Our world is bigger

I have traveled far, multiple times. My family is not rich or poor, somewhere in the middle, but we know how to spend money on important stuff. Like traveling.

I have no idea how many places I have been to, how many cultures I have experienced, how many big-city-sidewalks I have marched on, how many different languages I have heard. I know I love all of it.

New really is exiting. I learn more on a week's vacation in Greece, than I would in a plain classroom. Usually there is all kinds of religious, historical or nature experiences where ever you go in the world, but personally I am more interested in the food culture. Might be the fact, that I go to a culinary/hotel business school, because before I started that part of my life I was definitely one of the most annoyingly picky people about my food.

Or maybe the love of good food is what makes me want to study the different types of dishes, the way they cook or the typical ingredients. Like Chinese people with their rice, Indians with their curry, Brits with their baked beans and our traditional potatoes, meat and gravy, real Danish food.

There is one thing, though, that will never change when I board a plane. Every time, for as long as I can remember, when the plane starts to go really fast right before it takes off, and suddenly you are floating in mid air. Watching everything get smaller and smaller, cars, houses, everything shifts to doll size from your point of view.

The airport, you stood in a few minutes ago, where it would take an hour to get from one end to the other, is now smaller than a thumbnail. The city, you could easily get lost in before, you can now see it all at once. Even places like America, the land of endless possibilities, so wide, it is almost impossible to experience evrything it has to offer, would shrink enough to allow you to see it all through the small oval windows on the plane.

At this point, I sit with the strangest feeling I know. The feeling, that the world is so much bigger than just my home, my city, my country. MUCH bigger than me.

From my usual point of view, the world I know is big, with tons of people, restaurants I want to go to, books I haven't read. But it is when I sit in that window seat looking out over the green patches of land divided by a stunning marine blue ocean, that I realize how much I am missing out on. How much of the world, I still haven't seen. How many experiences I have yet to have.

Lots of people don't really like to travel much or too far. They feel comfortable where they are, they are fine with the temperature, fine with everything there is to do, fine with the food choices, they don't need to see everything else. Some part of me can relate to that feeling of comfort in the familiar rutine. The difference between those people and people like me, is that I don't do fine.

The way, you get pushed out of your comfort zone, when you have to speak another language or act a little different because of the norms and behavior is a bit vary from your own. It is a bit scary sometimes, to step out of your comfort zone, but not as hard as it seems. And usually, you create the most incredible memories to follow you throughout your life.

Now this is another thing I believe in. Traveling in itself is incredible, but add friends and family and it becomes so much more. A mix of familiar and brand new, that makes a perfect trip, and it allows you to relive the moment every time it is brought up in a conversation later on between the ones that where on the adventure with you.
Almost magically, you feel like you are back in your sunbed, climbing the mountains or shopping in Buda or Pest. Same feelings, yet a little distant. Like an addiction, you start to long for that feeling of excitement, of adventure and adrenaline, you crave it like you crave oxygen to breathe.

Traveling is my addiction. But unlike most other addictions, I would never try to quit it.