One and the Same
Sometimes we find places and other times they find us
artwork by author
Sometimes we find places and other times they find us.
Sometimes it may even be a little bit of both.
When we first fill in our travel cards, toting around those shiny, stiff passports with their crisp, empty pages, we feel like there are endless answers to the question: so where should we go?
More often than not, circumstances, compromises and logistics inspire our early itineraries. We book where we can afford; where we will feel comfortable, familiar or safe enough; where our traveling companions are willing to go; where we feel led by curiosity, peer pressure or obligation; where flights accommodate our impossible schedules; where the weather works for us instead of against us. And so on and so on.
The more we travel, the more we come to appreciate that some combination of these constraints will influence every journey that we take. Unless we’re traveling on the back of a magic carpet or behind a blank check, how could we ever skirt around them? It is futile to pretend there isn’t a practical dimension to intentional, soulful travel.
Yet, limitation can often be an unexpected gift.
Playing inside constraint, after all, is how I found myself traveling through Luxembourg City on my way home from Slovenia last October. Ljubljana to Luxembourg was the only direct flight out of Slovenia that offered me an extended layover in a country I hadn’t yet visited. On top of that, a stopover there came at a price I could justify, checked my status boxes with a nice Marriott Bonvoy hotel and a Star Alliance port of call and, most importantly, wasn’t dreadful, boring Frankfurt.
Luxembourg City, Luxembourg
Was Luxembourg on my bucket list, let alone my radar? No.
Should it have been? Absolutely.
Over the years, I have learned that what matters is what we do within the set parameters that emerge, not that we are stuck with them. When we embrace and accept limitations as the creative guardrails they really are, then a country we’ve never been to or ever entertained visiting can suddenly become a how-could-we-not-see-it destination.
Once I realized Luxembourg sat at the enviable intersection of the cultures, vineyards and gastronomies of France, Germany and Belgium, I couldn’t not see travel there as a culinary pilgrimage.
Parameters force us to narrow our scope of vision and focus. They give us a lens. They help us see.
In 2016, I took my mom on her second trip out of the country. Her first trip was years before her untethered forty-seven-year-old wanderlust daughter was born. I think it’s safe to say, when I invited my mom to travel, I felt she had some lost time and miles to make up for.
Not an extraordinarily experienced traveler myself at that point in time, I was careful how I designed our itinerary. I wanted my mom, more than anything, to fall in love with traveling the world like I had. I wanted to show her all those places she had only read or dreamt about. I wanted this to be the start of many mother-daughter journeys just like it.
By my estimation, anyway, that meant easing her into transatlantic travel and ensuring any culture shock was soft and easy to absorb. I decided on a destination where English was the primary language, which understandably but severely restricted our options. She had already been to London. Australia and New Zealand were too far away. And since I was going for distance and change of continent, that cut out certain islands in the Caribbean and all of Canada.
That left two places that seemed perfectly suited for the job at hand, although they had never been too high on my list: Ireland and Scotland. The price was right, we’d skip across the pond in no time, and the weather after the holidays was, well, it was better than Chicago’s.
We arrived in Edinburgh after spending the first half of our trip in Dublin. Both cities greeted us with grey, dreary skies, a clingy, nasty dampness and a feet-to-teeth-chattering wind. I have never again dismissed the travel tip that sounds the faintest bit like: it’s a different kind of cold. And trust me, neither should you.
We absolutely ate up Edinburgh. I eventually came to appreciate how those gloomy grey skies set the most marvelous and mysterious mood across Edinburgh’s Old Town cobblestone streets. The city felt rough and royal, majestic and fierce but also modern, bold and creative. Any time my mind drifts back, even some ten years later, I still get a rush, a quick hit of its bravado and stoicism. I feel, too, those Scottish winds cut through my Arc’teryx coat like a haunted, angry cyclone.
Despite being as inexperienced a foodie as I was a world traveler in 2016, I had managed to eke out some pretty amazing meals. There was a cozy eatery with a massive hearth fireplace, a white tablecloth set menu with the most beautiful black pudding I’ve ever seen and tasted, and a boisterous, proper pub. In between arranged bites and sips, we nursed mugs of mulled wine, met our match tasting scotch and rested tired feet patronizing historic hotel lobby bars.
Somewhere in the middle of all of that we still found room and time to go up a full pant size each, feasting off the raclette wheel at our first European Christmas Market. It was all perfect.
Edinburgh, Scotland
My most vivid memories of our trip, however, were harrowing rescues and bicker-fests curbside. Look Left, Look Right might as well have been painted in hieroglyphics at every crosswalk. I could pat myself on the back for removing any language barriers, but I had completely overlooked the dangers of merely crossing the street.
Close calls with double-decker buses aside, we did come to find our rhythm and have since taken three more trips outside of the United States together.
I found Edinburgh and Luxembourg because they had each in their own way satisfied different needs at very different times in my life. The constraints worked. While I can’t say that I ever felt called to either place, once I arrived in each city, movement there felt natural and preordained. I left both wanting more.
In the case of Edinburgh and Scotland overall, though, something else has been flitting about me: an invitation back. This feeling of wanting to, needing to return has been building slowly but strongly for some time now.
After 81 Tesseras, this Tessera journey is one of a dozen or so I have left on my list that features a pre-Untethered Traveler destination. I’m becoming increasingly aware that each edition is a gift, not only a journey back in time to places I have loved, but an opportunity to excavate something special I left behind there. They are each lessons in limitation.
I knew when I sat down to write this Tessera that the call to the Scottish Highlands, the Faroe Islands and back to Edinburgh would be far too powerful to ignore. I didn’t know until I lived through it again that Scotland had actually waited me out, issuing its return-to summons only after all those self-inflicted parameters had faded out of view.
Only then could I see that they’re one and the same. Constraint and calling.
The places we choose and the places that choose us.
Follow the unplanned moments that make travel matter.
Read Collisions, an Encounter series by The Untethered Traveler.
