Easy travel brings new experiences

PARIS – Barcelona for the weekend? Yeah, sure.

Being in Paris, that’s a conversation you can hear more often than you think. It’s one of the best parts about being here. The city is so well-connected to everywhere else in central Europe and the UK that it feels like almost any destination is possible.

Suddenly there’s an open-ended question every weekend that, when answered, makes me feel like I could pass as a member of the elite jet set who travels anywhere she fancies on a whim, without feeling the hurt in her pocketbook.

Having a much more moderately sized pocketbook makes it difficult to comprehend that kind of lifestyle. But even as one of the many “poor” college students in Europe, cheap and student-friendly online ticket Web sites have made it easier to imagine a jet-set lifestyle.

Of course, without much preemptive planning, travel quickly becomes an expensive affair. But with some foresight, traveling has become much more accessible than in earlier years.

It’s funny to hear my sister talk about her time studying abroad only 10 years ago, before there was the convenience of Wi-Fi and cell phones. Now it’s unfathomable to be without Internet access, and it’s usually a program requirement to have a cell phone that works in your host country.

With the convenience provided by technological advancements, I’m beginning to think all the fun and spontaneity in the pre-Internet-era travel has been lost on my generation.

Buying train tickets online the night before with a friend and then Google-mapping the town and metro system isn’t the same as walking into a train station and buying a ticket for that day to whichever place looks most appealing, overnight bag in tow.
Technology has made it easier and cheaper to travel, but has it taken the fun out of being a jet setter?

Maybe I’m overreacting. This past weekend I met up with a friend in Milan. We thought we had it all figured out – what restaurants to go to, which sights to check out and where to find last season’s discount designer clothes.

What we didn’t account for was the language barrier. Call us naive Americans, but after being in Paris for so long, where most everyone can speak enough English to get by, I assumed another major city like Milan would be similar.

Unfortunately, I was wrong. Thankfully I had an Italian phrase book at hand, but when the older Italian gentleman who works at the museum starts yelling at you for some unknown reason, “What time is the next train?” isn’t a very helpful response.

Most of the time, attempts at communication meant lots of gesturing and head nodding or shaking. Each time we walked away having learned something new about the language and people of the town that really can’t be understood from reading a guide book
It made me realize experiencing a new place and culture for the first time alone is bound to include the same fun and spontaneity of jumping on the next train to who knows where. And the memories that result from it can’t be determined by any amount of Internet research.