Essay Writing   For some time now, I’ve been using an extended word vignette below my signature on emails that I’ve liked quite a bit, so much so that I recently had a new set of business cards printed up that includes the three central lines of the vignette and thereby its essence. Below my name and above my email and New York addresses the word vignette states:

I think these three lines describe the essence of my activity, which I’d like to discuss.

LANGUAGE SPECIALIST I always went along reluctantly with the phrase “language teacher” when I had to fill in the profession box on forms. While that described how I made my living, it did not describe me and my interests beyond the job. As must be obvious, I both (1) like multiple languages and cultures, and (2) take deep interest as to why and how languages work.

Now that’s all too much to work with, so I’ve chosen Language Specialist, which is general enough to cover everything.

TRAVELER I’ve also stated many times that I take this word very seriously. Going away to primarily relax at the beach, ski, or shop is what a vacationer/holiday-maker does, and is a perfectly valid way to spend time. So is business “travel”. People classifying themselves or others as “tourists”, either literally on a guided tour or otherwise, take rather a negative view of travel, implying uninformed and possibly confused individuals. I can’t imagine anyone actually wanting to “look like a tourist”, whether they actually do or not.

The serious traveler asks questions like: Where is Spitzbergen? What’s the view like from the top of the Jungfrau? What’s it like watching a lion in the road from an open car? What route did Marco Polo take? Where did settlers arrive in the US? Essentially that’s geography and history, but on this website we’ve also covered art (Klimt, Gauguin), music (Rossini, Prévert/Mercer), literature (Maugham, Proust), poetry (Poe, Morgenstern), food (sukiyaki, Zürcher Geschnetzeltes), drink (akvavit, Bowl of Bishop). We’ve even had a recipe or two, and given instruction on dancing the Sirtaki. This is Travel with a capital T and is what a Traveler does. It leans, of course, heavily toward the humanities, and seems to slight math/science. That is perhaps the nature of the beast, although we have discussed geology (Niagara gorge, atoll formation) and just a bit of marine biology (Waikiki, Bora Bora). However, we do do quite a bit with technology. How about subjects such as rail and rail gauge, navigating the Panama Canal, funiculars, rack railroads, historic steamers on Swiss lakes, and the Allegheny Portage Railroad and former Pennsylvania Canal? It would seem that the type of technology that fits most closely with Travel is Civil Engineering. So be it. Maybe that was built into me at Brooklyn Technical High School, and maybe that’s why I seek out objects that are designated International Historic Civil Engineering Landmarks, or that are cited by the American Society of Civil Engineers. All in all, I learn something almost every day when traveling and try to incorporate it into this website. I suppose that component carries on the profession of teacher, but all while being a learner.

Travel, for me and for any reader wishing to come along for the ride, is an ever-developing and ever-expanding university education in the humanities, with multiple majors in geography (where?), history (when?), and languages and cultures (how?) and more, as well as perhaps a minor in Civil Engineering.

VOCATION & AVOCATION I love the way these two words are parallel, and I refer to Webster’s New World College Dictionary to confirm that a vocation is a profession and that an avocation is “something one does in addition to a vocation . . . usually for pleasure”. I rest my case.

ESSAYIST Finally, are these articles that I post regularly in groupings I call Series really essays? I refer again to Websters, which states that an essay is “a short literary composition of an analytical, interpretive, or reflective kind, dealing with its subject in a nontechnical, limited, often unsystematic way and, usually, expressive of the author’s outlook and personality.”

“Analytical, interpretive, reflective”? I think so. “Nontechnical”? I try to hold back on jargon, and where it’s included for those readers who might be interested in the technical words, I explain them--see “diachronic” and “synchronic” above. “Limited” is quite accurate. I like to limit history to beginnings, and rarely go beyond that, such as when we discussed the settlement the US East coast. That’s exactly how I’ll be discussing Australia during the course of this year. “Unsystematic”? Perhaps, since topics and subtopics come up at random. “Expressive of the author’s outlook and personality”? Mais oui, sans doute, absoluement à l’extrême.

World Colonial Heritage   The title of this next essay unfortunately sounds much too pompous, but it is accurate for what I really need to say. I’ve documented my travel outlook as having changed from being just Euramerican, that is, just involving Europe and North America, to a world outlook. Yet as I consider all the possible destinations, I suddenly achieve an understanding that transcends previous assumptions I’d had.

We know about the mid-millennium explorers sailing the seas, then the colonization, then, the mid-20C independence of so many countries. It all sounds so cut-and-dry, but I now see very clearly a three-way division of very different colonial heritages by continent.

It’s all about Europe. It was Europe that colonized most of the five other continents (Antarctica isn’t and wasn’t colonized). We think first of the British, Dutch, French, Spanish, and Portuguese, but the Russians spread to the Pacific, the Italians and Germans were involved in Africa, even Denmark colonized Greenland and the Virgin Islands, and Sweden for a while colonized St Barts in the Caribbean and had its colony on the Delaware River. Every country that could, spread its wings.

