days I believe I could be totally happy living out of my backpack & eating street food for the rest of my life. Some days I believe that is the ONLY thing that will make me happy. These are not good days. I don't want to talk about it.But enough about today & how far from travel it feels. As we closed out 2010, there was lots of hub bub about the end of the decade (if one includes 2010 in the previous decade) & about progress & change & that we really are TEN YEARS since 2000. I don't know about you, but 2000 doesn't really seem that long ago. ...until I start to think about travel.
(right: besties in Rome, 1/04)
Technology has changed our lives significantly in the last 10 years. It has changed our relationships, how we do business, how we get our information & most importantly to me, how we travel.
I was walking this afternoon with a Rick Steves podcast in my ear - what I like to think of as a conversation between Rick & myself. He was teaching me about Michelangelo & I was reminding him that Florence is a kick ass place to spend New Years. Listening to his specific & focused podcasts always remind me of a moment of my own travel that I've already forgotten.
Forgotten? What, am I 80?
No....but as time marches on, I get further & further from my first travel experiences.
This got me thinking about my own reflection on 2010 - the ten year anniversary of my first trip abroad - studying at the University of Edinburgh in the fall of 2000.
Technology has changed travel SO much in 10 years. It seems even silly to compare 2000 to 2010 - as if travel before 2000 didn't exist. I can't even imagine (no really, I can't even imagine) what it must've been like to travel 30 years ago when my mom was traveling Europe & when a 20-something Rick Steves was a European tour guide.
Ten years ago, I purchased my plane ticket to Edinburgh from a travel agent (on a brand new airline called "Virgin Atlantic" ha!) Ok, more appropriately, my mom purchased by Virgin Atlantic plane ticket from a travel agent, but whatever. Online travel booking was limited to a few high-fee websites of questionable integrity - or perhaps more accurately, our confidence in spending $1000 online ten years ago was shaky at best.
I met my new roommates when I arrived at the Cowgate apartment, suitcase in tow. Today, we would have long since friended each other on facebook, read each other's blogs & no matter how removed, discovered some friend or experience we have in common. We'd already know where each other grew up, went to college. We'd have a sense of each other's narcissism, interests & whose boyfriend was the hottest. If I was to study abroad today, I would arrive at the apartment with an introduction to my new roommates the 2000 me could have never phathomed.
We didn't have internet at our apartment. Now, anyone older than me reading this is probably thinking, "uh, there was a long time in history when people did not have internet at home". True, but not much in my lifetime [I believe the Stellfoxes got internet in 1995? Somewhere around me being 15?]. Take it a step further & say, within the same household, one child will remember life before the internet & one will not. That is to say, my experience with the internet (such as looking up a movie time online for the first time) is completely different than my little brother's (born in 1987). His is an online life - not a before & after internet. Just after, just normal. Even within one generation, our technological experience changed forever. People my age are among the youngest humans on the planet who remember life before the internet.
...And in 2000, we were juniors in college & headed abroad. So, we didn't have internet at my apartment in Edinburgh. Not only was internet limited at home, it was limited at the university as well. While Western has just opened the new library, complete with a "computer lab" (not to be confused with the Woodring lab of 1996 Mac Classics in the basement of Miller Hall), the University of Edinburgh was slow to utilize technology & frankly, I don't think they cared very much. We registered in person & computer usage in the library was limited to a few PCs against the back window on the fourth floor of the library - oh and you maxed out at 20 minutes.Because internet access was so limited both for students & for travelers in general (afterall, who had heard of wifi?), huge internet cafes popped up in European cities all over the continent. Huge, orange EasyEverythings lured in travelers with their modern computers & low rates. I would actually pay to write my papers, do basic research & write emails. As internet has become more common & gone wireless, free wifi has put big internet cafes out of business. In fact, the 10,000 square foot EasyEverything on Rose Street in Edinburgh went out of business years ago.
Had international cell phones, Skype & free wifi existed 10 years ago, I would have been in trouble. Between my dysfunctional love life (but never boring!) & my 21-year-old capacity for staying up all night without physical consequence, I would have LIVED on my phone with boyfriends in several time zones. As it was, I did not have a cell phone. Actually, I didn't even KNOW anyone with a cell phone. Today, I can't imagine 30 minutes without my phone. If I'm cooking or showering or otherwise without my phone for an hour or more, I'm sure to have several people fear I've perished (yes Hayley, I'm talking about you). Studying abroad in 2000, I had two options for phone calls: first, I must purchase a calling card from the nice Pakistani man at the kiosk on the corner - then I could use the phone at the apartment or the ironically more private pay phone (or "phone box", as it were) on the street below. Needless to say, my phone calls were brief & more functional in nature - none of today's 3 hour Skype dates with my sister & baby niece.
