked about it.
It's all down to genetics. You go to Albania to prove fitness, abundance.
"Is any place really idyllic in itself, such that you can go there and experience the idyllic"
Yes, to a degree. Heavily affected by circumstance of course. Such as not burning (too much) money while tarrying in the idyll. Add bugs and weather and crowds and toilet facilities. And whether someone is feeding you, and how well.
It's not always about the view. Sometimes it's about the experience of a different culture. We have plenty of views in the US.
This is the spirit in which to travel -
Bald and Bankrupt -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g68NJ1-GEiE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCIG3LmnPAs&t=745s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V47PzGpmwXo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42DzIDtMJlY&t=289s
etc.
It helps to travel with charming locals.
Amsterdam is worth the trip. The city itself is fascinating plus the Van Gogh museum, The Stedelijk, and the Rijksmuseum have extraordinary treasures impossible to experience elsewhere.
Currently in Cozumel. You can't experience different cultures, different people, sitting on you ass at home, fearful.
The words that come to mind are humblebrag, bucket-list and affluence.
Pointy places with animals are fun.
I've had The Good Fortune of living most of my life in vacation destinations. Now that I'm in the greater Boston area I'm finding that we are surrounded by fantastic vacation areas of the Adirondacks Vermont New Hampshire Maine and Maritime Canada. No need to waste time traveling to Albania. Death valley been there. The panamint valley and saline valley AR much better
And, of course, there is Kipling to explain.
https://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/kipling/mandalay.html
One can divide the world between those who "get" Mandalay, and those that don't.
My all-time favorite poem as well as my all-time favorite poet, buwaya. As you say, one either 'gets' Mandalay or one doesn't but that's not to conclude that one is right and another wrong, as Dear Hostess would have us believe. Some are seemingly born with a taste for foreign settings and cultures and some are not.
You just had a post saying you appreciate Cat Stevens, for whatever reasons, after decades. That Morning has Broken is your routine in the morning and that (more than likely) it gives you a moments happiness to have that. You also suggest that the music of The Four Tops is - despite being there before - now in the rear view.
I knew a guy who would listen to people (me) talk about music, and stare in frank confusion. I mean, surely he said, that song you like, -------, it is trite / tedious / underwhelming for this reason.... That concert? Really? It will be boring af. ... He was - I recall - always quite interested and up-to-date in discussing the latest in local politics.
As for travel, well.... there's that old poem about some guys leaving Baghdad and hitting the road to Samarkand and on their way out the gates, there are a few stanzas of people saying Really guys?
MJordan has it right. Value is in the minds eye.
I sit here every day looking at the sky ever wondering why I dream my dreams away and I'm living for today in my mind's eye
Things are clearer than before showing me the way, asking me to stay, I'll never close the door to all these things and more in my mind's eye
People running everywhere, running through my life, I couldn't give a care, because they'll never see all that I can see with my mind's eye
I enjoy travel, but I understand people who don't. There are often inconveniences involved, even hazards, and with technology today one can "virtually" visit almost anywhere on Earth. That said, I'll be spending a couple weeks with my wife and some friends in a small town in Germany this summer. My idea of idyllic is having lunch in the ruins of 15th century castle surrounded by a national park (I used to hang out there a lot in the early Nineties, I've hiked the park dozens of times, amazing views). I imagine we'll hit the Benelux and France while we're there, as well. I'm curious to see how different people react to being over there. I imagine the younger ones will be buried in their devices most of the time.
The greatest idyll of them all, by far:
https://youtu.be/891JUSQplzU
That there is a choice to do, or not do, that is everything.
God bless the generations that came before - be they whatever they were - to have provided me such a world which is filled with richness and, with freedom, can be whatever I want it to be.
Work hard all week to earn what you need to provide for yourself and those you love, and if you have a little left over, maybe you can buy some new boots, to go walking on Saturday in the woods. To listen to new music. Or maybe it helps pays for the wifi, for you to have a chance to text a buddy in Samarkand.
Nothing is free. But you should be free to pursue your happiness, and not worry if the buddy next door thinks it wrong, as long as it's legal. So no bear fighting.
P.S. Even Larry David thought so.
The Holodeck, i.e. full immersion virtual reality, will solve this dilemma.
It's coming.
Once upon a time I married a girl from another country. I have visited that country many times over the years with our chi lmk dren. I got to know her family and can speak the language (not perfectly, but okay). This is not tourism, but getting involved.
Children.
Albania must be the new destination for when your friends and colleagues have already gone to Venice and Split and Corfu.
