Nice Places Where I Don’t Want to Live

In Europe everybody lingers at their dinner tables for hours. We witnessed a lot of charity to street artists in Europe. People who play music at your table and then shove their cups into your face seemed to get a nice return. While eating in Rome we bought a crazy dancing dog doll that sports a combination of sunglasses, Santa hat, weird old-timey love song, and dancing ears- our sole souvenir from all of Europe.

“What does it mean if people don’t value their time?”

“Maybe it means they don’t value money.”

However I know people generous with their time but not with their money. Is this evidence that valuing time != valuing money or just more human irrationality?

Pleasure travel is always weird for me because if I’m going to be in some place I often think I should really value my time so I should take a taxi to the colosseum instead of a bus to minimize filler time that I’d normally spend in the USA on my computer because we’re not here to read and write- we’re here to spend time doing travel stuff! But I don’t like to rush myself and I always think these places are always going to be here. I rarely go anywhere that I think I won’t return to.

Oh except I got rid of my NYC apartment- I’m never going back there. I hadn’t been there in a while and when I returned to the states I fled into my serene little yard. I always slept soundly in the bedroom because there’s no street noise and the room opens into the quiet yard, with its tree that drops white petals in the summer. But as I stepped out into the yard there was a gigantic dead rat! I screamed so loudly when I saw this 6 pound monster toppled over onto its side with its fleshy pink toes and tail that my neighbor knocked on the door to make sure I hadn’t been murdered. So yeah I’m never going into that yard again. I’d already been intending to move out but I felt so crawly after seeing that rat (my superintendent removed it) that I moved out 3 weeks early. I kept thinking that it probably lived in my yard and was fatly sauntering around and could’ve given me the plague and what if it’d entered the house all the times I left the door open?? Anyway, I seek a place without rats. And I’ve learned my lesson about NYC: only live in a high rise.

9 Replies to “Nice Places Where I Don’t Want to Live”

  1. You know that clichéd saying that goes: “It’s the journey, not the destination”? Well, sometimes it *is* the destination, but other times, the journey is what matters. So if you’re traveling (for pleasure) and looking at the colosseum is really important to you, then taking a taxi instead of a bus makes a lot of sense to save time. But what is time when you’re traveling? If time is measured by money, then you’re not traveling, you’ve only successfully moved your physical body from one point to another on the geographical plane. Your mind is still in the same place. You’re actually ‘working’ and thinking about ‘earning’ the equivalent of what you earn back home. stop! your instinct is probably right, those things will always be there.
    I try to get lost at least once when I’m on a trip. It gives me a chance to stop and ask people for directions. That’s when interesting things start to happen!

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