Week 1

I arrived in New York City this week, excited by the city’s novelty – its crowdedness, its diversity, its intensity. To me, being surrounded by the new and different is one of the greatest joys of travel. Having grown up in a small town, where everyone was already familiar and known by the time I could walk, I love to be nothing but a visitor. I don’t have to belong to every place I visit; instead, I can enjoy new places from the perspective of a total outsider, and take in the different and the bizarre without feeling personally implicated. New York City is a particularly fun place to be anonymous and transient. With its tall buildings, bustling streets, and kind-hearted but aloof people, New York makes me feel like my separation from the city can only heighten my appreciation of it.

I was talking to another traveler the other day, though, who felt differently. Although she’d once felt the same sense of unfamiliar wonder with New York as I do, now, on her return to the city after several months away, she loves her connection to the place. She said that she liked the perspective that she got from being an outsider, but now that she knows the city, gets a different kind of joy from feeling like an insider. She was French – said she was from Paris – and I wonder if being from the city made her crave what I am used to, knowing a place well, while I crave what she is used to, being always surrounded by the unknown. I can see why she likes knowing New York so well – I do love the comfort of home, and it would be exciting to feel that way about lots of different places. Still, for now at least, I am thrilled to be in a novel and strange place. To me, this is the thrill of travel.