Doctor My Eyes

We were sitting with the parents in the lovely garden of the Stift’s Cafe at Klosterneuburg. The place was fairly empty – it was Monday and the museum was closed. The wind was swirling the first brown leaves across the plaza but we were protected by the garden’s walls. The waiter was kind and spoke excellent English and the food wasn’t bad either. We were talking about travel fatigue which right now, I have in spades.We’d skipped dinner the night before, leaving the parents to fend on their own – something they’re perfectly capable of doing. While at dinner, they met a guy from their neck of the woods, Central Oregon. He was part of an large group of travelers, probably one of those, “if it’s Tuesday, this must be Belgium” tours. We got to talking about what it was like to travel that way.

I get why people do it. I totally do. They are taken care of and they see a lot and they absolutely maximize their time. They visit the highlights and snap the right pictures and they surely feel a sense of accomplishment upon their return home, flipping through their photos and listing off the places they’ve been. London Paris Berlin Vienna Budapest Prague Copenhagen Amsterdam back on the plane whoosh!

But I can not travel that way. At the risk of sounding like I think I’m so effing special, I’m too sensitive to travel that way. See, after we went to the flea market, I had to go lay down. It’s too much input for me, I get overwhelmed and I need to empty my mental buffer, to make space for new things. My eyes get full.

My preferred methods are perhaps the most leisurely and spoiled manner of travel. We go somewhere and then we sit there for a while, watching. Not watching anything in particular, just watching. I am delighted to stroll nowhere, to get coffee and eavesdrop on conversation I do not understand. We stay with friends who drag us off to some local restaurant or take us swimming and then we go back to the house and I take a nap. Perhaps I am rationalizing my laziness, but I like to think that all that input needs a little time to settle. I like to read my book and, if i have the possiblity, to look at my photos and think about what I’ve seen earlier in the day. I like to do a little scribbling.

I don’t think I could do that on the tour bus. It’s the constant motion that wears me down, the mere idea of something moving when for a few hours, I want things to be still. Sleeping in a train compartment might work, but slouching in a bus seat? I don’t think so.

I’m not particularly ambitious anymore when it comes to travel. I don’t need to collect a specific list of places I’ve been or things I’ve done. I am past the competitive days of getting as many stamps as possible in the passport. This is a good thing. It means that as much as I want to go back to Venice, I’m also hugely satisfled with the tiny amount of time I spent there. It’s that result that makes me think that somehow, things are amped up for me. I don’t think, “Damn, I was so cheated over Venice!” I think, “Oh. My. God. Venice BLEW MY MIND!” And I was hardly there at all.

We were very busy during the time we spent in Vienna, taking the subway here and there, walking through the neighborhoods, hunting for dinner, seeing the art, eating cake, ordering cup after cup after cup of coffee. And now, I am very tired. Yesterday, I lay around our apartment doing, what? Nothing, I think. I made a little lunch, I read my book, I took a nap. I thought about how big Vienna is compared to Seattle – wow, it’s huge! – and wondered if I would feel tired if I lived there. I wondered how the people of that city find their quiet.

Husband accuses me of “taking a liking to the countryside.” I am offended by this as I consider myself to be so very urban, but I suspect there is a grain of truth in what he says. I instigated this remark by rolling down the window and saying, “HI COWS!” to the cows next to the arterial that leads to our tiny town. And now, I am postively wallowing in the silence, having traded the sirens for the clanging of bells just beyond the fence. Green is a restful color.

What I like is the time to think. The time to empty out all the ideas and pictures that have crowded in to my head for the past five days. Once that stuff has settled, I’ll be ready for more.

I’ve been reading a little about “Slow Travel.” It’s the idea that rather than just blasting through a place, you should take some time, meet some locals, stay put. Okay, see the sights, but see the non-sights too, so you can get a sense of where you are. This is a philosophy I can totally get behind. Time to see and time to think. Time to rest your eyes after they’ve worked so hard looking at things.

Slow down, you move too fast. Gotta make the morning last.