Home again- What you miss the most when you travel abroad.
Recently, I returned from a week’s stay in Paris. The trip was particularly active with little time to contemplate how the things I saw, heard or savored differed from what I normally experience at home. However, on my flight back to New York, I leisurely thought about the vicissitudes of travel. Over the eight-plus hour flight I also anticipated reclaiming the things that I missed most while abroad.
My late husband, Ed Lauber, spent a large portion of his career in the wine industry traveling around the world visiting his suppliers. He adapted easily to foreign environments. One could say that he was the prototype for a happy road warrior. When something was different from his American “norm” —such as not having a shower curtain in Germany or dealing with unsanitary toilet facilities in China—he’d just shrugged his shoulders. Ed never criticized how people lived in other parts of the world. In fact, he reveled in their differences.
Taking a Texan to task
Ed loved telling the story about traveling many years ago with a Dallas wine distributor and his pampered, second wife, naturally also a great deal younger. He was escorting them to meet Baron Philippe and tour Ch. Mouton Rothschild during harvest. However, as they arrived late in the evening, they overnighted in the city of Bordeaux before proceeding to the winery. Ed had reserved nice rooms in town at a top hotel. As he told it, the weather was particularly hot and humid that fall, France’s version of an Indian summer. There was no respite from the heat and the Texans just couldn’t get comfortable. When the wife realized that their hotel room didn’t have any air conditioning, she threw a fit.
Ed gently explained to the American couple the custom in France of not feeling the need for air conditioning just to accommodate a few days a year of excessive heat. This was incomprehensible to the Texas lady who was clearly addicted to a continuous 70⁰F year-round environment back home.
In a loud, indignant voice, she insisted they change hotels. “Y’all just gonna have to find us another hotel,” she demanded with a particularly drawn out Texas accent looking straight at Ed. Eyebrows at the front desk rose. There was nervous tension in the air. What to do?
Ever the diplomate, Ed acknowledged the “minor inconvenience” trying hard to avoid a potential “Ugly American” scene in front of the French hotel staff. Like a parent trying to quietly cajole his mis-behaved child into being reasonable, he explained that they were already staying in the best hotel in town and that the situation wouldn’t be any different elsewhere.
As Ed liked to recount the story, finally the Texas dame turned to her husband and exclaimed with a pout on her heavily made-up face that she wanted to go back home as France was such an uncivilized country. “And, can you believe? They don’t speak English like we do!”
That did it. Ed felt compelled to gently remind her where she was by asking her if she spoke any French. That question calmed her down, but she wasn’t a happy camper. Clearly, what she missed most from back in Dallas was air-conditioning, preferably at full blast.
Starting your day with the Wall Street Journal
Truth be told, when I queried my friends, many of them immediately answered they, too, missed not have air-conditioning when traveling abroad. After this predictable reply, my friend Karen Olaf—a former trader on the American Stock Exchange—went on to say that she also regretted not being able to start the day with her Wall Street Journal newspaper. “I know most people read their news on their iPhones these days, but I am old-fashioned and like the tactile quality of a newspaper. I enjoy it with my first cup of morning coffee and immediately turn to the second section to check out what’s going on with the stock market.”
Top New York public relations executive, Joan Brower, on the other hand, lamented her habit of turning the TV with CNN as soon as she wakes up. “As least when I travel, I am not bombarded with a continuous barrage of disturbing news. I don’t miss that part at all.”
A runner misses her favorite park
My trainer Jenn—who runs two marathons a year —said she missed not being able to run in Central Park. “To keep up my training I always try to find a good place to run while traveling. Yet nothing compares with what I have at home. The diverse terrain of hills and flat stretches plus the magnificent trees and lakes in the middle of Manhattan is something I never take for granted. Even when I am running along the Seine River and looking at stunning Parisian sights, I think about what I love best about my favorite park back home.”
Being able to eat a big salad for lunch is something else Jenn said she misses when she travels. “In most countries I’ve visited so far salads are not as substantial as they are here. An insalata mista in Italy, for example, is just a few lettuce leaves with a quartered tomato. Plus, you have to add your own olive oil and vinegar.” I explained to her that the American concept of a salad bar had recently reached France so it may be less of an issue for her future trips. In fact, last year, my local supermarket in Paris, Franprix, introduced their salad bar with great fanfare!
Whatever you do, don’t eat the lettuce!
