9907040035
DETROIT FREE PRESS
990704
Sunday, July 04, 1999
METRO FINAL
1H
MITCH ALBOM
Copyright (c) 1999, Detroit Free Press
TRAVELER, WHY NOT SIMPLY DISCONNECT?
LONDON -- I can still see the old train station in that northern Italian village. Can
still feel sun on the back of my neck and the weight of a huge canvas pack on
my shoulders.
I was just out of college, traveling across Europe, as kids did back then. I
had little money -- too little to spare for phone calls or a newspaper -- and
the next train wasn't for hours. I took a place against the white stone wall
of the station, dropped on my rear end and exhaled.
"This," I said to myself, gazing at the hot empty streets, "must be what they
mean by 'the middle of nowhere.' "
Of course, it wasn't nowhere. Everywhere is somewhere. And as I sat there,
letting time crawl by, I felt my breathing slow and my eyes droop, until the
whole thing was a bit dreamy.
I had no place to go, nowhere to be, no appointments, no obligations and, more
important, no options. It was, when I look back on it, not only somewhere, it
was a wonderful place, as calm and quiet as I have ever been.
I thought about that the other day when I read an article about today's young
footloose backpackers, and how their treks across Europe and Asia now include
regular stops -- at least two or three a day -- to log on to the Internet and
get e-mail and read news.
"I've been checking at Yahoo.com almost every day of my trip," said a young
man from North Dakota who was traveling through Bangkok. He'd been monitoring
a stock he owned, "and it's definitely time for me to sell my shares."
Sell his shares?
That's getting away from it all?
Avoidance therapy
The story went on to point out how Internet shops and access sites are
springing up all over the world's tourist spots. Travelers use the Web not
only for information and e-mail but for cyber phone calls and chats with
relatives. One woman talked about how going on-line enabled her to keep
appointments and schedules with other travelers.
"In a way, it's sad," one young man admitted, "because I should let myself get
absorbed in the surroundings. But writing messages on the Internet is a good
way to keep a journal."
I don't know. To me, avoiding such things was always the point of footloose
travel.
There is a great deal to learn from getting lost, from being out of touch,
from writing postcards as you sit on the bank of a river or on the ledge of a
castle, not in some dry, sterile cubicle.
To me, the fun of being in places like Greece, Turkey, Finland or Thailand was
how easily you could disappear from the shackles of the everyday. The phone
didn't ring. The door heard no knocks. If you truly felt the need to learn
something from home -- the latest political development, or a baseball score
-- you had to search for an English newspaper that was no doubt three days
behind.
You know what you learned from that? That life goes on without instant
information. That things can -- believe it or not -- wait.
Instead, today, we journey to new worlds while taking our old worlds with us.
We rent cell phones. We book rooms with faxes. We want CNN and MTV on the
hotel televisions. We want a modem to plug in a computer so as not to miss a
thing.
But if you don't miss a thing, what's the point of being away?
Find a way to get lost
I remember, in my post-college travels, wandering through European cities,
leafing through guidebooks for cheap youth hostels. My friends and I would
march miles to get there, only to find the information was out of date and the
place was closed. You know what? It was fun. We laughed and we found someplace
else to sleep.
It was part of something that I lament now that it's gone, something that has
all but disappeared for Americans: being disconnected.
You can't walk through an airport anymore without TV monitors blaring CNN.
What about those of us who don't want the latest news every 20 minutes?
At a Caribbean hotel not long ago, I ordered breakfast and was delivered a
faxed version of the New York Times: the latest info, even the weather. What
if I don't care to know all that?
People at Microsoft and CNN will say you need to be in touch. I don't know. I
say you need open space, new air, and landscapes that force you to get lost.
The planet, after all, has been here a lot longer than Microsoft.
If I could do anything for young travelers today, I'd plop them by that
Italian train station on a hot, lazy summer day. I'd tell them to breathe, in
and out, in and out.
And I'd steal their batteries.
MITCH ALBOM can be reached at 313-223-4581 or albom@freepress.com. Listen to
Mitch's radio show, "Albom in the Afternoon," 3-6 p.m. weekdays on WJR-AM
(760).
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