What it Means to Fall in Love with a Place

I could not agree more! You see, I have always had this habit of falling in love with the places that I have traveled to.  I fall in love with oceans and mountain ranges. I can fall in love just reading National Geographic or perusing Condé Nast. So sue me! I never quite move on from a place. It is like having a never-ending string of lifelong affairs. Affairs with beautiful skylines, sunrises, sunsets, new foods, different cultures, and brand new adventures.

The first place I ever fell in love with was Tucson, Arizona at the young age of four years old (ahh young love!). My family has spent just about every Thanksgiving there since before I was born. Having been born in New England, my experience in the Sonoran Desert was something very different than what I was used to and I adored it- everything from the dry heat to the way the pink and beige stucco homes integrated so smoothly into the desert landscape. By the time I had turned twelve, I had fallen head over heels for the city that never sleeps, entirely convinced that it was the city that would offer me everything necessary to achieve my dreams. At the age of sixteen, Tsfat and Tel Aviv inspired me to pursue International Relations in college, hoping that it would lead me to a life working for the United Nations or for the International Court of Justice. At seventeen, Cuzco, Peru really lit my fire. And if you were to tell me that Paris was incapable of catching your interest, nineteen year-old me would not believe you.

So what does this mean? How will I know?

Falling in love with a place feels a lot like hunger, but also satisfaction. There is this constant desire for more; all you can think about is seeing more and embracing it. The adventure consumes you. Moving around and exploring will satiate you; creating an overall feeling of warmth and full-on glee, but only temporarily. Of course, once you fall in love, it becomes cyclic: you constantly desire more of it, and the more you take in, the deeper you fall and the more you will wish to see. I will tell you now: traveling is addictive and these feelings do not go away.

Each time you look at your work schedule, you will debate when you can take your vacation days. You will spend your free time looking at service trips to Nicaragua and Myanmar and food tours through Italy. Your favorite form of procrastination will be browsing BuzzFeed articles and perusing through WikiTravel. Images of the Amazon Rainforest and the Northern Lights will send your heart into a frenzied state of pitter patters. You will forever feel this constant longing to take off. Literally. You will constantly feel the need to get on a bus, train or airplane and just leave. And once you have actually planned out your next destination? Well, you better apologize to your friends, family, and co-workers ahead of time because all you can talk about are your travel plans. Your facebook statuses and your twitter posts will be incessantly filled with countdowns until your departure and links to images and articles about your destination. Your facebook wall and your pinterest might as well be likened to that of a travel agency.  Some might say that you should lead a life that you enjoy enough to never wish to escape, but here’s the thing: for travel addicts, escape is our sustenance. It is not so much a love born out of dislike for where we are from, rather it is out of a desire to discover and learn. This, my fellow globetrotters, this is how you know.

Heartbreak. 

The greatest thing about falling in love with a place is that you can “cheat” on a place and feel no remorse. I can find love in an atlas and Ecuador will not resent me for lusting after Mozambique as well. The feeling of falling in love is addictive in and of itself, but I cannot beat around the bush any longer: a life and love of travel consists of great heartbreak.The day you board that plane to return home, it will take great effort to tighten your seatbelt and prepare for take-off as you look out the window at the land you have come to love and you will apologize for leaving as you try to convince yourself that you “will most definitely return!” And maybe you will, but you know that your desire for travel will first steer you to see the rest of the world before you circle back.

I should know. I constantly fear that one day I might not have the means to travel. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I know this is not the case, because once again, the affair is found in moving. A love of travel will bleed your (and possibly your parents’s) pockets dry, but it only can make your life richer and a true travel addict knows that their wanderlust will never disappear and to move is the goal.

Whether it be by a train beneath the English Channel, a camel ride through the Sinai, sled dog trek through Oymyakon, cross-country bicycle trip on winding roads, or a thirteen hour bus ride through varied terrains: you will get there. Wherever there is.