On the Flight from Munich to Athens:

Not in the mood to do real work on the PhD apps, nor do I want to read Meditaciones del Quijote, my Spanish philosophy book that I’m trying to bang out over break. Not really in the mood for philosophy.

Glance at the cover of the Lufthansa magazine sitting in the pocket of the chair in front of me. And I have to laugh. It’s so German! There’s really no other word for it. The three main headlines read as follows:

“German author Julia Franck describes a magical journey”

“A Collection of enduring travel memories”

“[Philosopher] Alain de Boton on the art of travel”

I said that I wasn’t in the mood for philosophy. HA! Only a German airline magazine would devote an entire edition to philosophizing about travel. This intrigued me. In the states, airline magazines are fluff pieces: straight-up company propaganda, maybe with an interview of some celebrity to actually attract a passenger to read it, but they are very definitely not highbrow literature. Nor do they generally deal in philosophy.

However, the philosophy of travel is fascinating. Why do people travel? What do they expect to gain? Questions like this are ones that Alain de Boton, author of The Art of Travel, answers, while at the same time proposing new manners on approaching travel, especially for the travel industry. My favorite quote is as follows:

“[The biggest obstacle we face is] overcoming fantasies about travel, trying to be imaginative and breaking away from clichés. Travel is full of them: the sunny beaches of x, the beautiful mountains of y. It’s always suggested that certain destinations are good and that others do not even qualify as destinations. It’s very normal, for example, to go to New York; it’s not very normal to go to Kansas. But maybe Kansas is actually better for you. Perhaps it suits you more.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself. Also, now I want to read his book. Drat!