“Travelling and Learning” or Rather “Travelling Is Learning”?

When I was still in primary school, I didn’t like Geography or History. Both subjects are very abstract and hard to understand for 14- and 15-year-olds. They’re mostly about memorisation of factual data, dates, concepts, and it often hard to imagine “the subject matter”. And there I was, often learning boring concepts without anything tangible to rely on or experience to compare them to.

Today, though, I’ve come to love geography because I can benefit from it at every turn, and history has grown on me since as well. When I started travelling, suddenly everything that was once just “knowledge” about something found its “place” – a city on a map, a colour, a smell, an association, a memory... A thing you simply learn about evolves into something completely different when you actually visit it or experience it. To me, travelling is a much better way of learning. When I started travelling, walking around a capital, climbed a volcano or the tallest hill, soaked my feet in the Atlantic Ocean, saw the world’s masterpieces in Louvre, experienced the monsoon and continental climates, visited the canals in Venice and the Netherlands... All the (previously boring) information got a story and imprinted in my memory and my heart.

Usually, when planning my trip, I already know what I want to see in the country or city. But I often look for interesting things that are typical for the place and add them to my list with the help of the Lonely Planet magazine, Instagram and various blogs (as well as tips from the locals when I’m already there). Whether I’m travelling with my boyfriend or with my girl friends, I’m really lucky that we all like similar things, so the girls and I manage to agree on what we’re going to visit without any hassle, and the same goes for my boyfriend.

When I was in Paris, I visited the world’s most popular museum and historical monument, the Louvre. Oh, what a great feeling it was, looking at those statues, paintings and other works of art I learned about in art history. I knew a lot about their authors, their periods and the circumstances in which they were produced. The reason why I went to Amsterdam was also to visit the Ann Frank House, ride a bike among the canals and see the windmills (more about my trip here). That’s how lessons of geography, art history and history all merged together. When I was planning my trip to Berlin, the itinerary had to include a visit to the Berlin Wall, the Brandenburg Gate, the Holocaust Memorial and Checkpoint Charlie (more about my trip to Berlin here). When you’re standing next to the Berlin Wall and trying to experience the same thing the families did when they found themselves on the other side of the wall overnight, far from their friends, acquaintances, crushes, that’s something completely different than reading about it in a history book.

And if I go back to the title... To me, travelling is also learning. Learning about the known and discovering the yet unknown. And what about you?