Skylark, if you have some free time in your travels, I suggest spending a day or two in Idar-Oberstein, Rhineland Palatinate. About halfway between Saarbrucken and Frankfurt if memory serves. Just a short detour if you are headed to the Benelux. It's the "Gem Capitol of Germany" with a "have to see it to believe it" Church built into the side of a cliff. Google "Felsenkirche" to get a look.
I'll probably take a trip to my ancestral homeland, Ireland, this year.
I prefer to make my own travel arrangements, not travel in a tour group. I'll go funky and cheap.
Will make it a point to hear an Irish band in a pub in a small town.
Imagine Kipling's soldier, but instead of dreaming of Burmese girls from a bank in London, gets off his arse and gets the almond-skin girl.
I love travel. I love it a little differently now than I did in my salad days - I prefer a bed to a cot or the ground now, for instance. But I love seeing new places.
My husband grew up on the SoCal coast. First time we drove through Provence toward the French coast, with our 16-month-old son just about reaching the end of his rope for the day, my husband (who loves travel even more than I do) muttered, "I can't believe we came halfway around the world to go to Ojai." I, having been an Air Force brat and therefore having grown up largely in boring or unattractive places (all the AF bases are like that), didn't share his irritation.
I enjoy traveling, but I get frustrated being limited to the tourist experience of sightseeing, hotels, and restaurants. It’s much better if you know someone you can visit and can see the way the locals actually live. It surprisingly different, even in countries that are mostly like the US, though the differences are rapidly disappearing.
Why do people travel? I suppose it’s like mountain climbing—you want to go to the top of a peak “because it’s there.” And when you return you see your usual environment with a fresh perspective.
Our winter anti travel post extolling the virtues of home by night car “travel”. Good as, better, than a trip to Rome with all those nasty tourists.
I'm tired of Fodor's or the NY Times telling me where I must travel this coming year. I read those articles, then go back to where I love to visit. It's a large world with a lot to see. But at this point in my life, I love to go back to those places that hit me most in my life. And let them hit me again.
Albania was not on my list.
There was some organization, at least there was a few years ago, that would schedule you trips to these other side of the world, out of the way places. You could be scheduled to:
Kuwait
Iraq
Somalia
Afghanistan (in fact, they had side trips through a LOT of 'stans
Earlier they did a bunch of Asian trips
these weren't just to the big city hotels! No, you'd be in the out back; and up close and personal to the natives.
Maybe NYT's readers should have considered contacted that organization?
It seems to me, that a LOT of the more recent trips had some sort of a new york connection too?
I did the 23 and Me thing, and unsurprisingly I am 98% from Ireland/Scotland. They have a tool which shows you which regions/counties you're ancestors likely came from. I'm going to try to hit a few of the small towns in a 2021 autumn trip.
Heh. I enjoyed last evening drinking with Turks in a beer street near Taksim. I love the Turks. It's just a stopover on my way to Odessa for the holidays.
"Mandalay" always bugged the crap out of me because the geography in the poem is all wrong.
In general, though, Kipling's great.
I travel for work. I don't like to travel for vacations.
""Mandalay" always bugged the crap out of me because the geography in the poem is all wrong."
Somewhat unreliable narrator. And its poetry!
And it is complex. It is wistful, wondering, glorious, bitter, sad.
As it really was, and is. Don't sweat the details.
A new-ish setting to music
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKOXJ9VwWtU
A more traditional one - Oley Speaks version, with Kiplings approval I think.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwckU15OC8U
Two versions by Peter Dawson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cVxnJsn0Is
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6nyHsP_FTI
""Mandalay" always bugged the crap out of me because the geography in the poem is all wrong."
That's like the problem with Poe's Raven: bad ornithology.
Don't know why you have such a bug up your butt about other people's travel, why you so belabor the "inauthentic" travel point, why you're so sure that all those phonies aren't getting anything out of their travels and are really just as miserable and disappointed as you would be if you went along.
No doubt your mind-reading would be correct for some set of participants. (Guess pretenses to mind-reading are OK for some things.) But so what? All kinds of activities are full of people doing it for the "wrong" reasons, all kinds of things are peddled as status-commodities with advertiser's bullshit - including lots of stuff that you enjoy, too.
And who's to say that people who spend a lot of money bucket-listing their way through the trendy suggestions of the NYT travel pages aren't disappointed at all, but are getting exactly the satisfaction that they paid for? Not my idea of travel, but is there a more authentically human pleasure than that to be had from status one-upmanship among one's peers?
