Blogs
Travel Habit
Habit: Their are so many beautiful stairways in Buenos Aires apartments. My homestay has a beautiful red and whit marble staircase but very few people use it. All portenos take the elevator--definitely an example of passing over the everyday beauty for function. Its strange because I will often take the stairs because I don't want to wait for the elevator. I too want to make my commute seem faster and the elevator slows it down.When de Botton talks about habit his main point is that we tend to simplify the spaces (areas, neighborhoods, streets, worlds) that we spend the most time in down to functionality. We miss points of view, namely imagined points of view that others may have and we miss the romantic and interesting for the pragmatic. I have taken up habits in Buenos Aires as I’m sure most have in their respective study abroad sites but the habits that de Botton talks about take form in the place that some call home. As I’m preparing to prepare to leave this city I think about how the spectrum of homes I feel connected to right now.
First there is the home that there is no place like. I like to poke fun at my liberal college Massachusetts town but as I write this I can think of places and not just people that are important to me there. A bridge in the woods near a middle school that I never went to, a park I used to run races around. Though I wouldn’t say these places are a part of me in any way I do think that they hold a significance that one who doesn’t live in my town would have a harder time appreciating. In a larger sense I thank my summer camp which is based on walking around my town much like de Botton (though it is of course different when you’re leading a group of kids) for a greater appreciation of the daily life that most people pass by in their cars.
I also think of New York which is still a place of discovery. I feel most like a New Yorker when I’m commuting. I also realize that I spend most of my time in the city with the same people in the same places be they school-related or not. When I get back I want to change that and if there is a place that one can constantly discover new things it is New York. One can feel at home there but I think it would never be the same feeling that de Botton has for his quiet English hometown or I have for the town I grew up in.
Then there is Buenos Aires. I wouldn’t call it home at all though I definitely feel an attachment to my bedroom that feels detached from travel. I still wake up to my host family eating breakfast and think, for an instant, that I’m back in the US. My room here is totally different than any room I have ever slept in but having a place that has not changed and that I have returned to almost every night for the past three months makes it special. And my commute here has not lost all romanticism. I have realized here that I like the bus more than the subway. I’ll say I want to take the bus instead because of the light, passing across Nueve de Julio, the street noise, and the nicer temperature. Yet I’ve realized how frustratingly held up the bus can get with the traffic in this city , that inefficiency that de Botton talks about. I’ve realized that the subway may be faster, and not take my monedas so sometimes I’ll take but if I can I still take the bus. Even though I opt for the more pleasurable transport (and often end up regretting it) I think that the fact that I still choose the bus exemplifies a habit specific to this city and my time here. This has not been a vacation to the Barbados; this is a different type of travel—longer, more complex, more quotidian yet not normal.
