"Did you read today?" by Alain De Botton, The Art of Travel

The Art of Travel by Alain De Botton

Price: 32 yuan

Book Excerpts:

Nicai offers advice on a second way of traveling: understanding how our societies and identities are formed through history, so as to get a sense of continuity and belonging. The person who makes such trips "transcends the short life of the individual and feels himself as the soul of his dwelling, race and city". He was able to gaze at the old building and experience "a joy in knowing that his existence was not entirely accidental or arbitrary, but a continuation and a consequence of the past." Therefore, the existence of a person is reasonable and does have the meaning of its existence."

The exoticism we find in a foreign land may be something we can't get in our own country.

Travel is thought-provoking. Few places make it easier to hear the inner voice than on a moving plane, ship, and train. There is a strange correlation between the landscape in front of us and the ideas that may arise in our minds: grand thinking often requires a magnificent landscape, and new ideas often arise in unfamiliar places. Stimulated by the flowing landscape, those inner quests that were easy to pause can continue to deepen.

The food on the plane, if you sit in the kitchen and enjoy it, can be said to be featureless, even appetizing, but now, because you are facing the sea of clouds, these foods have different tastes and interests (just like sitting on the top of the cliff by the sea, watching the waves crashing on the shore, while cooking, at this time eating even ordinary bread and cheese, it will make people feel high). Relying only on small dining boards in flight, we felt at home in the otherwise homeless cabin: we ate cold bread rolls and a small plate of potato salad, and enjoyed the interstellar beauty.

There is a difference between a trip on the ground and what we expect from it, and we are not unfamiliar with this view. People who are pessimistic about travel – d'Espandis should be an excellent example – and therefore think that reality is always disappointing. Perhaps, acknowledging the basic "difference" between a trip on the ground and a trip in anticipation would be closer to the truth and more beneficial.

Review:

The writer's travel is indeed completely different from the travel of ordinary people. This may be because their inner view of the world is different from ours, so it feels very special and wonderful to follow such an author to make such a journey through time and space.