The predictability of the comments are funny, though. There will be people "showing you their travel slides", as it were. (I'm guilty of that). There will be the "I'm a traveler, not a tourist" posts. (Is your name Ibn Battuta? Marco Polo? Richard Burton? Have you been kicking about for more than month or two? Do you have the ability to have conversations with the natives in their own tongue, or the local lingua franca, that go beyond expressing basic needs and simple observations? No? Then you're a tourist.)
Then there's always a post like this one, ragging on Althouse for her ragging on travel.
De gustibus of course.
Some people can't see the point of squatting in a Zen monastery while some character periodically whacks you over the head with a board. And some do.
It may all be genetic. I am the descendant of generations of crazy people who "went east", when there was a low probability of survival in it. And I went east myself, to your exotic shores, to get rich and find my pagan girl, which I did.
Our last trip to Europe was to Waterloo on the 200th anniversary of the battle.
We were with English friends. The wife has an ancestor who was one of Wellington's officers at the battle and wrote a letter to a friend describing it. She has that letter.
Like ST, I don't like tours but have done two medical history tours, which among other things, allowed me to sit at Florence Nightingale's desk in Istanbul.
To be aspirational -- the ideal reader of The New York Times -- means to zag when everyone is zigging.
Beautiful things is common, that's why you live in a minimalist concrete block and pay $120,000 for a banana taped to a wall.
You read The New Yorker, where the cartoons aren't funny, because laughing out loud is vulgar.
You fly off to destinations to look at ugly things because it's penance for flying and you don't want the wrath of St. Greta "Up against the wall" to get you.
My wife's reading me bits out of Vanity Fair about private jet owners, the ultra-rich and their ability to evade TSA security rules and make their pilots dress in Abercrombie and Fitch boxer shorts (this was the A&F CEO) and wear their signature perfume.
That's our Comfy Class.
That photo made me think of the last scene in "Sparticus."
Waterloo
My personal favorite bit of personal Waterloo-related tourist experiences: Faveau's cuirass at Les Invalides.
(Althouse might say: "See! You could just look that up online! No need to go to Paris!" which is true, except that I would probably never have known about it had I not gone to Paris.)
Speaking of "travel slides", my favorite travel experience was attending the Albertville Olympics in 1992. I got to hang out with Herschel Walker, Bonnie Blair, the Jamaican Bobsled team and other stars of the Games. Even got interviewed by USA Today for an article that appeared in the Int'l edition. Still have a copy of the article hanging on my wall. That trip gave me a lifelong appreciation of the Winter Olympics.
Riding a bus through the beautiful Bohemian countryside on the way to Prague, I remarked that it looked like southwest Wisconsin. This drew scoffs.
Paco: My personal favorite bit of personal Waterloo-related tourist experiences: Faveau's cuirass at Les Invalides.
(Althouse might say: "See! You could just look that up online! No need to go to Paris!" which is true, except that I would probably never have known about it had I not gone to Paris.)
Plus, seeing the photo and seeing the object are often very different experiences.
To join in the "let me show you my travel slides" activity here: And I never would have gone to Les Invalides and seen that cuirass if it hadn't been for the enthusiastic recommendation of the kindly and interesting man in Espalion who put us up in his (very interesting) house one night on our Chemin de Compostelle pilgrimage.
Never been to Les Invalides. I think we had wandered toward it with vague intent in the past, but never made it in. But our host insisted, we must visit Les Invalides when we got to Paris. I thought I'd be mildly interested, my husband moreso (being a guy and all), but I was completely sucked in. Absolutely fascinating place.
To a Midwesterner, an uncrowded tropical beach could easily be described as idyllic. More so in winter.
One of my other travel experiences that was terrific was visiting Parliament when you could still do it. (Pre-IRA bombing) It was 1977 and we lined up on Saturday morning for the tour which began at 9. A tall man came walking along the line, stopped and told us to go to the head of then line at the door. I didn't know what it was about but finally figured out he was a guide and was collecting the people he heard speaking English. When he had a group of about 20, he told us to follow him and be quick so we stayed ahead of other groups. We set off and his tour was wonderful. He had been a policeman during the war assigned to Parliament. He showed us all sorts of things you would never see in guidebooks. He talked about the morning after Parliament was bombed. He said, "Churchill stood there and I stood over there:" He pointed out how the ceiling had an area of poor plaster patterning and said Queen Anne was too cheap to continue to pay the Italian workmen. It was finished by English workmen who were less skilled.