Those regions vary today as to what First Peoples the Europeans encountered, and how numerous they were. Some First Peoples won out by reasserting themselves after colonization, some compromised, and some lost forever what they’d had before colonization.

ASIA & AFRICA In most of Asia and Africa, after colonization, the First Peoples living there usually reasserted themselves. Use India as an example. It was the keystone of the British Empire, and its colonial heritage is real. English is the language that holds India together today, and the original infrastructure, both governmental and physical, remains to this day. But with independence, the few British that had settled in India either assimilated or left. There is no population of European origin in India today that overwhelms the local population in size and influence.

Even after the French replaced the Vietnamese writing system, you cannot say Vietnam looks like France, or Indonesia looks like the Netherlands. If any country was entrenched in its colony it was France in Algeria, but even with all the chanting of “Algérie française!” in the 1960’s, even though the French language and traditions remain in Algeria, it’s an Arab Muslim country. Most of Africa, for better or for worse, reverted to the First Peoples, and the most spectacular change was of in South Africa. The European settlers resorted to apartheid to give the impression of a country that looked like Australia or Canada, but eventually the numerous indigenous population reasserted itself, and South Africa today is attempting to become at least an integrated society.

LATIN AMERICA The second heritage area would at first glance be South America, except for the fact that the region in question also includes the lower part of North America, and covers in its entirety from Mexico and Cuba south to Tierra del Fuego. There had been large indigenous (“Indian”) populations here, and many Europeans and Africans settled here. But this region, now referred to instead as Latin America, is one where the populations blended, and is the only region where a special ethnic term developed to describe the population, Hispanic, now often supplanted by Latino. Although Hispanics/Latinos can be white, black, or “Indian”, primarily we expect to find a blended ethnicity. This sets Latin America apart from the reasserted indigenous peoples of Asia and Africa, as well as from the third category below.

NORTH AMERICA & AUSTRALIA This entire review started with my trying to understand, after visiting New Zealand last year, why so much seemed so very familiar, a situation that I expect will be exactly the same when I get to Australia in August.

I’ve always tried to group the US and Canada as “North America” because of their similarities, with the understanding that the lower part of North America is actually part of Latin America. Last year I coined my personal term CanUS to be able to have a more precise term grouping Canada and the US together as a single unit, although I’ll feel free to continue to also say North America to refer to CanUS.

Australia and New Zealand have already been grouped together for a century under the term ANZAC (or Anzac), the term during WWI for the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps. The term remains, with 25 April still celebrated as a memorial day in both countries. I’ll use the term Anzac to group Australia and New Zealand together as one unit, albeit in a non-military, non-memorial sense.

But what is unique about the pair CanUS and the pair Anzac? And what urged me to propose, in the introduction to New Zealand (2009/8), the four-way combination ANZCUS? It’s simply because of what the four countries are today, places where the settling Western populations ended up, for better or for worse, overwhelming, for the most part, the indigenous populations. The situation in ANZCUS is therefore exponentially different from Asia & Africa on the one hand and from Latin America on the other. Again for better or for worse, the Native Americans are not about to evict the settled Western populations in the US, nor the First Nations the settled populations in Canada, nor the Indigenous Australians (“Aborigines”) the settled populations in Australia. These indigenous groups have largely assimilated into the general population as one more of many ethnicities.

[As described last year, the situation in New Zealand is unique in ANZCUS, where the Maori population continues to stand out and assert itself. Maori is taught in schools, may be used in court and in parliament, and the national anthem is bilingual. Still, with native-versus-settler assimilation in New Zealand being more open and obvious, still Maoris constitute only about 14-15% of the population and thus constitute one of many ethnicities.]

It is not the common use of English within ANZCUS that makes it stand out (compare the South Africa situation, or even India), and Britain remains part of Europe. It’s the heritage in ANSCUS of an expansionist Europe that successfully overtook continents. While all these countries are becoming more multicultural all the time, it’s the unique settlement of ANZCUS by Europeans and others that, in my mind, unifies the region with a common post-colonial heritage.

Round-The-World   With my world-wide expansion of travel interest in the last few years I’ve had to adjust my thinking and plan accordingly. There are many places in this world to visit. Contrary to what you may think, I do not wish to see all of them, or even most of them, certainly not anywhere near all 319 destinations listed by the Travelers' Century Club (travelerscenturyclub.org). I’ve passed the Club’s required minimum of 100, and with Taiwan reached 124. I wouldn’t mind hitting half of the total list at 150, which would put me in Silver status. 2010 will boost me considerably toward that number, but I’m not saying in advance to what point. I don’t have any aspirations at all for Gold at 200, but of course, never say never.

I’ve spent considerable time in the last couple of years on a wish list of destinations, but have no interest in large swaths of world areas. Again, I’m not saying in advance where I want to go and I’m definitely not saying what places do not interest me, since there will always be someone who really liked going there, or would like to, and would wonder why I don’t. But to each his own.

