Without Borders
After my time in France, I've been hopping around a bit more and visiting friends in Europe. Traveling on the cheap means you use things like blablacar or Flixbus, ground transportation that gives you a bit of a scenic tour and exposure to the area. If anyone has traveled in Europe, you are familiar with the distances from one culture into another being short in comparison to America's enormity. I heard about this constantly, many European or Australian friends always making the comment of "It's so big!" upon their first visit to the U.S. And it is. When you grow up with long distances, they don't seem so grand to a local. And with such a large country, you become accustomed to international "borders" meaning some sort of heavily secured gate of admittance. A place where documents, stamps, scans, rules and regulation preside. You know you are leaving the country or crossing into another culture before you ever leave. With this sort of experience engrained into my travel being, from strict biosecurity in New Zealand and Australia to the detailed scrutiny of London arrivals, I was flabbergasted (yes, a perfect opportunity to use this word) when sharing separate rides from France to Italy, Italy to Switzerland and Switzerland to Germany. Where are the gates where they stop to ask who you are? No stamp in my passport? No security check to at least know why I am traveling with this salesman or an Italian jazz singer, or that I am entering the country at all? At least when taking the ferry from France to England I encountered the oxymoron of nerve wracking comfort a security fence and questioning can provide. I find it actually quite refreshing to simply experience Europe's borders not with signs and secured gates, but with language and culture barriers. It is a strange feeling to order a "sandwich chaude avec poulet" and then ten minutes later after crossing through a tunnel, a new reality of ordering a caprese with pomodor vs. fromage and tomat at the petrol station. You would assume that a frequent stop for travelers on the border, using French near the border would work. Nope. And those are the distinct lines drawn in Europe. Not so much signs and fences, but language. The continual culture shock of communication limitations as an inevitable human crisis you must overcome.
