Rebuilding Rob

As WordPress continues to recycle old prompts, I pulled another prompt from The Coffee Monsterz Co to respond to today

Would you rather travel to 5 cities in 10 days, or stay at 1 city for 10 days??

I remember seeing ads for that CNN show Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown but I never watched it. I know who Anthony Bourdain is. He would travel to different places around the world and learn about different cultures and different peoples, specifically through the dining experience.

The show sounded like a pretty neat concept. Keep in mind, I’m not one of those people who will sit around and watch those cooking shows or Food Network either. But the whole idea that for Bourdain, food, and the dining experience was a universal experience at transcended most cultures, that is something that even I could get behind.

I did a little research on Anthony Bourdain, as I was putting this article together – which is to say that I looked at a couple of articles online, including Wikipedia. I’d forgotten that Bourdain had done other shows beyond Parts Unknown. He had also written several books, and was known as something of a celebrity chef. . Evidently I forgot that he died by suicide as well. That last part hit a little bit close to home, as I recently posted about an old friend of mine who lost his battle to mental health.

When Boutdain died, we put him on a pedestal – like we do with many famous people. Don’t get me wrong, by all accounts he sounds like a pretty cool dude; but I’m always fascinated with the way that we elevate the status of certain people after they die. But I digress…

I’m not much of a traveler, so the only real frame of reference I have for this would be my trip to France back when I was in high school over 30 years ago. But that trip lasted 15 days. I would have to go back and look up in the journal that I kept, but we probably saw eight or 10 different cities during that time. We booked-ended the trip with two days in Paris at the beginning and another day of Paris at the end.

But if I had that trip to do over again, I think I would like to spend a week in Paris. Some of the cities we saw, I could do without seeing again. But the truth is, some places are just too big to take and only one or two days. Heck, even my little baseball road trips that I do, I know that I’m cheating myself out of not seeing other stuff in the city. As it is, I feel like a single game is hardly even enough time to take everything at the ballpark! 

As much as I would like to rack up a large quantity of cities that I’ve traveled to, I think I would rather spend a 10 day trip in a single city, rather than racking up five cities which I spent only two days in each.

But we tend to do that in our culture. It seems like everything we do is “ bigger, better, faster, more, five minutes ago”. Even our vacations are rushed. We never take the time to slow down and really appreciate the nuance, the flavor of things (pun fully intended). And when we try to, we feel like we’re stuck in molasses. The things we do see when we’re on vacation, we usually see through the viewer on our camera phones. Other than going to sleep, when was the last time you were truly separated from your smart phone? I can’t even say I’m away from my phone now, as I’m writing this blog on it, instead of my computer.

Looking back on my trip to France, I remember walking the steps of the Eiffel Tower, I remember seeing several famous works of art in the Louvre. I remember seeing Napoleon‘s tomb Les Invalides and the fountains of the palace of Versailles. But some of my most vivid memories are of the random interactions I had with the locals.

I remember being at Sacre Coeur, and asking an employee where the restroom was. She actually complimented me on my French, in French behind you, and I understood her! There was a guy, who I presume was homeless, on the street with the street like a dog saying “Mon chien a trois jambes.” (my dog has three legs). There was an incident when a few of us got stuck in a particularly small elevator in Paris. Evidently, I was the first one who read the sign mentioning the elevator‘s capacity and realized that there were too many of us on board. 

The girls on our trip were advised it that French girls, and French women, are a little bit more reserved in public than American women are. One night when we were out walking as a group, there were a few teenage boys were walking behind us who were just completely enamored with the girls in our group. I don’t think they were used to seeing women being that outspoken and flirtatious in public. I think the girls were initially flattered by the attention, but then were annoyed by it very quickly.

I mention these encounters because as big as seeing the famous landmarks and learning about all the historical sites was, some of the starkest memories that stand out to me from that trip were the everyday human interactions that we had with the locals.

How many conversations can you remember from 35 years ago? If you’re like me, probably not many. But that woman complementing a skinny, awkward, 16-year-old Rob on his francais will be burned into my brain forever.

That’s the kind of stuff that Anthony Bourdain wanted to learn about. He wanted to meet people. He wanted to connect with them through some of the universal experiences that we all share – in his case, food. And sitting down to take part in the social dining experience, requires us to slow down, which brings us back to doe – as Maria Von Tropp sang in The Sound of Music .

Thanks for stopping by Rebuilding Rob. Be sure to like, 👍 comment and subscribe to my blog below. It’s greatly appreciated! Also, feel free to follow me on social media as well! Check out my most recent posts as well as some earlier, related posts:

• Rob’s Retro Movie Review: This is Spinal Tap (1984) – The Movie That Scaled to Eleven
• A Death in the Family (And My Disposable Income): My Life in Comics
• The Supporting Cast: Navigating the Eras of Male Friendship
• Life is What Happens: A Look Back at My Non-Existent 2025 Vision
• The Moment I Walked Inside a Hallmark Movie

The article “Feeling Anthony Bourdain“ first appeared on Rebuilding Rob