"¿No estamos perdiendo la oportunidad de experimentar sentimientos diferentes sólo por repetir aquellos que ya conocemos como placenteros?"
17.08.2016
So I was in that plane, from Miami to Madrid (flying with Air Europe in a very expensive flight to spend the holidays of La Feria de Agosto, the biggest event of the year in my hometown, Málaga), when suddenly that man started to talk to me.
*-Oh my god I am looking so forwaaaard to arrive!!!- . It was a 9 hours flight and it had not even taken off . . . I was like... not very talkative (it was an overnight one so I just wanted to sleep)...
-Yeah, me too...
*-But are you going to Madrid???
-No, I'm taking another plane from there to Malaga, I have been so many times to Madrid already by the way, I already know the city. And you?
*-I have never been to Madrid, well yes, lot of times but just in the airport. I am flying to Amsterdam...
-Mmm Amsterdam, so cool, I hope you have a lovely weather because last time I've been there I wanted to die because I was freaking freazing in January.
*-Oh my god but even if it's cold I love it, I've already been also in winter, and in summer, in all the seasons, it's incredible, I just love it...
-How many times have you already been to Amsterdam?
*-7, that's my 8th.
-But why Amsterdam?
*-Because I love it, there is no place in the world like this city, I have been so many years saving for coming again and I found very cheap flights and hotel so I am finally coming.-
For that man something like 2500 flight + hotel was cheap. I didn't know how to answer anymore, what to say. How could I explain to that man that I was flying all the time for less than 500€ in intercontinental flights (that time 900 a return ticket), for 30-90€ within European destinations, and NEVER spending a single penny in fucking hotels. How could I, tell me? It was just impossible. But there he was, super happy with their almost 3000$ spent in a trip for one week in a city that he had already visited 1000 times. But why? As he was showing me the new video camera that he bought specially for the trip I was not able to listen to his words anymore . . . I was just wondering in my mind: "but why?" . . . Why to spend this amount of money? Why a room in a hotel just for you? Why a city that you've already seen instead discovering new cultures and countries coming from sooo far???? Do some cities have something "addictive"?
When something it's good, we need to experimentate the same feeling again and again because we know it's pleasant. That's the addiction (love, sex, drugs, food, cities?, etc...). But aren't we missing the chance of knowing different feelings just to repeat one that we already know?
Well, I guess there are very different types of travelers. And there are also tourists, who are just that. Tourists or "vividores" ("livers") as I like to call them in Spanish, because they just live the luxury life between hotels, spas, cities, skyscratchs, etc. They don't go to Jamaica to sleep in a poor community in the guetto i.ex.
I don't know if that guy was a traveler or a "liver", but what it's sure it's that I will never travel like he was doing. I can't forget how excited he was though. Even if he had already visited 8 times the city, he was like a little child going to the toys store.
Humans are rare.
I mean, travelers
