The Journey or the Destination?
For most people who love travel, the journey to their destination is the least enjoyable part of the trip.
The destination, on a trip, is itself the high point. It’s what you think about, dream about, plan for and are impatient to get to. But for me, the journey and the people I meet along the way can be just as important.
Sure, I understand there’s a lot not to like about the actual travel to and from your destination: it’s uncomfortable to be stuck on a plane for long periods of time. The food sucks. Your skin gets dry. It’s hard to sleep (if you are lucky enough to be able to at all). The rushing to the airport, waiting in security lines, and then waiting more at the terminal is a bit tedious. You lose a day of your vacation just getting to your destination. Then, there’s the jet lag.
The people you meet on planes……
But. The travel to the destination is one of the greatest ways to meet other travelers. I’ve had some fabulously pleasurable flights abroad, shooting the breeze with the Scottish engineer, Irish computer scientist, or German financial analyst sitting next to me.
I’ve been set up on a blind date with someone’s boss, after spending an hour and a half flight next to a really nice guy on the way back to San Francisco from Los Angeles. We had a great time sharing life stories. He emailed me after the flight, and we all (he, his boss, and I) met up at a wine bar for drinks a couple of weeks later. I learned a lot about actuaries (like what the heck it is they do) due to this chance meeting and made a new friend.
Recently, I spent happy hour on a plane en route to Croatia toasting with a group of Austrians (with our complimentary glasses of wine-I love British Airways!). We then spent the entire flight trading stories and I met up with one of the girls in the group, later during my trip!
In airports……..
I’ve met still other wonderful people during my travels at bars and restaurants in airports. I’ve spent many of what would normally be tedious flight delay hours in stimulating conversations and laughter instead of bored, miserable, and plugged into an electronic device.
These were all interactions I had before I even reached my destination! For me, the vacation starts when I step into the airport, check my luggage and am holding my boarding pass. Even pesky security lines don’t bother me when I’m headed off on an adventure. I think about all of the possibilities ahead of me.
I unplug from my devices, smile, and make eye contact with those around me. People normally respond positively and with similar energy.
The people I meet along the way, are often one of the best parts of the over all journey.
Haha, Great article about people you meet on planes during long flight journeys, speaking with personal experience I was sitting next to a small new born kid and he was just crying the entire time and spoilt my whole mood for my journey ahead, although I met a lot of lovely people out there with whom I had a great conversation.
That is definitely every traveler’s nightmare! Well that… and being sat next to someone who’s puking and running to the bathroom every few minutes/is seriously ill… I’ve been unlucky and lucky with my flying experiences. I was once stuck on a runway for 6 hours on Christmas eve even without any fresh air, water, or any refreshment due to having to land plane because of someone onboard who was ill but then being kept there by Canadian authorities who let us all keep our family’s waiting on Christmas/missing our Christmas and get stuck in stale, stuffy, uncomfortable plane for 6 hours while they haggled over exactly what payment method our airline was going to use to pay them for the fuel we had to get when we stopped, due to having had to detour to drop this sick passenger off.
I’ve also been taken severely ill right before a flight to where I was vomiting in potted plants at the airport due to having no control over when it came and then running to the bathroom every 2 minutes and barfing in my barf bag for 3-4 hours of a 10-12 hour flight (thank God the drugs I’d gotten from the pharmacy finally started working) AND I’ve been stuck (unable to board my flight-and watching it leave without me) in Costa Rica, being grilled by authorities in a tiny scary room as if I was a criminal only to later find out that while they’d let me into the country on an old passport, they apparently only really check it when you leave, and I’d been carrying an old passport I’d reported as stolen due to accidentally pulling it out of a file folder instead of my current passport (I’d been missing this passport for 2 years but then got it back randomly and so had just shoved it into a folder without thinking about it like a year before this trip). So there I was in a room with two Costa Rican interrogators, freaking out thinking someone must have said I was carrying drugs, and they were trying to get me to admit I was a criminal and I had to keep begging them to tell me what it was they thought I had done… and eventually I think it got resolved by their calling people in the U.S. to verify my identity and/or online photos of me with my name on my profile or something along these lines. Anyways, in the end I got stuck overnight in the airport due to having missed all possible flights. No food places open. Not even a vending machine in our terminal. That was brutal.
But somehow I put those nightmare situations out of my mind and remember that most of my flying experiences have actually been pretty good 🙂