At the end of the tour, he told us to tip him what we thought it was worth. I gave him 5 pounds and he came running after us. He said we had given him too much. I had been to an antique market at Pprtobello Road which was way over priced so I told him I had only done what he said. I took his picture before we left. A couple of years later the tours ended as the IRA continued bombing,. They have not resumed.
Althouse>>"but imagine going all the way to Albania and finding your way out to a farm just to look at that! Is that some kind of joke?!"
Your statement is a joke. No one, of course, goes to Albania *just* to look at that particular place.
I have travelled all over Albania - over twenty years ago - and it still ranks as one of my favorite trips. It is in fact beautiful. It is also full of lovely people and rife with artistic and historical interest.
It never occurred to me but "idyllic" is a very good word to describe Albania. It is precisely that: pastoral, rural and full of natural simple charm and picturesqueness. It has many beautiful sites and sights. To judge its value to a traveler simply by that one photo of an off-season orchard is, frankly, dumb.
If your view is that the point of traveling somewhere is just to see *views*, as your writing in this piece clearly suggests - or to hike and take photos as seems the case from the reports of your "travels" I've read here - then you will quite understandably be puzzled by anyone going to Albania or Morocco or the like. But the quick answer is, they go to see what is there and who is there - and as it happens, they are regularly treated to, yes, idyllic scenes and experiences along the way. To each his own but, jesus, a little scope on this subject wouldn't hurt you.
Better than Kipling:
My my
At Waterloo Napoleon did surrender
Oh yeah
And I have met my destiny in quite a similar way
The history book on the shelf
Is always repeating itself
Waterloo I was defeated, you won the war
Waterloo promise to love you for ever more
Waterloo couldn't escape if I wanted to
Waterloo knowing my fate is to be with you
Waterloo finally facing my Waterloo
Such as not burning (too much) money while tarrying in the idyll. Add bugs and weather and crowds and toilet facilities. And whether someone is feeding you, and how well.
Still in Bilbao? Definitely a place for retirement and old age, unless the Basques and Catalans and Spanish all of them elect to take up arms against each other.
"It never occurred to me but "idyllic" is a very good word to describe Albania. It is precisely that: pastoral, rural and full of natural simple charm and picturesqueness...."
Spending big money to view the "simple charm and picturesqueness" of a place so far away seems so unaesthetic. Paradoxical, really. If you had a well-developed taste for "simple charm and picturesqueness," you would see it all around you. If you don't, why would you go searching for it in Albania?!
Again, an "idyll" is, originally, a piece of poetic writing, taking the simple scene and elevating it through the skillful use of words. One could simply read. To tell you the truth though, this kind of writing sounds pretty bad (like that poem I quoted above).
"(Althouse might say: "See! You could just look that up online! No need to go to Paris!" which is true, except that I would probably never have known about it had I not gone to Paris.)"/"Plus, seeing the photo and seeing the object are often very different experiences."
The idyllic experience would be a *poem* about it, and I would argue that the poem (if it's good) would be *better* than gazing upon the object "in person."
If you have the problem of not knowing about things unless you happen to travel somewhere and bump into it, I would suggest that poking around in Wikipedia would get you much more than going places and looking at what's served up in the museums and churches and historical sites.
I have been to Paris. More than once. I remember looking at the jaw of St. Louis (in some gallery in Notre Dame). Being with it "in person" was very different from just seeing a photo of it, but I'd have preferred a high-quality poem about it. The effect in person was... freaky. I don't understand carving up the saint. Can't they keep him in one piece? But I felt a little icky being judgmental of people who may have deeply and sincerely believed in what they were doing and thought maybe it was bad of me to be staring at it and thinking ill of them.
It's probably just me, but the picture reminds me of the crucifixes lined up along the Appian Way at the end of Spartacus. Not idyllic.
Thank you for recalling Whittier's grand poem! I think I haven't read it in 40 years. Such a wonderful evocation of home and childhood, family and hometown, all set like jewels within the vast onrush of History-- the world of the righteous opposition to slavery and the Grand Army of the Republic. Were Snow-Bound taught in schools these days it would require as much annotation as Shakespeare, alas.
Yet, haply, in some lull of life,
Some Truce of God which breaks its strife,
The worldling’s eyes shall gather dew,
Dreaming in throngful city ways
Of winter joys his boyhood knew;
And dear and early friends—the few
Who yet remain—shall pause to view
These Flemish pictures of old days;
Sit with me by the homestead hearth,
And stretch the hands of memory forth
To warm them at the wood-fire’s blaze!
