From Center Hall
The Art of Travel
When I was about to enter college and Freddie Laker and People’s Express were driving down international airfares, my father found an inexpensive flight that allowed my older sister and me to explore France for two months.
Five stops (including an emergency landing in Shannon, Ireland “to pick up parts”) and too many hours later, we landed in Paris. We found a rickety student hostel near to the Oberkampf Metro station and collapsed.
Jet-lagged when I woke up the next morning, I stumbled downstairs to light pouring into the room and breakfast on the table—baskets of baguettes next to bowls of butter and jam and slices of bread.
“Café ou chocolat?” the waiter asked.
I wasn’t a coffee drinker, but figured this must be the kind of moment it was made for. The waiter brought me a bowl of coffee with steamed milk.
I’ve been hooked ever since.
Two months wandering the cities, towns, and countryside of France made travel a lifetime habit, too.
It’s exhilarating, it’s exhausting. Sometimes travel recharges you, sometimes it’s like putting your finger in a light socket.
It amplifies everything about life, which may be why travel stories are some of our most memorable.
Travel has brought Lora, our daughters, and me together in ways few things can. Without the distractions of our everyday lives, we’re all four locked in and focused, all in it together.
Creating a sense of home in an unfamiliar place becomes an art, and there are many skills to be learned.
That’s also why we try to make a travel experience part of every student’s Wabash education.
The face-to-face learning that infuses our classrooms is excellent preparation for stepping into another culture.
Travel strengthens you, no matter what you encounter in life. You learn to deal with setbacks and late trains; you learn how to figure it out when things go completely awry and you don’t speak the language. It teaches you about responsibility: how to protect your passport, money, and to help your fellow travelers (even if you’re just carrying their luggage) along the way.
There’s a lot of downtime, too. Sometimes you are waiting hours for a bus or plane. Sometimes the train doesn’t have Wi-Fi. You get a chance to disconnect and reflect. Many people make major life decisions while traveling, because you can take a deep breath, look at a blanker slate.
Then there’s the adventure.
When I was studying at the London School of Economics during my junior year in college, a couple friends and I decided to go to Spain. I remember reading The Sun Also Rises on what had to be the slowest train between Paris and Madrid, arriving during Easter Week and the Semana Santa processions.
Toward the end of that trip we traveled to Morocco, with me lugging my econ books through the streets of Meknes and Fez. In the latter city we got to know some Moroccan students, and we decided to go to a movie together—Raiders of the Lost Ark, a favorite of my father’s and mine and a film I’d seen several times.
You may recall the famous scene (filmed in neighboring Tunisia) in which Indiana Jones encounters an Arab swordsman who displays his skills with the blade and threatens to kill him. In the improvised version of the scene used in the movie, Jones simply draws his gun and shoots him. In the United States it drew the biggest laughs in the film.
But sitting with our new Arab friends and as one of only three non-Arabs in the theater, I started looking around to make sure I knew where the exits were. I just wasn’t sure how that scene would translate culturally.
But our Moroccan friends laughed harder than I did. It seemed like everyone in the theater thought the scene was the funniest thing imaginable.
I realized then that there really are some universal constants. You don’t always know where they are, and you have to be cautious and humble as you search for them. But that was a moment of understanding for me, one I could only get by traveling thousands of miles from home to an unfamiliar culture and place.
Like most learned from traveling, it is a lesson that informs me still.
Gregory Hess
President