Bound

Bound, a bookstore in PragueIt is five o’clock in the evening. I walk through the glass doors off Wenceslaus Square and stand before an impressive room filled with books. The scene before me, although foreign, is familiar. People roam through the aisles carrying gym bags, sporting after work attire, or wearing oversized down coats like my own. Books face outwards on stands, greeting their customers rather than hiding behind their spines. Picturesque mountains, eager kangaroos, endless roads, expansive prairies, New York City skyscrapers, sparkling glasses of wine, and quaint European alleys decorate each volume. While at home titles such as Let’s go Europe, I Am A stranger Here Myself, Prague!, Highways, Quest for Kaitiakitanga, and My French Life can be read on any of the covers, here I can make out words like Cestovat (Travel), Prohlídka (tour), Evropa (Europe) and even Spojené státy americké(USA). As I venture further into this oasis of wanderlust, I notice huge coffee-table-style books with coliseums and deserts on their faces, promising me “the wonders of the world” for prices in the range of 300kc ($15). Clusters of couples sit together with piles of travel books by their sides, jotting down notes on the backs of business cards, scribbling facts between appointments in already packed calendars and writing furiously on any scrap of paper that’s available. I, follow suite, and pen and paper in hand, head to the English language section to begin to devour a budget travel Eastern Europe book. Even before my arrival in Prague I loved, (or rather, am still obsessed) with travel books. I devour them. I read them, and then some otherwise under-utilized-unknown-somewhat-photographic part of my mind memorizes them and files the information in what is perhaps my brain’s best attempt at organization. When I should be remembering mathematic formulas, or where I last put my phone and wallet, I, instead, can easily recall how far away Krakow is from Prague, what bus line to take, how much money it costs, and what the ten “least discovered” things to do in both cities are…as recommended by a Mr. Frommer, a Mr. Steves, and a college student writing for Let’s Go. My infatuation with the notion travel is repulsive. Alain de Bottom writes in her book, The Art of Travel that “we are familiar with the notion that the reality of travel is not what we anticipate” (11). For me the anticipation or reading of a travel book, is, itself a reality. I whether in Amherst, New York, and now Prague, read travel books to understand where I am, where I am going, and where I want to go. While de Bottom writes that, “it is easy for us to forget ourselves when we contemplate pictorial and verbal descriptions of places” (19), for me its not about forgetting, but discovering who I am in the context my own surroundings and in the surroundings of others. I agree with de Bottom’s belief that a “plane’s ascent is an exemplary symbol of transformation” (38). However, (and perhaps this stems from my own reality of previously limited travel experience) I believe this transformation can occur without the plane. Bottom states then while abroad she finds herself focusing on the exotic and “absurd intense reactions provoked by such small (and mute) foreign elements” (75). Yet I, like her, agree in “how rich in meaning details may be” (75). These details, my dorm’s stain glassed doors, Prague’s slippery cobblestone, the curvature of European streets, and the familiar environment of the travel section of a bookstore, are what make traveling, in my mind, an endless exploration of discovery. A discovery that begins by reading the spine of a neatly bound book.