Reading “Travel as a Political Act” by Rick Steves has really opened my eyes about the real way to travel. It’s more than visiting a beautiful place, but experiencing diffferent cultures and different ways of life. It’s about leaving what you know behind, and boldly experiencing something beyond you. When you travel, the most beautiful things you experience are the people you meet and not the places you see, but of course the places play a big role in it all. In the second chaper of the book, Rick Steves talks about how he visits places that were recently in conflict. He talked about how you could see some of the damage done by the conflict. A specific example would be when he went to Dubrovnik and he met a man named Pero. Pero’s house was completely destroyed from the recent conflict; he even saved the mortar that leveled the house. The house had been rebuilt, but Steves had noticed the roofs of houses were different colors; some were bright red and others darker with specks of bright red. When Steves asked Pero why this was he replied that if the roof was all bright red that means that the whole house or roof had to be rebuilt and if they were different shades of red then the house just had to be repaired. When Steves looked out at the houses he noticed that a significant amount of them had bright red roofs meaning that much of the town was destroyed because of the conflict. When you learn the history behind a place it makes it much more memorable than if you were to go to a beach and watch the sunset.

When talking about using travel as a political act is where it gets a little complicated. In a way, you can use your experiences when traveling to better educate yourself about our government and how we communicate with other countries. You could also think critically about our foreign policies and affects we have on other countries. I remember learning about how China has factories where young people work, many of them female, in harsh conditions and very low pay. Now, it is one thing to learn about that through a video, but it is another thing to learn about that by experiencing it yourself. You are much more likely to try and make a change by seeing it first-hand rather than just hearing about it. If you open your mind to see the real culture of the country by going to the less-touristy destinations you will learn a lot more about the country. Then, when you learn about things in another country you can be more educated and less oblivious to the rest of the world. Using the information, we can better make decisions about government policies and such.