“So…the French got their asses kicked, huh?”, he snickered.

I just smiled. I’m used to this. Having spent several months living in France and being a self-proclaimed Francophile makes you a target for people to say these sorts of things – I just have to take it all in stride.

I knew my co-worker was referring to the Olympics Swimming 400 Freestyle Relay in which the USA team pulled out a major win after a huge comeback. I coolly replied that “losing by a finger-length is hardly getting your ass kicked”. I braced myself because I knew what was to follow. It’s the same song and dance every time I defend the French: First, the world wars are mentioned and how they can’t fight and the U.S had to save them and they should be grateful and blah blah. Then, someone else that’s joined the conversation will see that I’m getting upset at all of the ignorant comments that are being thrown about and they’ll mention that they spent 4 days in Paris once…and other than those snotty Parisians, the French are ok their book.

*sigh* I won’t bore you with my responses to such foolishness. (Actually, my responses aren’t boring – quite the contrary, actually. But as this is not the point of this blog, and I’m long-winded anyway, I think I should get to my point). When things like this happen, it makes me think about travel and what it can offer.

I was flipping through my Conde Nast Traveler magazine the other day and came across an interview with Queen Rania of Jordan. She said something that I thought was really great. The quote from her was that “Travel is a powerful antidote [for misinformation]“.

Of course, people like me that travel already know this (and really, I don’t need any more excuses to travel. I almost took the magazine to my boss, told him I was ‘misinformed’ about Hawaii, and that we should find a training session there for me just so I wouldn’t be so ignorant). In all seriousness, I think what Queen Rania said sums up the problem that I faced with my co-worker. If people would just travel more, we would learn more about the culture we were visiting. Which is, I think, the underlying theme of why we travel.

Of course, we travel to see sights and to escape our everyday lives. But it’s the curiosity that we have of a particular place and its culture that ultimately propels us to go there (I say this with particular reference to international travel). And if we could embrace the differences in which that particular place offers, then there’s a greater probability that some of the stereotypes that we have would be eliminated. Upon returning home, we’d describe our experiences to our friends, and thus become mini-ambassadors.

Here are a few travel quotes that I like that kind of hit the point home:

1) “To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries” – Aldous Huxley

2) “Travel has a way of stretching the mind. The stretch comes not from travel’s immediate rewards, the inevitable myriad of new sights, smells and sounds, but with experiencing firsthand how others do differently what we believed to be the right and only way.” – Ralph Crawshaw

I think I’m going to get my co-worker a one-way ticket to Paris…