Date a man who travels on a budget, a man whose passport is more important than his bankbook. Because a man who loves to travel will show you, with childlike excitement, his collection of immigration stamps and visas on his well-worn passport. They are the official illustrations that accompany the stories he narrates. He will not be able to tell you much about rates and returns, but he is able to point at the world map at the bookstore and tell your stories that will make you feel as if you were there with him.
Date a man who knows how to pack a picnic for the morning hike up the hill. This is a man who will drag you into small local shops to assemble your meal for the day. Chances are he will not speak the language, and he will gesticulate wildly mimicking the sounds of animals to pick out your ham. Chances are you may sometimes end up with a terrible cheese or a dubious cut of ham, but what doesn’t kill you makes for a good story at the dinner table.
Follow a man who makes good plans. More so, follow a man who breaks good plans. Your flights and itineraries may change in an instant; this man is unpredictable and unconventional. The only constant about dating a man who travels on a budget is waking up every morning not knowing what exotic adventures this man could bring you on with so little euros and so much verve.
When this man asks you to do something crazy, remember that crazy is just another word that the bitter old you say to the younger you. This man will challenge you, scare you, excite you, and build you up. You will leave cities and well-worn touristy trails. You will trek the rainforests, climb volcanos, bungee, have dinner with a local family, sleep in the open field. Our memories youth are vague and undifferentiated. The best moments in life happen when we are in the wrong place at the wrong time doing the wrong thing with the right people.
So break rules, run away sometimes, have these moments carved on your memorial plate.
Date a man who tells stories. Date a man who jokes, who lies about facts, who talks to the cashier at the store. Therefore date a man who cannot stop talking, because his well-travelled life contains secrets that he cannot help but share. Appreciate that these stories are not mindlessly reproduced on impersonal social networks, but that you have heard them in a serendipitous kind of way as a fellow traveler.
Simultaneously, date a man who knows when to be quiet. He will chase sunrises, sunsets, the aurora borealis, and the view from the mountain summit. Money will get you transport to some of these places, but only passion can bring you to the best vantage points. There is really nothing like the shared connection between human beings in the presence of such cosmic wonders. During this time, the heavens will open up to him and he will shut the hell up.
This is a man who does not like to sleep early. This is the time when conversations flow as freely as wine. Lie down right under the Eiffel past midnight, run around the Vatican City in 5 minutes, sing at the top of your voice off a cliff, and summit a hill in complete darkness and pop a bottle of champagne. For the very same streets look so different after 2am and then he would have travelled the world two times over.
Date a man who travels light. A man who travels on a budget has everything he needs stashed in his backpack. He is astute, resourceful, and imaginative. Immigration customs can take away his souvenirs, pickpockets can take away his precious camera, lousy airlines can lose his backpack, but nobody can ever take away his travel experiences and the visual memories etched in his head.
The hallmark of this man is this. When you are caught in a burning house or a sinking ship, this man will not hanker after money or possessions. In the fateful minutes of fatality, he will walk over to you, his fellow traveler for life, and tell you ‘it’s time to go’., E
-Eric Sor
