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I’m writing this from an apartment in Gdańsk, Poland. I’ve always loved to travel and like to make a big trip every few years. As my husband and I approach the age when retirement is an option, we’ve considered living somewhere outside of the US for a little while – so while this is a vacation, it’s also a fact-finding mission.
Why Poland? My husband was born here, and he and our children all have dual citizenship. This means that while other places in the world might also be options, EU countries would be the easiest places for us to consider living. He hasn’t been to Poland in 29 years, so it’s been a chance for him to see the ways it has changed – as well as some ways in which it is still the same.
Before Poland, we spent a few days in Ireland. In a few days, we’ll be leaving Poland to spend 3 weeks in France. I’ve been relying on my husband to do all of the talking and navigating here, but next week it will be his turn to rely on me. I visited Poland in 2018 with my children – we visited Kraków and the nearby Auschwitz/Birkenau camps. When I returned home, I told him that Poland was still Polish, but also very much a part of the EU. We had visited in 1994 when communism had recently ended and the country was still making its way into capitalism and independence. The differences between travel in 1994 and 2018 were immense!
Why is travel so useful to language teachers?
As a language teacher, travel is so valuable for us. I remember the first trips I took to France with students. I would return with a huge amount of things I could use in my classroom – books and magazines, maps of the metro system, anything that I thought would be interesting and useful.
Things have changed so much – many of the reading materials are now available online, with no need to travel across the world with me in a suitcase. I regularly use social media and YouTube videos from French content producers, and we listen to French music every week in my classroom – and yet it’s still weird to go to France and recognize the songs playing on the radio!
I’m not sure exactly what sorts of things I’ll bring back with me from France this time. Magazines and books aren’t really necessary, unless it’s something that really appeals to me. Most of these things are available online and a digital copy is more useful than a printed one anyway. So I think instead, I will focus on taking pictures as I travel around Brittany and Normandy – lots of pictures of everyday life in France. Street signs, store windows, posters – things that are part of the daily landscape but that are often ignored by the tourist magazines and websites.
I don’t want my students to go as tourists – I want them to be able to go and really enjoy French life, not the sanitized version that tourists see. France is more than museums and churches, but without speaking with people, you probably won’t get to see that. I want them to be able to speak French, to buy food at the market and the bakery and the grocery store. I want them to be able to travel on public transportation and walk around and truly BE in France, not just pass through. There is a huge difference between being in a country and just watching a country through your phone’s camera.
Traveling can be a great way to open your eyes to new perspectives, cultures, and lifestyles. As I write this, the news coming from Russia over the past 24 hours has been crazy – a possible coup leading to civil war? It ended up sputtering out within a single day, but everyone is still confused about with Prigozhin was up to, or what the end game is. We spent part of the day watching the news to see what was happening and the Polish channels were very quiet about it. CNN was reporting on it breathlessly, as the search for the missing submarine was no longer the top story.
My husband was surprised that they weren’t talking about the coup on Polish news – until I pointed out that he was not actually watching the news, but just regularly scheduled TV programming! In the US, there are 24-hour news channels and that’s all they do. In Poland, even the main news channels aren’t news all day long. There isn’t the feeling of needing to be connected to the breaking news 100% of the time. I think this is a huge difference between the American and European views of life.
This is seen not only in the view of the news, but daily life in general. At work, you work. But when you are done working, you are done. No phone calls. No e-mails. No planning for the coming week. And vacation is seen as something to be relished, not reluctantly taken. It’s assumed that you will be better at your job if you are rested and have that time to relax for a few weeks at a time. People here love to travel, and many visit different countries on their vacations. Something about travel to another place gives us something to look forward to, but also helps us appreciate our homes when we return.
In Poland, they passed a law to ban companies from operating on Sundays, with a few exceptions. While it’s nice to be able to stop by the grocery store for something, it’s also nice to know that the guy who stocks the shelves gets a day off at least once a week. One of the exceptions is family businesses – if it’s your business and you want to work, you’re allowed to be open. But any large company can’t require that its workers come in. France is similar, with many stores being closed on Sundays.
You get out of travel what you put into it
I’ve visited Europe many times – often with students on a planned tour, but several times on my own with either my children or my husband. The trips have different purposes, and my experience has been very different. In all cases I’ve come home (and I hope that the people I’ve traveled with have done the same) with memories and experiences that I can value.
My trips with students tend to be very rushed, with little sleep but a lot of “accomplishments.” Meaning that when a student returns from these trips, they can talk about all of the different things they’ve seen – the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, a chateau or two. This is worthwhile and I would hate for students to visit Paris and go home without having seen the big things. I know that when they go home, they will always be asked – did you see the Mona Lisa? Did you visit the Eiffel Tower? These trips are shorter and the goal is to fit as much stuff into them in the allotted time.
Unfortunately, those trips don’t really give students and idea of what life is really like in the country they visit. Their meals are planned for them, they don’t have to do any sort of grocery shopping, they don’t have to think about what they want to do with their spare time – there is no spare time. Everyone has the same experience, everyone sees the same things for the most part. There isn’t really time for exploration or individual choice in these trips. But they are good for young students who are taking their first trip abroad.
My travels with family are more relaxing and interesting to me – but they are a lot of work to put together. They are enjoyable because once I’m at my destination, I can do what I want – not what someone else wants to do.
I traveled to London and Paris with my daughter in 2015 and some of our best memories were the times when we woke up in the morning with no specific plans and could just take a walk around the neighborhood or go shopping at the mall where French people shop. We saw a lot of things, but we also took our time to enjoy getting a taste of living in Paris – in an apartment with a washing machine and full kitchen.
In 2018, I took all three kids to several countries – Ireland, England, France, Germany, Poland, Austria. We rented a car sometimes – and took public transportation sometimes. We ate at restaurants sometimes – but ate food we purchased at the grocery store most of the time. We shopped at touristy gift shops sometimes – but usually went to the malls and shopping centers outside of that part of town. Our memories include some of the sights we saw, but mostly the include the interactions we had together and the time we spent together.
All of my travels have been unique and different in some way. But no matter what kind of trip, no matter who I traveled with – I enjoyed them because I went with the idea of seeing new things, living a different type of life for a short period of time, or sharing something with those who hadn’t yet seen it.
As teachers, this is one of our responsibilities – awakening our students to the possibilities of the world around them. I would love for all of my students to travel. I’ve had many former students who have visited France after graduation, and even a couple who have moved to Europe. So the next time I tell them about France and someone says they don’t care because they can’t see themselves ever visiting another country, I tell them to stop limiting themselves – they don’t know what will come in the future!