Travel Chatter | Editorial

"Prosperity be thy page!"
Coriolanus, i, 5

If the greatest human challenge is interacting with foreign people, then the second greatest challenge must be telling your own people about foreign travel. No one enjoys too many vacation photos or too many meaningful anecdotes. If your trapped audience hasn't seen the place in person, there is little for them to relate to. If they have, they prefer their own stories to yours.

Listening to someone else's travel chatter won't help you unless it's spectacular enough for you to endure beyond politeness. You have to fall in love with that expansion, with that desire for more exposure to the strange and unusual. And if you're telling the tale, you must be spectacular enough to make someone else fall in love.

We look more outward than ever. Barnes and Noble has an increasingly large travel section. ABC Carpet and Home, with its embroidered textiles, ornate tiles, and beaded lampshades, looks like Istanbul's Grand Bazaar. Study abroad is up. Peace Corps recruitment is up. The economy is slow. It's time to go.