free your mind

Sometimes I think I’ve lived and seen too much of life for my age. I’ve traveled to many and very different places. But every once in a while, especially when I’m at home, I realize that’s impossible. You can’t ever have too much; traveling is the attempt to satisfy an insatiable desire, and therefore we travelers are doomed to keep moving from place to place.
So here is the story of how I learned one of the most important things that helped me enjoy every trip even more than usual.
Bariloche, a not-that-small town on the edge of the Patagonia’s Andes, is the place where I grew up. Mostly cold weather, except for a few months in summer, also home of one of Argentina’s greatest ski resorts. It was here, in a small bar I had never got in before where I met Manuel. Quite a well-built person, probably in his mid-30’s, with a long very well cared beard, also born and raised in this beautiful town.
For some reasons I can’t still remember, I ended up sharing a beer with this fellow and some friends. We were talking about food, trips and places where we had both been to in Europe, until the topic “things we like most about traveling” came up. He told me that his favorite thing about traveling is coming back home. He explained how much he always enjoyed exploring Bariloche through 'new eyes'. About how much every trip changes you, and consequently, when you come back to a place that is familiar to you, you can look at it from an absolutely different perspective, that way, you can also rediscover it and therefore, rediscover yourself.
So, after he finished talking, I told him that despite the fact that I doubted there was anything at all I didn’t know about this city, I decided to follow his advice and be a tourist in my own town, after all, it’s the cheapest place to visit!
So I did it, I went to all the places I knew that were interesting, and surprisingly he was right, they were different. I had the feeling I could now compare the people and the places with something else, I guess with “the new me”.
So, if you are at home, planning a trip, thinking about traveling, knowing new destinations, I strongly recommend to take your time and first to get lost in your local town. Explore it, go to all sort of spots, both the ones you’ve already been to, and those you haven’t. You never know when a place you never thought as interesting, a restaurant, a store, a pub, or maybe, that bar you’ve always looked at on your way home might change the way you look at things
15/4/13