Experiential versus textual learning

Metropolis Statue- City CenterWhen I looked through the list of suggested readings I was surprised to notice one already on the travel shelf in my parents’ library. It is for that reason that I chose to read the book “Travelers’ Tales Spain.” This book claims from the get go that it is not your typical guidebook, choosing to focus more on individual accounts than on such figures as monetary exchange rates and conversion of various forms of measurements. Let’s just say I think that is the strongest asset this book has to offer. I feel that since each story was contained to no more than ten pages, each word had been chosen with much precision, and that that succinctness made it very easy to follow.

That said, each of the stories were well crafted, giving you the details you wouldn’t know had you not seen the described scene yourself. In her introduction to the book, Editor Lucy McCauley claims that “All travelers will take home a tale of their own making, different from the place they envisioned from afar. Between these two, between the place that is read about and the place that is experienced, there is a connection, May this book serve as that bridge.” I think it definitely served that purpose. I started reading this book, not seriously, but a story here or there before I left the states. In those initial moments I was that dreamer, imagining what Spain would look like, smell like, taste like, feel like without ever having stepped on Spanish soil.

Once I got here, and started my life in Spain, I began to craft my own story—my own tale of what it meant to be Spanish, integrating all my own personal experiences. In the time since I’ve left home I have become a traveler with a personal story. But now reading through these stories, I see them at sort of a middle ground—even though I’ve been living here, I still haven’t had the experiences these authors describe. That said, having a general knowledge of Spain and its customs puts me a little higher up in terms of understanding as compared with someone who knows really nothing of the culture. There are various degrees of this acculturation; for example, I felt that when reading the stories set in Madrid, I feel the closest to the authors. The streets they describe, the sights they see are all ones that I have experienced firsthand. In that sense, I feel like I am even closer to actually being where they are—obviously physically, but moreover metaphorically!

Location