Travelling To Improve

“You can’t see everything in Louvre”

Those were the words that echoed in my mind as I tirelessly walked in the biggest museum I have ever visited. Kathy, my Canadian friend that I’ve met at the hostel, said those exact words to me days ago, yet I didn’t realize she meant them literally until I see the museum with my own eyes.

My heart started pounding as soon as I get in line for the security check. Quickly, I rented an audio guide from the counter and used its navigation feature to head to the Egyptian Antiquities collection. Of course, this was not a random decision. In fact, this collection was one of the main reasons I’ve always dreamt of visiting Louvre. And that is all because my passion about mysterious events. I am a big fan of mystery genre in every medium; books, movies, video games, you name it. But if there is anything I know about mysterious stories, it’s that the real ones are always better than the fictional ones.

As I paced through the pieces in the collection, I tried to understand this ancient civilization better. I was looking at every piece as if I was going to discover something about it that well-educated archaeologists couldn’t. Soon, I have lost track of time. When I finished the collection, I realized that I had so little time left and so much to see! I started running from one famous artwork to another. But don’t get me wrong though, I was not running between them to rush and see as many artworks as I can, I was running so that I could give each of them the time and appreciation it deserves.

Unfortunately I can’t tell you about my impression of each individual piece. But I can tell you about the unified impact they had on me. Thanks to my limited amount of time, the museum became a time vortex for me. The artworks and the historical pieces represented the milestones of the human kind. In Louvre, I got to see how our perception of the world has changed over time and how different artists reflected this change in their works. This experience led me to a mystery, the biggest one I’ve ever encountered;

“What pushes the human race forward?”

I am really glad that my Louvre visit was so much more than just taking a selfie with Mona Lisa and tweeting about how small the actual painting is. I’m glad that it was about progress and that is why Paris will always have a special place in my heart.