One answer to the question “Why travel to Europe?” is because it is food for the soul, a feast for the senses.
One of the most fascinating ideas I have come across along my jagged path of explorations is from the mystic Georges Gurdjieff of the Caucasus. It’s the idea that our sensory impressions are a kind of food, providing energy and nourishment for body and soul.
It may not be scientifically measurable, but the idea that you receive energy from the things you see, hear, smell, etc., has a certain practical validity for me that is proven again with every trip.
For me the energy I absorb from travel is palpable. I am a different organism when traveling than when I have been home for too long without a break.
The promise of that recharge provides good motivation to bust out of your routines and travel to Europe, where you will be exposed at every turn to a richly layered tapestry of cultural impressions operating on many levels simultaneously. They collectively will infuse you with new energy, broaden your world and enhance your capacity for enjoyment.
The principle is demonstrated by a process that plays out over and over in my life, and I suspect in the lives of many others as well.
Periodically, I get stale. When I receive essentially the same impressions day after day, at some point they cease to have resonance for me. When my life becomes consumed by habit and routine, my experiences start to deliver diminishing returns. They become less rewarding. Maybe I have already wrung everything out of them I am likely to get until I get a fresh perspective. That’s when I have to get out, set out on paths unknown to seek new experiences and revelations, to expand my world. It is only in the realm of the unknown that you can discover the new.
When seeking a place that is rich in fine impressions, certainly no place exceeds Europe. There is so much to see and experience in a small space. There is no place where there is a greater variety of fine impressions than Europe.
For students of American history, when Early America was taking shape in the 1600s and 1700s, civilization in Europe had already been building for a thousand years on the ruins of the Roman Empire. The cultural richness of Europe begins with Rome.
The making of modern America grew out of the age of European colonialism. American colonial culture was originally imported European culture, the French in the north, the British in the original 13 colonies, the Spanish in the south.
American culture is fed by its European roots as well as Native American culture, the African and Asian cultures. All those cultural streams were weaving together to create the American cultural tapestry. But the official culture of the colonies was transplanted European. So, when you trace back American culture, you reach a point where you need to jump to the mother countries to continue following that historical trajectory.
When you go to Europe you can see and feel a thousand years of history that took place before the European colonization of the Americas even began.
The last 2,000 years of history are piled up on each other like geological strata. Being there is not like reading about it or seeing video, no matter how compelling. Some of that history you absorb viscerally. You can get a feeling for things that no words or images can adequately describe.
When early Americans aspired to build their culture on European culture, Europe presented a lot to aspire to. That is still true today. As America developed, Europe also continued developing. Europe is not only a historical treasure trove, it’s also a vibrant region in its present-day activities and current evolutionary development. It’s fun to see how the different countries and cultures pick up on and develop each wave of change in technology and style.
Europe remains one of the most concentrated regions in terms of its diversity of cultures, and the quantity and variety of culture within a relatively small area. Most of Western Europe would fit into India. Yet it really does have a tremendous richness and variety, from the glory that was Rome through all the separate countries that formed in the 2,000 years since the Roman Empire.
Rome is all over Europe, even in the British Isles. Ralph Waldo Emerson telescopes a lot of history into this paragraph from his book English Traits:
“The Roman conquest carried its arts and roads as far as the Thames, and then the empire went no farther, but here, on its northern verge, its hand was stayed; it built a wall, and presently the world receded from its feet. Yet, before it fell, it had sown in Britain those seeds of order and law which no revolutions have since wholly destroyed.”
Rome is at the foundation of European civilization, and a great tapestry of cultures has grown up in that region in the two millennia since Roman times. Much of that history is preserved within the marrow of Europe.
Part of the street layout of the modern city of Rome is built on the street plan of ancient Rome. Ancient Rome is still there, not only at the specific iconic Roman monuments like the Colosseum, but also in the well-trafficked streets of the city.
The Pantheon in Rome was built during the Roman Empire in 125 A.D. It is still at the city center of modern Rome. It stands alongside buildings from many eras between 125 A.D. and today: Medieval times, the Renaissance, the Baroque, Neoclassical and Modern periods.
Since 609 CE, the Pantheon has been a Catholic church. When I look at it, it feels like I am looking into another dimension of time. It as if it were framed through the wrong end of a telescope, clearly occupying a separate dimension of time from its surroundings.
The Pantheon stands apart from the surrounding buildings, as if vibrating at a different frequency. It’s just one striking example of a kind of juxtapositions of eras of history you run into with practically every footstep all over Europe.
Whenever I break loose from my routines and go traveling, I realize again that when you travel you unleash a tremendous amount of energy that you did not have before you left on your trip.
Where did that energy come from? It doesn’t matter. What is self-evident is that when you travel, you receive a big boost of energy. And it holds over for a while when you return home again and everything that was old seems new again.
Your humble reporter,
A. Colin Treadwell
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