Charles Milliken: Unintended education of travel

Charles C. Milliken

Bonnie and I love to travel. You may recall my remarks from last week on our recent sojourn to Romania. Given a few days we spent in Moldova, this adds up to 60 countries we’ve visited in the past quarter century. A friend recently asked us if we didn’t get tired of travel. She might as well have asked us if we didn’t get tired of life.

Those of you who do travel require no explanation. Those of you who don’t — and we know many — cannot see the benefits being worth the costs, especially when it comes to international travel. There is no denying costs are significant, and I’m not talking just about dollars. The hassle factor is serious and rising. It takes longer and longer to get a passport. Airports can be a nightmare. There is always fear of flying, especially over water. Language barriers are always fun, depending on the destination. The food may not be to your taste. And so on and so forth.

But, I point out to my skeptical friends, travel is very educational. Their rejoinder is YouTube. You can see videos of anything in this whole wide world. Google Earth lets you helicopter over any spot on the planet. Why spend thousands just to see it in person? If I may use a bit of a stretch, why fall in love when you can watch a movie about it? It’s a lot cheaper!

But for us the education isn’t just about actually being there. I made mention last week of the “Merry Cemetery.” To be sure there are videos aplenty, but these fail to convey the totality of the experience, and the context in which it is found. Moreover, everywhere we go we encounter people — people who provide background and reaction to what we are seeing. (This is especially true for Bonnie and I, who are “thrifty” travelers. Expensive journeys, and paid tours, tend to insulate you from the locals. The cheap joints we stay in immerse us in the locals and often teach us to appreciate what we have back home. Showers which do not leak, for instance. And when I say “leak”, “flood” would more often be an accurate choice of words.)

For me the greatest unintended lesson occurred at the Atlanta airport when we arrived from our flight from Europe. Like many of my fellow citizens, I am aghast at the totally porous borders of our country. Passport Control gave me the answer. For those of you who haven’t had the experience, even though you are a citizen of the U.S. of A., you have to have permission to get back in. This is, or should be, simplicity in itself. Show your passport, which identifies you as a citizen, and in you go. Shouldn’t take more than 10 seconds, if that. However, depending upon the zealousness of the agent, 10 seconds can stretch to a minute.

Big deal, you say? You and 400 of your fellow passengers have all landed at once. You are joined, at Atlanta and other major international hubs, by more planeloads arriving every few minutes. Even at 10 seconds, processing 400 people takes over an hour. Not only that, but many passengers hold non-U.S. passports, which takes even longer.

When we got off the plane, we were warned there were “long lines” at Passport Control. Before we even got to the entry hall, non-U.S. passport holders were told to “line up against the wall.” Welcome to America!

When we got to the cavernous entry hall, we found “long lines” were a joke. The whole thing was packed with thousands of people. We had a two hour and 45 minute layover. It took one hour and 20 minutes to get through Passport Control and, with another security check, customs, bag retrieval, changing terminals and long walks we made our connecting flight five minutes before they shut the doors. Others were not so lucky.