travel – Sheila Kennedy

Some Reflections

Travel is always educational–a way to challenge the “givens” of our own daily surroundings and routines by engaging with different cultures and environments. As our recent, extended trip has concluded, it seems appropriate to share some reflections.

In both Australia and New Zealand, we were struck by–and impressed with–the meticulous maintenance of the infrastructure and especially of the public spaces. In New Zealand, especially, the parks and beaches weren’t only well maintained, they were numerous–and I found it particularly interesting that they routinely included public toilets–also clean and well maintained. Not “pay for use” facilities, as we’ve seen elsewhere, but conveniences open to the general public.

The emphasis on –and care for–free publicly available amenities really impressed me; it suggests a culture far more focused on community than we in the U.S. are accustomed to.

A couple of conversations–one with a passenger on our ship, and one with a New Zealand friend of my youngest son–gave me an insight into the contending reactions to lockdowns that we saw during the Covid pandemic. The first exchange occurred when I was in a line with another passenger; he said he lived in Florida, and (intemperate as it was) I asked him how he viewed Florida’s governor. His response was that DeSantis had “handled” the pandemic exceptionally well. I restrained myself from remarking that the data showed a rather different result. It may have been less annoying for the Florida citizens who survived; but thanks to DeSantis’ dismissal o medical science, a significantly larger percentage of Florida residents died than died elsewhere.

The conversation with my son’s friend was a bit different. I remarked how much I admired Jacinda Ardern, the former PM. She laughed and told me that Ardern was far more popular internationally than in New Zealand, and that she would not have been re-elected because of widespread disapproval of the way she’d handled the Covid pandemic–that New Zealanders overwhelmingly thought the lockdowns were too stringent, lasted too long, and were damaging to the economy.

The data confirms that Ardern’s management–a management consistent with medical advice– saved many lives. But those measures did depress the economy.

Both discussions illuminated something I’ve had great difficulty understanding: why did so many people resent the rules and restrictions meant to protect them from illness and death? I guess if you owned a small business or restaurant and the rules caused it to tank, recognizing that your pain had saved the lives of people you don’t know is asking a lot. Still…

Humans on planet Earth occupy vastly different natural, economic and cultural environments. The contrast between the native populations with whom we interacted in French Polynesia and Tonga, for example, and those who live in Australia and New Zealand was striking, and confirmed to me how much of individual well-being is shaped by the institutions of a given culture and society.

I think particularly of the young man who drove us around in Uturoa. He spoke at least two languages–his own and English (and perhaps others), and shared that in addition to providing tours to visitors, he had established a small business exporting fruit and vegetables. He was clearly ambitious, hard-working and entrepreneurial, but it was also clear that what he will be able to accomplish will be limited by the extent of local dependence on tourism, by the widespread, obvious poverty, and by the lack of a supportive economic infrastructure.

On a cruise and far from home, the news takes on a more detached quality. As we have heard heart-rending stories about the hostages, about Gaza and the continued travesty in Ukraine, and been treated to daily reports chronicling the chaos, stupidity and mean-spirited activity that passes for politics in the U.S. these days, it’s hard not to be depressed about the world our grandchildren will have to negotiate. I alternate between hoping that we can emerge from all the craziness and despairing that humanity is headed for another Dark Ages…

Most of all, a trip of this sort reminds me how very fortunate my husband and I have been. We may have missed Thanksgiving with our extended family, but my husband and I absolutely haven’t forgotten to be grateful for having been born in a time and at a place that allowed us to fashion a good life. I just want that same good life for my grandchildren– and for everyone else’s children and grandchildren.

A ship took us to an incredibly beautiful part of the world. Next year, I hope Americans will vote to keep another ship– the ship of state– in the hands of an equally sane, competent captain who can steer us into calmer waters.

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About that Identity Crisis

I blogged yesterday about our unfortunate experiences entering Stratford Upon Avon. (My unstated conclusion was that the town is confident that William (Shakespeare) will continue to pull in the tourists, and additional efforts are unnecessary.)

That said, we did encounter a couple of wonderful, helpful people. When we got off the train in Stratford, we were on the opposite side of the tracks from the station, requiring us to negotiate one of those bridges that spans the tracks. Up a flight of stairs, across, and then down to the platform. I had the big suitcase, and a young man insisted on carrying it for me up, across and then down the steps, despite my protests that I could handle it. Bob’s experience was similar–a man traveling with his toddler daughter took both cases across the bridge for him.

In my case, the helpful young man was an Arab. Bob’s helper was black.

I don’t want to use this happenstance to draw any large social conclusions; I simply note it. But we have both remarked upon the changing composition of the English crowds we’ve encountered on this trip. Americans like to think our country is more diverse than other western industrialized nations, but if our observations are representative, multiculturalism is hardly confined to the U.S. As we looked out the windows at each of the 15 stops between London and Stratford, we were struck by the number of women wearing hijabs (even a few burkas), and others who clearly were not from stereotypical English backgrounds.

Those observations made me think about our dinner companions on the just-ended cruise. We ate with a couple from Switzerland whose son lives in Florida and whose daughter lives in Germany. The wife’s sister lives in Paris. The couple themselves have a flat in Nice, an apartment in Florida and their “ancestral” home in Switzerland. They are multi-lingual (I always feel like an ugly American around people who are fluent in three or four languages…). During our trip, we met a number of people with such multiple “homes” and what one might call “shared identities.”

