In Transit

It was time for my friend to leave Poland. After buying some mint-apple juice from a nearby convenience store she mentioned that she had to use the facilities. My friend returned three minutes before her train left. I was exasperated, but didn’t want to ruin our goodbyes by ranting. It’d been amazing to tour the major sites of Poland with a friend of many years. Yet, I was ready for a brake. For the past week, I’d been Travel agent, Translator and Tour guide in-one. This is travel. But, not the way I’d grown up understanding it.    

About a month ago I embarked on the most recent family trip.  I was looking forward to the three week experience. After January in Wroclaw it would be heaven. The trip was planed mostly by my parents. The money would be their problem. The biggest thing I had to worry about was what to order for lunch!

I’ve traveled on my own before too. The experience is enlightening. You really get a feel for how people treat foreigners. Alone with your own thoughts, you develop an understanding of a peoples’ history -- Their way of thinking and living.

But, it’s anything but relaxing. You’re free to do as you please. Yet, there’s no one to share the experience with. The burden is all yours. I remember days in Albania when I thought I’d be kidnapped. Making a Belgrade train reservation is only possible with helpful locals. Avoiding drunks in Lwow is practically impossible.

Avoiding the drunks in Wroclaw was impossible with my Asian-American friend. It was as if we had a sign on our backs that said ‘give us crap’ at every street corner and tramwaj stop.  We had fun laughing at in-jokes and trying to ascend centuries old battlements. Still, when she lost her cell phone I was the one who had to deal with the national railways’ unhelpful blue-collar workers.

My mother voiced a similar complaint in Tunisia. There, she was the itinerary planner and translator for the entire family. “When will I be on vacation?” she vented one day. I felt relived of all concerns. My father just seemed proud that he was responsible for getting us on the plane to the country in the first place.  

When we arrived in Sicily, my mother began to relax. My father shouldered the driving. I handled the navigation. Mom provided the itinerary.

I felt life’s weight returning in Malta. After visiting Rhodes, I’d expected the country to be the knights’ crowning achievement. Even during Carnival, it turned out to be a Disneyland for old British people. For most of the trip, no expectations had been placed on me. Now, I realized that the trip would end. Reality is inescapable.

We got lost on our way back from Amalfi. My father, known for being needlessly cautious about travel plans, complained strenuously. It was a mere inconvenience for me and my mother.   

 Back in Poland, I’d misread the train schedules. The express my friend and I were planning to take wasn’t running. Only one other train departed to Wroclaw that day.  After a quick dinner, I informed her that we needed to head to the platform: now.  It was strange how much I sounded like my father as I sternly told her why she could not use the lieu at this critical juncture.     

Travel comes in many forms. With family, you defend against onslaught of reality. With friends, you hide from it as best you can. With solo travel, you immerse yourself with no life lines. Each holds a new type of knowledge; its own type of stress.

  As Ayn Rand opined in the Fountainhead: travel “is not for going places, but for getting away from them.” It’s an attempted escape from reality. A futile flight from that which is. No matter where one goes.    

The Real 'People's State'

Before I left for south-east Asia I watched the first part of Ayn Rand’s ‘Atlas Shrugged’. I wanted to know how the story ended so I started reading the 1,500 page novel. As a business student I found much of the work’s objectivist philosophy to be of merit. The plot deals with how corrupt government officials and their allies can appropriate entrepreneurial gains for their own interests. It shows how this can retard a nation’s growth and even bring it to its knees.

These literal implications of the novel seemed a bit far-fetched to me until I visited Cambodia. On my last day there, I had a chance to talk with my hotel’s owner.  He told me that the country has remained an unofficial communist dictatorship since the fall of the Khmer Rouge 40 years ago. Mostly, it has remained under the rule of a single family.

 Many commodities and state assets have been subject to government manipulation.  In a country where some cannot afford the costs of subsistence, gas costs much more than in the U.S.  Many museums charge above market rates for all patrons because they are now controled by the governing family, which has amassed billions of dollars.

Wealth is not a bad thing. However, from the discussions I had, it seemed to me that if one has enough success the regime will make matters difficult for that person’s business in the name of the public good.

In such an environment, it is little wonder that the country has struggled economically compared to other south-east Asian nations. Cambodia currently produces little. It relies on aid and must import many products and necessities from neighboring Thailand. Services in the country also lag behind. Tellingly for those who have read the novel, all railroad service in the country ceased a few years ago.

My final day in Cambodia was Election Day. My hotel owner did not bother to vote. “Even if we managed to elect the opposition those in power would just throw the results out” he said.  In this light, the power of Rand’s message seems clear. There can be no path forward until business can be perused on individual merit -- and until its rewards can be enjoyed by those who deserve them.