At the moment, there are 216 countries in the world, but it wasn’t always
like that, and not all of them are recognized by every international
governmental body. That doesn’t matter to me, though. I’m not traveling to
these places as a diplomat. If they have declared themselves to be an
independent state, I have to visit them, even if I was technically already
there when it was part of a different nation. Well, I don’t have to
do any of this, but I’ve made it this far, so I need to see it through. Let
me explain. When I was a girl, my parents received a hefty inheritance from
a distant relative that my mother didn’t even know existed. According to her
executor, my mom’s great aunt something-something didn’t have any other
family left by the time she died. Mom didn’t get this inheritance just
because she was next of kin, though. Her aunt knew of her, and even followed
her career as a trombonist. Sadly, we never got to meet her, but we did get
that money. The two of them took some time off work one summer to travel. We
went to several countries in Europe, plus Egypt, plus India. Just like that,
I found myself having seen three continents, and one subcontinent. I felt
compelled to continue, so before I began my studies at university, I spent a
gap year backpacking through Asia, seeing five more countries. Every year, I
became more obsessed with adding to my itinerary. North America, South
America, even Antarctica. I developed rules about my stays. I had to remain
for at least one week for it to count, and I had to go to multiple cities. I
couldn’t just hang out near the airport, or straddle the border between two
neighbors. I could have done it much faster without these rules—which some
people do, thinking faster is better—but money runs low fast, so I still had
to work. It took me decades to do it right.
Word spread what I was doing. As I said, I wasn’t the only one, but I was
famous for it before I was halfway through, because I was actually spending
time absorbing culture. Airlines would send me free tickets to promote their
planes. Countries would pay my way to draw in tourism. Everybody wanted a
piece of the action, and it was totally fine by me. I was the girl who saw
it all, and people wanted me to tell them about it. I tried to write a book
about my travels once, but I’m not a very good writer, so I hired others to
do it for me. I sent them updates to include in the book, and we realized
that it was going to be too long for one volume. This wasn’t a travel guide;
it was deeply personal, but the audience ate it up, because there are so
many people out there who will never get to see this stuff. Finally, in my
old age, I reached my goal. I went to some of the most dangerous parts of
the world, but I survived, and no one could take that away from me. Except
they almost did. A few years ago, a community in Spain called Catalonia
declared its independence. Just last month, the rest of the world finally
agreed to recognize this independence, and the Catalan Republic entered the
United Nations as a separate body. This is great, but things are still
shifting, and during this time, travel to Catalan is incredibly restricted.
All tourism has been blocked. But that put me in a pickle. It was a new
country, and we all knew it, but I couldn’t go there. Now, had I spent time
in the area when it was considered only a community, I might have argued
success, but I never did, and I needed to get there. The world united in my
favor, and pleaded with the governments involved to let me in, just for one
week. Surprisingly, my request was actually granted, and it is in a hospital
in Barcelona where I draw my last breath.
No comments :
Post a Comment