Pete Hodkinson Talks Travel
We all have our preferred methods of travelling: walking, bikes, cars and planes, etc. Some we experience on a day-to-day basis and will have done so for a long time. Others you may not have had the pleasure of acquainting yourself with yet.
However you go about it, I have to say, travel is about much more than just moving around. There’s a lot you learn through travelling that has little if anything to do with physically getting from A to B. When you learn to walk you learn that the ground is hard and coffee tables can be painful. When you learn to ride a bike you see that the ground is still hard and that trees, too, can be painful. When you learn to drive you learn how to swear and become irrational; everyone travelling slower than you is a moron and everyone going faster than you is a nutter worthy of mum’s most gut-wrenching “tisk tisk”.
When you first fly you learn that you are in possession of super-powers and discover that it is your destiny to fight crime. Your first heroic deed is getting a frightened kitten down from a tree. Mine certainly was. And if you’re flying in a plane, I suppose you learn - quickly - how loud and annoying a small child can be, especially if that child is Pete Hodkinson at age one.
The point is - all jokes aside - when you travel anything can happen, and anything can change everything. I lived in Munich for seven months in 2007. While there I travelled extensively through Germany but also spent time in Italy, Corsica (an awesome tiny French Island) and Austria. The time I spent there and the people I met flipped my world 360 degrees.
If you maybe don’t have the money to fly over to Europe and do what I did as a student, consider volunteering for Habitat for Humanity – apparently you can fundraise to pay for your airfares, plus you’d be doing something amazing for people in need – just a thought.
Someone said to me recently (and by that I of course mean I read it online just now) “Life is a big book, of which those who never travel only read one page”. It’s quite true, so don’t just look at life’s little blurb and waste time wishing that it could be you on that picturesque Italian beach in the brochure – it can, so get in amongst it broseph!
Holidays are coming up fairly soon - I bet there’s a few of you who can feel a trip coming on - but in the mean time, work hard and give yourself a reason to celebrate when that break rolls your way.
Peace,
Pete.
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