It is not unusual, however, for Americans to crave salads as well as fresh fruits and vegetables while abroad. When I’ve traveled to countries in the Far East, Eastern Mediterranean or even Mexico, I’ve tried to follow the advice of not eating anything which is unwashed or uncooked. To ward off Montezuma’s revenge it is also recommended not drinking unfiltered water. By the time I get home, all I want to do is down several glasses of cold water from the tap, bit into a fresh apple, and prepare myself a large chef’s salad.
Clara, my favorite server at the Mansion coffee shop, says that she misses her grandson, Joseph, when she travels. She is just back from a three-country trip which ended in Russia. After Moscow Clara couldn’t wait to get back to her only grandchild and smother his chubby face with her kisses.
Things you can do without when traveling
While simple pleasures—such as sleeping in your own bed—is also frequently mentioned as something friends miss when traveling, one unexpected reply came from Mike. He explained “It not what I miss most as much as what I don’t miss about travel.” That response confused me, so he explained. “What I could to without is having to face the dangers and precarious inconveniences of travel.”
And for good reason. Before he retired, Mike flew back and forth regularly to the Middle East as a top banking executive. He encountered many unexpectedly dangerous situations such as being barracked in the Saint James hotel in Beirut in 1977. Turns out one the country’s many conflicts erupted upon his arrival. Unfortunately, the Saint James was smack in the middle of the two warring factions who were shooting at each other from either side of the hotel.
To prove his point, Mike recounted another story of an electrical fire on board a SAS flight while on a business trip. An hour after take-off, thick, black smoke started to fill the cabin. People began screaming hysterically and after what seemed like an interminable amount of time, the captain finally announced what the situation was and told the passengers not to worry. Eventually, the smoke did dissipate but Mike laughingly recalled that he was so panicky that he could barely recall the words to the Hail Mary Full of Grace prayer from his year’s at Catholic school.
The comfort of a routine
When I asked frequent traveler Mary Ewing Mulligan, MW and author of the Wine for Dummies series, what she missed most, she replied: “In a word, I am happy to experience my routine again. ‘Routine’ encompasses all the little everyday things, such as what time I wake up, what I do in the morning, my 6:00 am yoga practice, what time I eat, what time I return home, and what bed I sleep in. Of course, my husband and my kitties are part of my routine life, and therefore part of what I’m grateful for when I return home! Perhaps I am a creature of habit, but I find routine enormously comforting.”
Missing ways to feed the stomach and the soul
When you ask culinary experts what they miss most their replies often revolve around their specialty: food. Italian food authority and award-winning cookbook author Michele Scicolone answered, “I miss two things when I travel: my own cooking and eating simply. An egg and toast for breakfast, which you don't normally get in Italy and France, or the coffee we have at home, or pasta the way I make it. I rarely get to cook when I travel.” What Michele really misses is having her own kitchen!
Another noted cookbook author, Joanna Pruess, answered, “Having been a vagabond for much of my life, changing cities and homes relatively frequently, I tend to crave family recipes that have been staples at our Thanksgivings in London, Paris, Seville, Istanbul, etc.”
How did we ever live without Google Translate?
Being able to communicate easily was another thing people said they missed while traveling. Lila Gault, former wine marketer, explains it this way. “English speaking countries excepted, of course, I hate not understanding the language being spoken around me. Sure, I can dig out a pocket dictionary or go online to Google Translator and get my basic questions answered, but I miss talking to the local people. How I wish I had majored in Spanish in college!”
Things to look forward to back home
What do I regret not having? Well, there are two things. The first is the diversity I experience as a New Yorker. While more and more countries abroad have immigrants moving into their cities, no place is as cosmopolitan as New York City with its five distinctively different boroughs. For example, Jackson Heights, a historically diverse neighborhood in Queens, is home to residents speaking 167 different languages! I miss this diversity when abroad and am always happy to get on an MTA subway, look around and see the different colors of skin on the passengers around me and know that I’m back home in Manhattan.
The second thing I miss is hearing the US Customs officers say, “Welcome home.” Several people concurred with me that the simple statement would cause them to chock up when they heard it upon their return. Nowadays, however, with Global Entry and the overall speeded-up electronic processing of incoming passengers, the officers don’t even collect your customs declaration form anymore. Making eye contact, stamping your passport and welcoming you home is a thing of the past, I fear. Despite the intrigue and excitement of international travel, being back on American soil is something almost all of us are happy to reclaim, even without the former official welcome.