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If I were a White Rock

This article is part of the #20Again series: in these texts, I do not intend to advise anyone to travel, nor I want to convince people to stay at home. Simply and generally, I will tell my experiences and share my thoughts, without the presumption of wanting to influence those of other people. I firmly believe that everyone can decide for themselves, through their own evaluation parameters. In addition, during my travels, I always respected all local restrictions and rules, on which I constantly tried to inquire beforehand.

I traveled.

I have touched five countries in less than two weeks.

By public transport: local buses, long-distance buses, night buses, subways, trams, trains.

I didn't take taxis, because in Europe they are beyond my budget. I didn't take planes, for fear that the flights would be canceled. And I didn't take ships or ferries, simply because I didn't have a chance.

I stayed in hotels of different categories, although always with our private room and bathroom. All of them managed and sanitized differently. One of them even had a buffet breakfast.

And I didn't do all this in 2018 or 2019. But in July 2020. At the time of writing, I have been back for less than forty-eight hours: therefore I am still in time to get sick. I am more than aware of it. I took a greater risk than staying at home. And perhaps a little higher also than leading an almost normal life in the city where I live or than traveling in the proximity and with my own car.

But in this article, I don't particularly mean to talk about when, where or how I traveled. In this post, I will try to explain why I did it, in a period when it would seem advised against.

But maybe I should explain first why this article will be part of a series I called #20Again. Well, it is very simple: in reality, I am no longer twenty years old, but I traveled with my wife as if I got quite young again. And perhaps even more: we traveled as we had never done, with very little organization, no very early reservations and an itinerary only sketched out and subject to changes. As in fact it happened, but I will talk about it another time.

I realize this doesn't answer why I did it. I'll confess that it took me some time to figure it out too. We left that Friday night because we wanted to do it, we could simply say so, without too many details.

But I remember very well about the thrill I had, even though I was not in a special place. In fact, I would have called it a little disheartening, at other times. At some point, this new twenty-years-old guy crosses the square of the bus station of Rome Tiburtina. He stops for a moment, embraces all the asphalt with his eyes. There are people with suitcases, others who show their tickets. There are groups of excited teenagers, which are all going to go to Puglia together. There are big buses that move slowly. Some arrive, others depart. And there are also some adrift men, as you always find them in such places. But, in one word, there is life. And there are two guys who are about to leave with many unknowns, even if only for a small adventure confined to western comfort. After so many months, I really felt alive.

And this was a first indication, an emotional impulse. That might be enough, but it wasn't enough for me.

I knew there was also the will to study how different European countries were restarting after the health tsunami flooded them. The idea of observing the different approaches, regulations, people's behaviors. At least in the few places that I would have been able to touch in a few days. There was therefore also the curiosity to see things with my own eyes, despite not having the pretension of making statistics out of my observations. And there was also sincere emotional participation in an international context to which I feel I belong.

Perhaps we also wanted to demonstrate to ourselves (and, I repeat, only to ourselves), that we could try to live our lives normally. As my wife has often pointed out. Maybe this is the #20Again fallacy: it's just a renewal of youth, a fiction. Because we really are not twenty anymore. And we are in that age group where you are still young enough to do everything, but you start to think that you are not young enough to postpone things.

So, let's go! Immediately with a bang! Night bus, with an upcoming busy day in Trieste, without any hotel booked. So that we had to carry backpacks around all day. And, I admit, it was tiring. I'm not sure I could have done it for the whole holiday.

And I received an award already from the first evening, which I won thanks to fatigue. After a long time, I finally fell asleep in an instant and woke up only the next morning, a few minutes before the time set on the alarm clock. A beneficial rest and a natural awakening. With the feeling of being ready to discover the world. It was the same for almost all the other days of the trip. Now someone could admonish me by telling me that if I broke my back eight or more hours a day, perhaps with some heavy and unrewarding job, in the evening I would be even more tired and I would sleep even better. Maybe it's true that I would sleep as deeply, but it wouldn't be the same thing. Because the tiredness I am talking about is not the one generated by the everyday strain, not the one that leads you to hide from the world. Travel fatigue is what makes you forget about everyday problems, it makes you close two eyes that still reflect the splendor of the past day, with the expectation of equally bright moments for the next one.

But I had to wait a few days to really understand why I was traveling. And it happened after I went to visit the Postojna Cave, after I found myself in front of the "Brilliant". Who is the Brilliant? The Brilliant is a white stalagmite, still in (very slow) evolution. Is somewhat considered the symbol of the Postojna Cave and for this reason it had been granted its own name. It took about one hundred thousand years to reach the current state of formation, it was estimated. Such is the patience that nature has in its works of change!

And so I happen to think that...

If I were a white rock, time would not be a problem for me, because the time horizon would tend to infinity.

If I were a white rock, I could also stand still and wait for the progressive sedimentation. I would grow, I would transform myself without having to do anything.

If I were a white rock, sooner or later someone would find me even if I just stood still. And people would come to admire me from all over the world. And even if it doesn't happen, even if I would remain hidden forever in the bowels of this planet, I wouldn't really care.

But the fact is I am not a white rock. I'm just an ordinary human being. I don't have a hundred thousand years ahead of me: a couple of years are already a portion of existence which is not negligible for a being who has my frailty. Not being a white rock, standing still all the time certainly would not make me grow. I would transform myself anyway, but in my case it would most likely be for the worse. Besides, nobody will ever come to admire me, I know. I am well hidden from the world even in full sunlight.

This is what I am and that is why I travel. To each his own nature.