October 6: So what’s it all about ? What does 2 months in Europe teach you ? Actually, quite a lot. Certainly more than I can adequately convey in a short-ish post. But here are a few initial thoughts:
Life can be better when you relax. When I have travelled in the past, even for relatively short periods of time, I have always had a plan. I always felt that I had to account for every minute and every day because “we might not ever be here again”. This trip was long enough that, as a friend said: I could have a journey rather than a trip. I left a lot of the time unplanned and tried to be open to new experiences along the way. Some of the most enjoyable and rewarding moments came from that strategy.
People do not generally have your best interests in mind. Conversely, some unhappy experiences arose because I let people convince me that they were trying to help me when they were not. A taxi driver sat with the meter running while I was in the pharmacy because he said it would be hard to find another taxi on Sunday. That cost me 25 Euro. Call me a Pollyanna but I have tended to think that people are basically good and honest, and that may not always be the case. Others usually have their own interests in mind.
Drinking wine and eating baguettes every day causes weight gain. Duh. I gained 2 kilos in spite of making the effort to go for a run every few days.
I think I could live in Europe. I understand that travelling on a vacation is not really “living” in a country. But this trip was long enough that I felt I gained some perspective on what living overseas would mean. I enjoy the lifestyle: the emphasis on being active and involved; the “café culture” and living outside your home; the food and drink (although there are now far too many pizza parlours and far too few real bistros in France). But mostly I love the environment: the busy towns and cities and the hills and mountains that surround them.
I am a work in progress. As I said many months ago, this year is only one part of an on-going effort to become stronger. I think I have made some really good progress in that direction, and many things convince me that is the case. While travelling I made good decisions and did things that made me happy – easy to do when you are alone. But when others came into the mix, and even a few times when I was alone, I would sometimes revert to past habits and ways of thinking even though I consciously told myself that I would not do so. I have a ways to go…
Toronto is really pretty mundane: We’ve all heard the trope about Toronto becoming a “world city”, and certainly there’s merit in aspiring toward that goal. But having been in an actual world city – one with an extensive transit system, beautiful streets and public spaces, an active and well-financed cultural life – it’s discouraging to see how far we have yet to go . We pride ourselves on our multi-national culture and that is an important asset worth protecting. Yet we are plagued by “congestion” primarily because there are so few alternatives to moving about by car. Our streets are abysmal and our public spaces are not much better. The architecture of most new buildings is derivative and repetitive. Public housing is a disaster.
The truly sad part is that City Councillors – the people we elect to show leadership – are virtually all acting only in their own self-interest. Their focus is their ward so their thinking is short-term and parochial. Nobody speaks for the big picture, long-term vision of where we need to go, and the hard (financial) decisions that need to be made to get us there. Without that type of leadership it’s hard to imagine we will ever become anything more than a second-rank, provincial city with aspirations….