Email. Lifeblood. I would run, every day, up to the computer I believed to be the most undiscovered on the fourth floor of the library. Check email. There would be several - I would respond at brief, without pictures, stories or terribly interesting substance. Once I got through the first 5 songs on my walkman (featuring that new group, Rascal Flatts & "Everyday Love"), I knew it had been about 20 minutes & I better wrap it up.
(right: Krakow, 11/05)
Today, we blog. Oh, do we blog. I sit in my livingroom every day (don't doubt me) & read blogs from travelers. Blogs are long & flowery & bright with pictures. Rather than email - with a readership of questionable interest, travelers can blog & friends can peek in at their convenience. Or, travelers can blog & people they don't even know can follow their stories (who often care more than the friends & family, I might add). I can read travel blogs on the bus, waiting in line at the Post Office or dining alone over a Starbucks breakfast wrap. Rather than sitting in an EasyEverything or on the fourth floor of a university library, my travel writers are sitting on their hostel bunks, picking up free wifi, blogging on their iPads at their own pace. [a note about iPads - this is exactly the technology travelers have been waiting for - a lighter, smaller, cheaper version of a "laptop" which no self-respecting backpacker would EVER bring into risk - yet a fantastic 3-in-one of media, communication & data storage. Way to go Apple. Again.]
And blogs show me pictures. You will not see a picture of me from 2000 abroad in this blog post. Those pictures a) are so hideous they should never be seen b) were taken on 10 disposable cameras I brought home in my backpack & c) are taped to the inside of a scrapbook in my attic on G Street. Of course they were not digital! I couldn't take a picture of my apartment on my phone & text it to my friends & family. I couldn't upload a picture of myself floating on the Dead freaking Sea & post it to my fb like it ain't no thing (Anna, I'm hating you extra right now). Come to think of it, you won't see any pictures from my trip in 2001 either - they were also artistically crafted on disposable cameras (but let's be honest, that was not the low point of that trip - that was the trip I was given money on the street in confusion that I was a homeless person. Dark in Dublin 2k1.)
There was no tripadvisor.com or Lonely Planet Thorntree forums to direct my efforts. I couldn't change my plane ticket or check in for my flight from my phone. When I went to Vienna to see a "friend", I booked my ticket through a British travel agent for $350. Today, low fares airlines will hoist you up & over the continent for $50. Technology has afforded the low fares airline industry the ability to run an entire flight operation with 1 person (or a couple more, but not many more).
(right: Russian train, 12/07)
Couchsurfing couldn't even exist without the facebook-type technology required to connect an international network of travelers. Ten year ago's night at the train station is this year's friendly local pick-up & free accommodation. Delightful!
(left: Tallinn, Estonia 1/08)I'm not going to say that European borders have been that big of a deal in the last 10 years, but I will say that I come home with a lot less change at the bottom of my bag these days. The Euro, for better or worse, is dead handy for European travelers. Simply in change fees, we come out WAY on top. The year 2000 was the official time-of-death for travelers checks, but someone forgot to tell Europe. ATMs were much more rare than they happily are now. In the last 10 years, cash has gone from something we protected dearly (after all, we had to search for it & it's irreplaceable) to that of currency casual - that is, cash is easier to find, easier to replace than your credit card & easy to use over the next border. Major shift in perv pouch security priorities.
(right: Norway, 8/09)
I really have no idea what technology will do to travel in the NEXT 10 years. I hope it will not just increase convenience but do good (can't someone invent preservation technology that the whole of Egypt could employ?). Will we be wearing real-time cameras to take friends, family (or blog readers) into the colosseum with us? Will Alaska Airlines smartphone boarding pass actually work instead of making us look like idiots? One thing I am sure of, the next technological 'thing', the next advancement, the next gadget will make the world seem ever smaller, will further the give & take between the traveling & the home community. That is excellent news for me, in my livingroom, loving my ability to travel with and through my friends & my computer.
Bon voyage 2010.
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