Matthew Parris, writing in this week’s edition of The Spectator, ruminates on what he’s learned in a lifetime of world travel. I know the feeling. Nothing’s been more central to my understanding of existence than travel, mostly courtesy of my corporate overlords. Parris says you can’t get to know a place until you’ve been bored there and he’s right. Once the electric sensation of the new is gone, you get to understand what a locale is really about. This happened often. I remember standing on a balcony of a Prague hotel room on an extravagant summer day, just watching people go to work, exiting trams and cars. I wondered about their lives and what made them tick. In my last work trip, to Tokyo, I learned I was well and truly done with business travel. It was a watershed moment. One of my learnings concerned Elizabeth Taylor, who died on this day in 2011, age 79.
© 2024 John Oliver
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