And thanks untraced to lips unknown
Shall greet me like the odors blown
From unseen meadows newly mown,
Or lilies floating in some pond,
Wood-fringed, the wayside gaze beyond;
The traveller owns the grateful sense
Of sweetness near, he knows not whence,
And, pausing, takes with forehead bare
The benediction of the air.
On the great and wrathful day of Judgment all the relics will be restored in the saints' own bodies; until then, we have them to remind us of their struggles and our common destiny. Whittier was far from the Roman Church but he would have had a flicker of understanding so far as the veneration of the saints and of their relics goes. I imagine.
Althouse>>Spending big money to view the "simple charm and picturesqueness" of a place so far away seems so unaesthetic. Paradoxical, really. If you had a well-developed taste for "simple charm and picturesqueness," you would see it all around you. If you don't, why would you go searching for it in Albania?!<<
It is of course your prerogative to ignore my point but I will reiterate it nonetheless. People don't go to Albania and others to "search for charm and picturesqueness" - they incidentally encounter those when they are there for the reasons I explained.
How stultifyingly parochial your comment is. It never occurred to me that it might tax the imagination to understand why someone might be interested in seeing those very things somewhere besides state parks in Wisconsin or cute little cafes in Colorado. Who knows, y'know, the charm and picturesqueness somewhere else, like say, Albania, just might have a little bit different quality or perspective - and wouldn't that be interesting and edifying and enriching!
>>Again, an "idyll" is, originally, a piece of poetic writing, taking the simple scene and elevating it through the skillful use of words. One could simply read.<<
I know what an idyll is. The magazine didn't have anything to do with idylls - that was your interjection midway in your piece about it. The mag article was about the "idyllic" nature of such places and that word refers to the qualities I mentioned in my first post, not to poetry.
The destination is not the point. Being able to tell other NYT readers that you went to the destination is the point.
If you're in an Upper West Side coffee shop, and you say, "The rural Albanian scenery was so beautiful," you will receive the appropriate, ego-stroking responses of approval.
If you're in an Upper West Side coffee shop, and you say, "The rural Wisconsin scenery was so beautiful," you will receive a stunned look and be asked, "Why the hell did you go to Wisconsin? In-laws?"
"I felt a little icky being judgmental"
I'm glad the moment passed.
Ice Nine: It is of course your prerogative to ignore my point but I will reiterate it nonetheless.
Forget it, Ice. This is one of those topics about which Althouse has such a bug up her butt that she always makes irrational, if not downright weird, or weirdly defensive responses. ("I have, too, been to Paris!" Huh? Where'd that come from? Who knows.)
She can be relied on to ignore points or respond to them in petty and silly (and weird) ways. But I must say that suggesting that Paco enjoyed his serendipitous travel encounters because he's, well, just not as well-read or as well-informed as her is petty and silly (and weird) even by her very high standards of petty and silly (and weird) on this topic.
Meeting people of different cultures, being immersed in a different culture, requires true self esteem. Trying to speak the language, making mistakes, laughing at yourself, is healthy. It gets you out of an insular existence.
We went to Tulum on Thursday. Magnificent. My bride fell hard and injured her eye and knee. The concern and empathy was so heartening. A vendor selling beer ran over w/ ice for her to put on her eye. A random nurse got a first aid kit from nearby cab and put disinfectant on the wound. I'm not saying this couldn't or wouldn't happen in the US. But, the feel was different. The empathy was palpable. This is a gracious culture. Even in an accident, the trip was enhanced. I'll remember the genuine kindness of strangers more than I will the ruins..which are impressive.
AA said: "...but imagine going all the way to Albania and finding your way out to a farm just to look at that! Is that some kind of joke?!..."
It looks like early spring to me. I am sure that it has its charms, which could be discovered if one went there with an open mind. There must be a reason why people have been living there since before the time of the ancient Greeks.
How many people that you've met have met an Albanian? The Soviets saw to it that the country was kept ludicrously backward throughout the 20th century. A frequent result of such a policy is the preservation of old-time folkways, which can be interesting to an outsider, even if one does not care to participate.
If you want easy entertainment and pretty much guaranteed nice weather, you could always book a junket to Hawaii. I'd be much obliged if you brought a pineapple back for me.
Of course, what's really going on here is that the writer and editors of the piece want to show off how sophisticated they are: rather than directing the first-time visitor to Central Europe to say, Prague, they propose sending you to a vinyard in Albania.
Well it's probably cheaper than (already inexpensive) Prague, but you won't have to worry that your friends have already been there when you start talking about it at your next cocktail party.
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