But one thing struck me in 2005 about destinations that happen to be halfway around the world from where one is located. If you’re going there one way, why not come back the other? This applied to going to Russia to take the GW Travel Transsiberian train. If I’m flying from CanUS (via Seoul) to Vladivostok, and if the train lets me off in Moscow, why not come back the other way? Better still, why not make continuous train connections Moscow-Berlin-Paris-London-Southampton and come back by ship? And I’m going across all of Eurasia by train, why not start out at the beginning by crossing CanUS by train as well? That was the logical development of my first round-the-world (RTW) trip in 2005 by rail via Siberia, which I’m now designating RTW1-2005-Rail-Siberia. But wouldn’t that also apply to a visit from New York to India? To China? To Australia? Well, if Australia (Oz) is my principal destination this year, which it is, that’s going to be the core of my second RTW trip, RTW2-2010-Air-Oz.

I would say that those people that go around the world usually go by sea or air. A sea voyage, often by Cunard, is certainly the easiest to plan, since there really is no planning. Just pack a bushel of cash and book it, allowing some 3 ½ months, usually leaving in January, and of course, always going the easy way, westbound, with 25-hour days. Many people just book segments of a RTW cruise, which, as a matter of fact, is what I did when I took the Queen Victoria a year ago January from New York via the Panama Canal to Los Angeles, which was the second segment (after Southampton-New York) of its RTW cruise. However, there was only a smallish group of passengers on the QV who actually were on board RTW. You could tell, since they had a special lounge area to themselves, and special receptions.

[I must add parenthetically that, since the QM2 can’t fit through the Panama Canal, but can fit through the Suez Canal, Cunard, of all people, is running, as we speak in 2010 a so-called “World Cruise” that goes to lots of places but DOES NOT go around the world !!! While the Queen Victoria is presently doing the real thing (NY-Panama-Australia-Suez-Southampton-then QM2 to NY), the QM2 left New York eastbound (!!!) to Southampton-Suez-Asia-Australia then will do an about-face (!!!) and go westbound to Cape Town-Rio-New York. In other words, they will not pass between the Pacific and Atlantic through the Americas at all, not even around Cape Horn (which is probably wise). I suppose they can get away calling it a World Cruise even though they don’t go AROUND the world. It’s a nice circle cruise, but a passenger can’t really claim having gone AROUND the world, can they, although that might not stop some from making the claim anyway.]

If sea and air are the most frequent RTW routes, I would say rail is the least. I’m particularly proud of the fact that my first RTW was by rail, all self-planned, and that I’ve never heard of anyone else doing RTW by rail. That doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened, but I’ve yet to hear of it, and if I do hear of one, it’ll be a long time until I hear of another. Even Mark Smith, the Man in Seat Sixty-One (seat61.com), who goes EVERYWHERE by rail, doesn’t discuss the possibility.

But this year I’m going RTW again, and by air. Let’s first discuss the possibility of routings. Given the location of the two canals, going by sea pretty much zigzags around the equator, plus down to Australia and up to England. Going by rail is by far the most restrictive, since the land masses in the northern hemisphere have to be followed. I described my rail trip as circling the Earth, well above the “waist” of the equator, at “necklace” level, which I described (2005/6) as in the “Forties and Fifties”, in other words, between 40°N and 60°N.

But given the nature of flying, circling the Earth by air can physically be anything. I suppose you could even do it North-South, overflying both poles, but while commercial flights do overfly the North Pole, I’ve never heard of any flights over the South Pole, given the low population of the southern hemisphere. So as ever, flying westward, which gets you at least some 25-hour days, is the wisest move.

The airlines have thought of this already. Some started teaming up with one or two other airlines as early as the 1930’s to allow a string of one-way RTW fares booked together, and grouping two or three airlines together still exists. But much better known are the airline alliances that have been established in the last few years. They are the Star Alliance (1997), Oneworld (1999), and SkyTeam (2000). Each group of airlines has roughly a quarter more or less of the RTW market, the other quarter being taken by independent airlines.

Using an alliance is OK, but my problem with it is that it puts routes first, then destinations. Any one alliance will offer you certain routes, and if you get a route you like, you might save money, but there might be a destination you really want that’s not served by that alliance. For that sort of lack of flexibility I rejected any groupings in favor of four individual one-way flights.

The next choice was to consult airline consolidators, also known just slightly less politely as “bucket shops”. The term was originally applied to saloons where you could buy beer by the bucket. By the 1920’s, the term became particularly derogatory, when you called a bucket shop an unsavory fly-by-night stock brokerage. Today the term is not really derogatory, and widely used for airline consolidators, although calling such a firm a consolidator nicer. A consolidator is a broker who contracts with airlines to buy seats in bulk at a discount and then to resell them to travel agents and to the public. (There are also hotel consolidators, and I paid for at least some of my New Zealand hotels last year through a discounter in Asia.) Consolidators only sell tickets for distant, international destinations. I seem to be having luck with a consolidator on one of my flights.

I will continue discussing RTW travel and add details of RTW2-2010-Air-Oz in upcoming essays.