Germans have a word wanderlust which translated into English would be ‘the desire to wander’. Nowadays the opportunity to travel is endless. Thanks to low-cost airfares, travelling abroad is very accessible and sometimes it’s even cheaper to fly out of the country than to travel within your own. So, yes, travelling is cheap but there have to be other reasons to travel and you’re right, there are plenty!
I have always had this feeling of wanderlust. It started from me wanting to explore my local woods at the back of my garden as a young girl and as I have grown so has my sense of adventure. And I found my local woods being replaced with the Brazil wetland, Pantanal, where I went last summer in search of jaguars, snakes and crocodiles. The thing with travelling is it’s always different. Even if you went to the same country, to the same town and stayed in the exact same hostel it would be a completely different experience. The people you meet will be different, and they will tell you their own travelling stories: stories of holiday romance, holiday horrors and stories that seem so outrageous and unbelievable you can hardly believe them until something as ridiculous happens to you and you find yourself becoming one of those people telling your tales.
Or maybe the difference is you? Maybe you have changed since last time you were there? And that’s the thing with travelling – it changes you. When you travel you are forced to immerse yourself in a new culture and whether it’s eating guinea pig, or staying with a family where neither of you speak a common language and you have to communicate through hand actions and smiles, the experience gives me itchy feet to do it all again. And although wanderlust is originally a German word, the English idiom ‘to have itchy feet’ captures a similar idea. Someone who has itchy feet needs to leave or travel. This sensation to explore is found not only in language but in us.
What have you learned while travelling? Do you have itchy feet?
