How to Avoid Travelling

Travel is the name of a modern disease which started in the mid-fifties and is still spreading. The patient grows restless in the early spring and starts rushing about from one travel agent to another collecting useless information about places he doesn’t intend to visit. Then he, or usually she, will do a round of shops and spend much more than he or she can afford. Finally in August, the patient will board the plane, train, coach or car and go to foreign places along with thousands of his fellow-countrymen, not because he is interested in or attracted by some place, nor because he can afford to go but simply because he cannot afford not to. The result is that in the summer months (and in the last few years also during the winter seasons) everybody is on the move.

What is the aim of all this travelling?

Each nationality has its own different one. The Americans want to take photographs of themselves in different places. The idea is simply to collect documentary proof that they have been there. The German travels to check up on his guide-books. Why do the English travel? First, because their neighbour does. Secondly, they were taught that travel broadens the mind. But lastly – and perhaps mainly – they travel to avoid foreigners. I know many English people who travel in groups, stay in hotels where even the staff is English, eat roast beef and Yorkshire pudding on Sunday and steak-and-kidney pies on weekdays, all over Europe. The main aim of the Englishman abroad is to meet people, I mean, of course, nice English people from next door or from the next street. It is possible, however, that the mania for travelling is coming to an end. A Roman friend of mine told me: “I no longer travel at all. I stay here because I want to meet my friends from all over the world”. “What exactly do you mean?” I asked. “It is simple,” he explained. “Whenever I go to London my friend Smith is in Tokyo and Brown is in Sicily. If I go to Paris my friends are either in London or in Spain. But if I stay in Rome all my friends, I’m sure, will turn up at one time or another. The world means people for me. I stay here because I want to see the world. Besides, staying at home broadens the mind.”

Task 23. Read the following text to find out more about the reasons of travelling.

Why Not Stay at Home?

Some people travel on business, some in search of health. But it is neither the sickly nor the men of affairs who fill the Grand Hotels and the pockets of their proprietors. It is those who travel “for pleasure”, as the phrase goes. What Epicurus, who never travelled except when he was banished, sought in his own garden, our tourists seek abroad. And do they find their happiness? Those who frequent the places where they resort must often find this question, with a tentative answer in the negative, fairly forced upon them. For tourists are, in the main, a very gloomy-looking tribe. I have seen much brighter faces at a funeral than in the Piazza of St. Mark’s only when they can band together and pretend, for a brief, precarious hour, that they are at home, do the majority of tourists look really happy. One wonders why they come abroad.

The fact is that few travellers really like travelling. If they go to the trouble and expense of travelling, it is not so much from curiosity, for fun, or because they like to see things beautiful and strange, as out of a kind of snobbery. People travel for the same reason as they collect works of art: because the best people do it. To have been to certain spots on the earth’s surface is socially correct; and having been there, one is superior to those who have not. Moreover, travelling gives one something to talk about when one gets home. The subjects of conversation are not so numerous that one can neglect an opportunity of adding to one’s store.

Task 24. Study the following information and say a) what transport you prefer while travelling and why; b) what the choice of transport depends on and c) if you agree with the author of the text.