THE BROADENING EXPERIENCE
Travel is another kind of learning. All the clichés about it are true.
It does broaden. It is revelatory. It changes your perspective im-
mediately, because it requires new and different responses from
you. Things are done differently in other countries. People are
more relaxed, or less so, more reserved, or more volatile. Their
rituals vary. In Paris, many shops close down entirely in August.
In Spain, an afternoon siesta follows a long lunch, and dinner is
very late. Language is suddenly a barrier. The simplest transac-
tion can turn complex all of a sudden. A friend of mine once went
from London to Paris, and she was so preoccupied with re-
gearing her brain to figure in francs rather than pounds that she
said, “For twenty-four hours I couldn’t speak English or French.
I went into a tobacco shop and asked for quatorze packets of
Kents. The shopkeeper looked at me as if I were quite mad. Peo-
ple buy one or two or even ten packages of cigarettes, but they
don’t buy fourteen. I’d meant to say four packs, of course.”
The extent to which travel broadens depends at least partly
on how much you give yourself to the experience. Those who
immerse themselves in a different culture are likely to learn
more than those who head for the Paris McDonald’s. At the
same time, there’s a difference between immersing oneself in a
new culture and “going native.” Sitting in Les Deux Magots
wearing a beret is not necessarily being a critical learner. If you
lose perspective on yourself and your own roots, you have
merely put on the garb of another culture. You need to keep
the sense of difference.
Henry Thoreau wrote that one sees the world more clearly
if one looks at it from an angle. In a foreign land, one sees
everything from an angle. Thorsten Veblen theorized that
Knowing the World