Who has gone traveling and made met really amazing people?

Case in point.

Thash true!

I love to travel by rail, in America that would be Amtrak. Amtrak sucks, but there is something about train travel, being cooped up with others unlike you for an extended period of time, that is exhilarating. I meet and get to know people whom are of types that I would never meet in the course of a normal day.

The problem with travel is that you meet people who are seeking to broaden their mind by spreading it out over a large surface area and thus diminishing its depth.

The volume of knowledge depends on minds, not craniums...

And as such, it's not a constant..

Pure sophistry Frankie!!

One is not going to explore the interior of the atom if one continually goes around exploring the surface of a large number of atoms and listing all the different colours and concluding, to the applause of the peer group, of whatever position in the pecking order, that Merteuilium is black and Virginium is white which they would be if you named the ones that reflected no light Merteuilium and the ones whose resplendent rays fused the electron microscope Virginium and the ones in between Bettium and Elsium and Valerium and Petunium.

I was once formally introduced to a young lady called Petunia and I had difficulty in not bursting out laughing. Deadly Nightshade would have been a better name for her.

When one travels one cannot help meet the surface of people. Unless you go as a football hooligan I mean. They already know each other's interiors before they meet.

Of course, the surface of people is about all most of us can tolerate and it is understandable I suppose judging by known facts about the interiors that there is a great deal of travelling and toing and froing and making lists of things needed, such as a certain remedy for XXXXXX (fill in city of choice) tummy, and packing suitcases and going through the rigmarole at the airports before embarking on a journey I fear it would take me too long for a short post like this to describe in anything like realistic terms which would, inevitably, downplay the standing in front of the fountain/statue/obelisk/ other lump of masonry to have one's picture recorded to show the folks back home and bring to the fore the sordid accompianments to that great feat.

The higher you rise in the world and the fewer people you can really meet.

Dylan tells a tale of him looking in the windows of a packed and noisy pub at the revellers and walking away disconsolately because he knew that if he went into to join them the atmosphere would suddenly change. They would become surfaces again like they had been all day up to getting bladdered.

So really, proper traveller's tales should deal with the piss-ups. Or any one of those traumatic incidents in which interiors are more exposed to view.

What you said about "meeting" the American consul and him being knowledgeable and having amazing stories does nothing for me apart from informing me that you have been to the Ivory Coast and move in exalted circles and thus you might be a source of useful investment advice on the able to know principle and that dangling this knowledge before our eyes without giving us the advice is as cruel as showing a starving man a plate of bacon and eggs and preventing him from reaching it.

That's a version of Learn English. Phase II.

Excellent Spendius. A brilliant quote.
Well, yes. In this case you were right.
I don't really have much of an idea about how to 'winkle one out.'

No I haven't, but it sounds like the sort of book I would like. It can be next on my list.
Thank you Fresco.

I would offer to show you if I wasn't such a shagged-out old has-been.

Have you seen the Sky Arts "How Art Made the World". It is on again at 9.00 pm on Sept 11th, 14th and 15th.

I like sophistry, don't you, Spendi?

Whatever long, elaborate and insightfull, your post is rejoycing but missed many points as far as I'm concerned.

The one is, based on what I learned from your past posts, you have no experience of long time traveling and/or what it is traveling for business.

As Louis-Ferdinand Céline stated (but Diogenes had hinted it already), experience is a dim light that only lights the one who bears it.

As so, you can hardly talk about things you have no experience on whatsoever. Sure, you can always rationalise and perform rethorics that usually go overhead of the average citizen.

But I must tell you that I've a good experience of microscopes and flowers' Latin names.

I no more check for the surface of things but I focuse on the essential when I travel.

What PQ talks about is an endless repetition of known facts.

Being upset about such frequent episodes denotes that she has not a real experience of travelling.

That people usually do not have the profoundity of thought one expects, while traveling or not, only tells that people put too many expectations in mankind in general. Quite a matter of wishful thinking...

As to the ordeals one have to get through, before and while in the airports, I can tell you that's largely inflated and its only a matter of how used one is to travelling.

As an exemplification of the aforesaid, I'd like to tell you a small story: Lately I was travelling with a business partner who was not very aware of the servitudes one has to endure while going through airports.

I briefed him beforehand how he would have to have his stuff packed and what behavior display toward security controlers, and every other useful information.

What do you think he did? Just the contrary of what I told him.

What was the result? I passed the controls in two minutes and then waited for him for an hour.

I've seen people excited, upset, nervous or exhibiting every kind of behavior they would abhorr in normal life, meaning while not travelling.

Therefore, the piss-ups are legions, and narrating them wouldn't even been a matter of merriment.

Now, coming back to my supposed cruelty, I assure you that such display it's really involuntary.

If you had taken the pain of asking, I would deliver you some advice on investments.

I have actually met some amazing people on my travels.

4 of us were being driven through the desert about 25 miles north of Baghdad. Our Iraqi driver pulled in at a place of refreshment where some Detroit rustbuckets were parked. There was nothing you could see in any direction but flat light brown dirt and there were packs of dogs howling incessantly and an old fashioned ghetto-blaster playing Arabic music at full bore. They sold cold Coca Cola and other coloured liquids which were popular on account of how ******* hot it was. It was a collection of rough huts and structures with skins over the top and oil lamps hung from the beams. The floors creaked. All in all, about the size of a Tesco Express.

Round a table were some tribesmen playing cards. They had daggers and pistols stuck in their belts and weathered faces with flashing eyes and large noses. If they had any WAGS they were not immediately visible. And they were all in the full flowing kit you see in Lawrence of Arabia movies. There were piles of greasy currency notes on the table. Some younger men in jeans and T-shirts were lounging about on the gloomy periphery joshing with each other.

As card playing was one of our few sources of solace we stopped to watch them play as we drank our Cokes. Not that we understood the game.

It wasn't long before there were some oaths being muttered and tension was in the air and our driver hurried us into our car and drove off fast. When he was satisfied we weren't being followed he slowed down a bit and told us that one of them was blaming his luck turning on our presence.

I can still see them in my mind's eye. That's how amazing they were.

I have asked before. You said you would let me know.

I'll ask again. What should I invest in? And you needn't worry about me blaming you if it doesn't turn out.

Nice story, Spendi, just the kind that makes unexperienced travelers look at you in awe, when, by chance, they find you in a light mood to tell..

But you missed the part where the guy that was blaming his lack of luck on your presence, stood up and, with a swift movement, slashed your face with his dagger, leaving a bleeding wound, which later became the scar you hide with your profuse beard.

Isn't it a much nicer ending?

Ok, just buy some (I mean sufficiently) shares of ETFC.

I'm sure they will, at least, double their value in the next few months.

But my point was that you have no choice with transitory relationships with people of other cultures. Depth can only come with time. Every night in the same pub close to where you were born and brought up opens chasms of meaning which are not evident to those passing through.

I presume that's E-Trade Financial Corporation and not Enfield Town Football Club.

I'm not sure UK citizens can buy on the NASDAQ. Do you know?

Then again, Spendi, either you have no experience of travel or you have no experience about how to make people unveil their true soul.

I mean, people you think maybe are worth your efforts.

If French citizens can, why not British ones?

You mean seeing the chthonic real you at last? I've been close. You're welcome. I prefer a modicum of circumspection which I accept is a bit chicken but I was molly-coddled in my formatives.