Is there a point to these random observations? Probably not–unless we chalk up all these experiences to “the world is changing” and “you can’t tell a book by its cover.” Stereotypes–racial, national, religious, what-have-you–have never been particularly reliable, but in the world we inhabit, they have gone from being marginally useful to downright misleading.

Sometimes, travel outside one’s safe, familiar world is a forcible reminder that identity is a social construct.

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Last Day in Lithuania

We woke to a really magnificent day–sunny, warm and breezy, and no humidity. We strolled though Uzupis and Old Town, stopping at
A couple of the ubiquitous cafes and doing lots of people watching. Lithuanians are a remarkably attractive people–many of them resemble Scandinavians ( since they are neighbors, my guess is they’ve intermarried).

Lithuanians also seem fairly prosperous. They dress well and I have been impresses by the tidiness and condition of their public spaces. I’ve seen very few abandoned properties and many, many buildings under renovation.

If there has been one disappointment, it has been the lack of evidence–historic or otherwise– of a Jewish presence in a city that was half Jewish before the second World War. I had hoped to learn more about the community from which my great-grandfather emigrated in the late 19th century, but at least in our brief time here, we’ve seen nothing reminiscent of the community once known as a center of Jewish life and scholarship.

We leave tonight for Dublin. (Our itinerary is an odd collection of places we’ve previously missed–after Dublin comes Berlin!)

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Travel Notes

It has been a couple of days since my last post, because we’ve been traveling…I am writing this from the bar in our hotel in Vilnius, Lithuania–the Shakespeare, a hotel I enthusiastically recommend. Vilnius is a wonderful city, alive with cultural actvities, buzzing with commerce, and very walkable, at least in the old city. There is even an artists’ area they call the Montmarte of Vilnius.

We flew to Chicago, then Heathrow, then Copenhagen, where we discovered our direct flight to Vilnius had been cancelled and we had to fly through Riga. All in all a very long travel time–we calculate about 36 hours in all.

Some observations:

people are much thinner in Europe.

customer service has been uniformly excellent–everywhere we’ve been, airline personnel and waiters, etc., have been helpful and courteous and multi-lingual.

it is hard to miss the degree to which the world has truly globalized.
To the naked eye, everyone looks American–we dress alike, shop at the same stores, express common mannerisms….True, we’ve lost a great deal of the charm of indigenous cultures, but it is impossible not to recognize how rapidly globalization is homogenizing the world–at least, the western world.

blogging will be sporadic, as we will be traveling pretty consistently for the next month.

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Personal Rant

Okay–I’m back from an academic conference in San Francisco. (Didn’t have my laptop, hence blogging suffered.) And if those of you who read this blog will indulge me, today’s post will be an exercise in pique as a result of my travel experiences. I know I’m old, but I remember when travel was an adventure–in a GOOD way.

The conference was at the lovely–albeit overpriced–St. Francis hotel on Union Square. I will never understand why pricey hotels nickle and dime guests. If Day’s Inn can offer free wi-fi with their cheapo rooms, why did I have to pay 44 dollars for three days of connectivity? I had taken my workout clothes, but decided not to pay 12/day for the privilege of using their facility. Food in the hotel was outrageously overpriced, and the constant drizzle, cold and wind made walking around to find something less expensive unappealing.

Those irritations, however, paled before the rotten flying experience.

I have very rarely flown United Airlines, and if I can manage it, I will avoid ever doing so in the future. Why?

when I checked in at 5:00 a.m.– an hour and a half before flight time– for my Continental flight (United recently purchased Continental, with which I had previously had no problems), there was a huge line which was moving very slowly. Since I was not checking luggage, I wanted to use an automated check-in kiosk; however, those were placed at the counter, in a configuration that required that everyone stand in the same line–you couldn’t just go to the kiosk, get your boarding pass and proceed through security, as you can with most other carriers.
Once aboard, there were the usual indignities you experience flying on any carrier today–you have to buy your food (even “complimentary” beverages don’t come with those little bags of pretzels anymore) and as the stewardess told me when–freezing–I asked for a blanket, “We don’t provide those on domestic flights.”
On the return trip, the cabin was dirty, and the stewardesses obviously didn’t want to be there. In fact, for at least half the 4 and a half hour flight to Chicago, they were nowhere to be seen. When they were actually visible, they were also visibly uninterested in being helpful.
I had been worried about making my connection to Indianapolis from Chicago, since I only had 45 minutes. I shouldn’t have worried–the Indianapolis plane was scheduled to depart at 9:55, and was delayed until 12:30. Now, these things happen. But there was NO ONE there to respond to questions, offer information, or otherwise smooth over the delay. In fact, the entire concourse was bare of United personnel–which made the electronic signs suggesting that passengers “ask your gate agent” pretty ironic, since there was no gate agent to be seen until five minutes before boarding. The gate area was filled with bewildered, tired people. When I turned to the woman sitting next to me and muttered that it would be nice if United provided some personnel to update us, she shrugged and said “They just don’t care, and they make that quite obvious.” She was right.

I finally crawled into my own bed at 3:00 a.m. this morning, angry and exhausted.

I’ve never been one of those people who looks back to “the old days” with nostalgia. Except when I travel.

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