Daydreams of far places

Recent exchanges in the comments of a couple of other blogs got me thinking about travel.  I haven't done any traveling since my visit to Ukraine in 2007 -- almost twenty years, the longest time in my whole life without taking a trip somewhere.  I went to Britain numerous times as a minor (because of my parents frequently going back and forth between their country of birth and their adoptive one).  I've been to Syria, Jordan, and Egypt in 1979, to Germany in 1984, to Japan in 1995, and to Ukraine in 2007.  I've also been to various places within the US, notably Texas in 2002.

My interest in travel hasn't changed, but personal circumstances have.  During the nine years I was focused on taking care of my mother, taking a trip somewhere else was obviously out of the question.  Even after that, financial and health issues rendered it impractical.  The money situation has since improved, the health situation has not.  Enduring a long plane flight might be beyond me; the kind of extensive walking around cities which I used to relish certainly would be.

Still, I sometimes think about where I would go if circumstances allowed.  Five places in particular stand out:

1.  Italy.  For history and architecture, nowhere else compares.  This is the land that launched both the Roman Empire and the Renaissance, and the physical traces of both are still thick on the ground there, to be seen and experienced.  To walk the streets of Pompeii, to see where Galileo lived and worked..... I really should have done this already.  And so much monumental architecture still stands, from the Roman Pantheon to the Colosseum to the incredible works of the Renaissance, the visible proclamations in stone of our civilization's re-ascent from the darkness.

The one negative would be that I know almost no Italian and it seems like a rather challenging language to study.  (I reject the attitude of "don't bother, everybody speaks English anyway" -- not everybody does, and this kind of arrogance is part of what gives other people a bad impression of Americans.  I always try to learn enough of the local language to at least handle basic practical things.)  Also, I'm now sixty-five, and language-learning ability declines with age.

2.  Iran.  Obviously this would be out of the question until the current regime is gone and a stable civilized government is in place, but that could happen even within a year -- things are very much in flux now.  Like Italy, Iran in ancient times built a great empire which played an important role in the rise of Western civilization, and far more of the roots of Western culture (and the monotheistic religions) trace back there than most Americans realize.  And like Italy, it boasts a great abundance of impressive historic architecture, including some ruins from ancient times and many more examples from within the last few centuries.  I posted about the country here.

I can speak a little basic Persian, and it was certainly the easiest language I've ever studied, with very simple and logical grammar compared to most (the large number of Arabic loan words would be an obstacle for most Americans, but I already knew a fair bit of Arabic before I started studying Persian, so to me it was less of a problem).  If there's any language I could still get up to a useful level in, it's probably this one.  On the minus side, I have a very bad physical reaction to cigarette smoke, and I get the impression it's hard to completely avoid it in Iran.

3.  The land of my ancestors.  Family visits as a child are not nothing, but I'm sure Britain has changed a great deal in the almost fifty years since I was last there.  There is a huge amount of interesting medieval and Renaissance architecture, as well as more Roman relics than you'd think (one of my few somewhat-clear childhood memories is of walking Hadrian's Wall), as well as libraries and museums without parallel.  And, of course, language wouldn't be a problem.

It is, of course, where my family originated and mostly still lives.  Everyone who actually remembers my visits as a child must be dead or elderly by now, and most of my living relatives would have no idea who I even was, but it might be possible to make a few connections.  There is one person in particular I would want to look up, though he must be at least in his seventies by now.

4.  France.  It has a similar range of architecture and history as the UK, with more Roman traces in the south, and is the home of the second most influential culture in the modern West after the Anglo-American.  It's also much more modern and advanced than most Americans think, being a leader in areas like high-speed trains and nuclear power.  One of my favorite blogs, Cas d'intérêt (sadly now apparently defunct) had many posts about travel in France and helped stimulate my interest in the country.

I know only a little French, but while it's closely related to Italian, it seems more accessible somehow, probably because so many English words come from it and the French originals are thus familiar.  The French people, however, have a reputation for being notably intolerant of those who don't know their language or are bad at it.

5.  India.  My counselor is fascinated by India and has been there more than a dozen times; talking with her about it led me to take more interest in it as well.  While its culture is far less related to our own than are those of the other countries on this list, it is incredibly variegated.  The Taj Mahal is the most Persian-looking structure I've ever seen, while there are old temples in Chennai and elsewhere (especially in the south, the most developed and interesting part of the country) which look like nothing else in the world.  Also, this is the future.  If the US is ever superseded as the world's leading country, it will probably be by India, with its demographic vigor, open society, and strong democracy, rather than by China with its imploding birth rate and its paranoid, stodgy, totalitarian gangster-regime.

Learning "the" local language would really not be an option -- almost every state has a different language, and all of them seem complex and difficult, from what I know about them.  English, however, is widely used for communication between speakers of different Indian languages, so I would be able to take advantage of that, and hopefully still not come across as an arrogant and ignorant American.  A bigger concern would be hygienic safety in what remains, by Western standards, a largely underdeveloped country.  I'd be concerned about how safe things like restaurants or hospitals would be.

For any country, of course, local attitudes toward Americans are a potential issue.  Everything I know about Iran recently suggests that most people there have a favorable view of Americans -- they know the US is an enemy of their ghastly regime, and this feeling will presumably become even stronger if we actually help them overthrow it.  For the other countries listed, I don't know how much blowback ordinary Americans can expect from Trump's relentless trashing of our country's international image and reputation.

I'd be particularly interested to hear from any readers who have been to any of these countries, especially recently.