Just a character, or a fulsome scent, but each place has its own flavor and taste that is like nothing else. Perhaps that is why when we travel for a time and then come back to our home country – we feel that special feeling that we are home.
Hearing about a place or a country is never the same as seeing it, spending time to enjoy the richness of the place and take in its flavor – it actually is that – a flavor, even in the taste of the air, the smell of the trees.
The same trees and flowers, the grass, just grass – as anywhere else – and yet it is not the same.
You stand and breathe it in, open your mind, your heart, and let it flow – and it is the way that we accept a place with the desire that we want to see below the surface that makes us able to draw in all that we can and all that the place has to give.
You stand surrounded by buildings, and you want to see beyond that, to the why it has been done that way, or what is it that it says – and when you start understanding, then, you start to really see a place.
From the buildings, you start to take in all that there is to take and to see this country that is new to you, and the seeing becomes something much more profound. The scent surrounds you, and the plants that are exactly the same as you have back home – smell different, and even the way they adapt to the surroundings makes them look different and give off a different scent.
That is why each place has its own flavor, and our acceptance of different cultures and places will make us enjoy each place in its uniqueness.
And when it is time to leave, to go back home, we take a little bit of that place with us, and it stays with us forever. Likewise, we leave a part of us there, that part that has been interacting with it, and in a way, it becomes another home, another sojourn that we may go back to or perhaps….
But some travel far and wide, never really get to see – or perhaps they know the surface and the things they need from the place until they leave – they never get to enjoy that flavor, that uniqueness.
A Traveler’s Quote
“I stand, and I look around, some might see that these buildings are monstrosities, but I see the usefulness, the vision of creation that looks far into the future, creating something that will last for generations without the need for a renovation that is unnecessary. I take in the landscapes, the foliage, the flowers – and I let them wrap around me, and I know the flavor of a place – it becomes home.
I take in the scents, place them deep in my memory, knowing that I would draw on to it later when I am gone back to whence I came from. But the scents are so sweet, to the extent that I feel they will always be part of me and I may never be able to let them go. Is that why traveling is recommended for the sick at heart, the ailing and the old? That they may draw in fresh energy, see life from a different perspective and see another place that could become so dear and home.
I worried that it may feel strange that the people would be different from mine – but what are my people? Then, I saw the smiles, felt their welcome, and I know that a place is as dear as you accept it or as you see it from a non-criticizing eye.
The days pass, one by one, and I want to see everything that I can see in such little time but time is never enough, and as my departure draws near I decide to stop and just breathe in the scents, the flavors of this place I have come to love so much. And, as I do, so I realize that some spots have become so dear to me and I want to visit them again. I do so, and the nostalgia is so exquisite. It mattered not if I take a photo, for it is all in my heart. Most of all, I want to take a piece of that special sojourn that has become home to me. Then, I realize that I also want to leave a part of me, just a little something that will always make this my place. Will I be remembered, and will a bit of my own scent stay behind as a memory for those who have made this my home, my safe place? ” by a Traveler.
“And, to everyone who visits a place, I will just say this – enjoy the place and do not make it all about shopping and eating or making sure you take value for the money you paid. But really be one with it, see beyond the eye, and take a piece of this unique flavor in your heart” – The Traveler.
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