If I Had Never Traveled, By Arthur Frommer

In a time of crowded airports, tense security lines, jam-packed flights, fuel-inflated airfares, and poor exchange rates, it is harder than ever to travel.

But it has never been more important to travel.

Despite all the problems, we cannot permit ourselves to live stunted, stay-at-home lives. We need to travel if we are to enjoy the fullness of life. Through travel, we experience different lifestyles and cultures, different philosophies and theologies, different responses to personal, social, and economic challenges—and in that jolting contact with the new and the different, we grow and develop.

It’s possible, of course, to seek those goals in ways other than travel. But there is something about actually experiencing the world that cannot be duplicated. You can read endlessly about other countries, regions, and people, but nothing has the lasting impact of actually being there.

It is the purpose of this book to overcome the problems of travel. And though this task can sometimes require discussing a great many tedious facts, the overall goal is important, as I can testify from my own life.

If I had never traveled, I would never have witnessed all the many startling ways— some that work, some that don’t—in which other cultures respond to their social, urban, and personal problems. I would never have fully understood all the enormous variety of solutions.

I would never have spoken with a European conservative defending the laws that prevent an employer from firing a long-time employee for insubstantial reasons. I would have gone through life assuming such a right to be God-ordained. I would never have met an Indonesian lawyer who ridiculed the idea of submitting lawsuits to a jury of one’s peers. I would regard the jury principle as sacrosanct.

In other words, I would have remained limited in my mind’s ability to consider other solutions.

If I had never traveled, I would never have understood that all people, no matter how exotic their appearance, have basically the same concerns, the same desires. I would never have spoken with an African woman in a dung hut about theories of child upbringing. I would never have heard the reactions of an Egyptian laborer to recent films.

If I had never traveled, I would never have felt physically sick when I read about the oppression or misfortune of peoples I had met in the course of my journeys. I would never have remembered them as fellow human beings instead of abstract news items. In short, I would have remained—despite all the reading I could do, all the lectures I could hear—a person who fundamentally was without humility, subconsciously believing in the constant superiority of his own nation or tribe.

Travel, in short, is a life-changing experience, a positive and joyous activity. So why am I so troubled by the current state of travel in America? It is because travel is not simply hampered by current economic conditions. Travel is also under attack.

It is under attack, first, through ignorance. It has been trivialized by media executives of superficial culture and attitudes. Barely a handful of American newspapers devote serious attention to travel, or keep up with major travel trends, or perform any real service to the traveler of average income. Nearly all the others treat travel as a mere recreation, and cover it in the most frivolous fashion. People who have never traveled extensively or given a moment’s thought to the deeper implications of travel are appointed to the travel desk, if there is a travel desk. Several of the few impressive newspaper travel editors have recently been dropped from staff for reasons of economy, and persons with other responsibilities have been asked, part-time, to throw together a travel section from wire services and canned features.

And even the more serious newspaper travel sections are today devoted almost exclusively to travel facilities that no normal American can afford. One of the newspaper travel sections, felt to be the best of them, never fails to announce the opening of yet another absurdly expensive boutique hotel.

In defending that choice, its editor has claimed he is required to report the news. But he remains silent over the fact that his travel section has never once reported on the really newsworthy opening of moderately priced 300-room hotels in the center of Paris, while never failing to gush over a tiny, new, deluxe 48-room lodging for the jet set.

Even worse than the newspapers are the glossy travel magazines, all worshippers of wealth without exception. Written in the main by young people dazzled by millionaire celebrities, the travel magazines rhapsodize about $700 hotel rooms and $150 meals. Not one of them any longer provides real service to the thoughtful American traveler.

If the travel magazines are atrocious, the travel TV programs are even worse. With minor   exceptions, they are hosted by giddy starlets who gush about familiar sights and provide not a single fact of genuine usefulness to would-be travelers.

So in addition to world economic problems, the current sorry state of the travel media is another reason for this book. I have thus tried to deal with both the content of travel and the price of travel. I have discussed the current obstacles to serious travel and the ways to travel affordably. And I have tried to answer the questions that almost always occur to persons contemplating a trip.

I hope this book will encourage you to continue traveling—and to enjoy the full rewards of travel. And I hope we will always pause to appreciate the great privilege of travel. We are the first generation in human history to be able to go to other continents as easily as people once boarded a trolley to a nearby town. It is a precious right we enjoy, and we should not squander it by failing to acquire the skills to travel. Bon Voyage!