London as a Model of Gorgeousness - Essay Example

I was floating on the river Thames that flowed below London Tower Bridge. The time was about sunset. The sky was reddish when I got on the cruise, but as time passed, the red of the sky began getting darker. Finally, the river lost the power of the sun, turning its waters black and reflecting the light from Big Ben and the bridge in glittering pathways. The light, contrasted with the black river, was sparkling bright and highlighted the grandeur of Big Ben, casting its own face upon the surface of the Thames in a beautiful display of the passage of time. If London was a model of gorgeousness, the scenery of Switzerland symbolized purity itself. More than any other scenery I had ever seen, Switzerland’s green growing things and the clear refreshment of the air blew out all my stress and worries at once. One moment especially stands out in my memory. As we traveled on our cruise, I had been able to pick out a few islands distant and gray in the mist. As the cruise approached closer to them, they emerged green and shining, opening up as an entirely new world and I seemed to understand Columbus’ thrill of discovery in coming across a new world. To travel between nations, I usually used the Euro Pass. This was a tremendous means of transportation because the trains offered personal beds, and the number of beds equaled the number of people in each room. Thanks to this procedure, I naturally encountered many new people on every rail trip. Most of them were also travelers like me. They wanted something new, to experience new things and to see new ways of living, just like I did. This common goal destroyed the barrier that people normally seem to place between strangers and we became friends easily. The conversations we had were not so practical or necessarily focused on real life; however, we all seemed to feel rather carefree and this increased our sense of true freedom. It was a great experience to have relationships with a bunch of people who didn’t know about me before. I could be anyone that I had wanted to be and I really enjoyed those moments as I experienced a view of myself through others that was, at the same time, not me. Besides the people I met in the trains, there was a memorable person I remember. In Rome, I once lost my way on the road. It was not easy to find the right way, because the road was crowded with other lost travelers. While I was confused, looking at the map of Rome and moving slantwise again and again, I heard someone’s voice calling me. At my first glimpse, I knew what he was going to say. A big straw hat, tattered clothes, everything he wore indicated he was among the typical homeless population. As I expected, as soon as I turned my head to him, he opened his lips with a very pitiful voice, “Please, give me some money, I haven’t eaten any food since this morning.” Because I was not cold-blooded enough to let a hungry man starve, I handed him some Euros, and then as a reward, he told me the way. But, in a few minutes, I got lost again within several steps. Embarrassed, all I was able to do was just look around and try to guess where I should go. However, things didn’t quite work out the way I expected. I could see the guy I had given some money to was approaching me again. Actually, he was walking behind me to be sure I found my way. He indicated a specific direction again, “That’s the way you’re going to.” I realized that while I was looking at him as a stereotypical homeless person, dependant on the kindness and handouts of others, he automatically saw me as a hopeless tourist, but we were each just people. We were able to help each other out not because of our assumptions about each other, but because of our willingness to move beyond these assumptions to see each other as human. This had been my first tour overseas. Until I undertook the trip, I couldn’t understand my father’s saying before every business trip, “Oh! I hate these flights.” I considered it a common complaint to the life he lived, like “Life is hard.” But for the first two hours of my flight, I began to understand my father’s complaints. It seemed I became someone’s pet, required to fall within specific patterns of behavior and rewarded with attention when I did well. The only pleasure I was able to have was in the meals the stewardess offered twice during the flight, based upon their own determination of the appropriate times. If I had not had a fantasy built up regarding the new world I was going to see after the flight, I’m not sure I would have been able to sit so patiently through the flight. However, time was honest and in fifteen hours, I arrived at the international airport of London. As time passed during my tour, I found myself becoming tired of the picturesque scenes surrounding me all the time. Everything I was seeing was a work of art. All the buildings I went through, even supermarkets, represented the magnificence of the Middle Ages. The buildings were embellished with all kinds of gorgeous and delicate lines and there was no such thing that had just a sleek surface upon it. My fingers releasing the shutter of a camera restlessly for the first couple of days began to lose their willingness to perform this role as my mind, overwhelmed with the images around me, began to lose the reason that those splendid moments had to be captured on the film inside it. My eyes got tired of being dazzled with the brilliance of all those wonderful things. I began to miss the concept of the merely mediocre. Most of the days I spent in Europe were spent under the cover of clouds blocking the brilliance of the sun and further making me miss my home. It was usually raining, but even if it wasn’t, I always had to keep an umbrella in my hand. One book, called “Nine Keys for Success”, indicated, “You shouldn’t be affected by weather, whatever the weather is like, you are the person dominating yourself.” As I traveled, though, I thought I couldn’t reach the point the book recommended for success at the time. Although I had been surrounded by a great deal of splendor, I wasn’t able to escape being at least a little depressed. One feat I was proud of during my trip was that I hadn’t lost very much money. I took specific time out during one of the days I spent in the Czech Republic to figure out how much money I had by that point. Because I scattered my money among a few places within my traveling bags, considering the possibility that some of my money might be stolen, I tended to spend it without first making plans. I decided to pool it all together in my wallet to encourage me to be more careful. One day I took a bus and I was wearing Hip-hop style jeans that had a big sized pocket. After I got off the bus, I finally realized that two thousand Euros that were in my pocket were as accessible to anyone else besides me who had been standing in my area. I realized that keeping all my money in one place might be more convenient to me and less tiresome in trying to make more economical spending decisions, but that it was not worth the possibility of losing everything with one careless action like keeping it one of those pockets on the bus. Suddenly, I began to miss my country so much because it was the place where everything had been familiar, comfortable and handy. If I could travel through time and talk with my younger self, before I went on the trip, I would say to him, “This trip is not going to be exactly what you have expected, but you go, and feel by yourself!” I didn’t know what exploring a new world would mean to me. I thought it would be just like eye shopping for splendor and gorgeousness. However, I was arrogant in this assumption. I had considered myself an already-completed-person. All the magnificence I had seen, all the people I had met, and every moment I spent in Europe, even the moment in which I lost my money during the bus ride, were the lessons I gained of this new world. Now I am in another new world, called America. This time, I am not wishing or expecting everything to be under my complete control, but I am going to feel and touch this country as another new world I am going to face head-on with all its faults and benefits! Read More