When it comes to travel, many of us, if not most of us, have some ambitions of seeing more of the world, and for good reason. Travel is a way to better understand yourself by understanding your fellow man (and woman) and nature, itself, as well as our place in it. Travel might just offer the meaning of life up to us on a silver platter, as it does connect many disparate human cultures and the natural world all under the same banner of Planet Earth, and that sounds like the foundation of a great philosophy to me. However, travel is a multifaceted experience that requires a lot of planning, and the efficacy of said planning determines the quality of your trip. Here are some tips to make the most of your travels.
First and foremost, international travel can come with a language barrier. This can make even simple tasks more difficult and, while it won’t ruin your trip, you could stand to work on this. So, try learning the local language of your upcoming destinations. You don’t have to learn the language fluently, though that’s the ideal version of this scenario. You can, instead, simply learn the basics required to ask for directions, order food, etc. Either way, a program like Rosetta Stone or a translation dictionary are a big help here and can drastically improve your whole experience. Language is sort of like the atom of human culture. It is the smallest unit of culture in a sense, out of which the larger culture is built. This is especially true in the case of words that don’t translate into other languages. A great, but terrible, example of this is the German word schadenfreude, which roughly translates to “the feeling of taking joy from the misfortune of others.”