Friends Across the Water

“A journey is best measured in friends, rather than miles.”

Tim Cahill

While I am not a huge social media user, I do have one of those blue & white accounts.  You know the one I mean.  I also acknowledge that social media has made it much easier to keep in touch with friends who live elsewhere.  For the travel-addicted, one of the best bi-products of this hobby is that you meet people who live on other continents. 

Having friends and acquaintances in other cultures, on other continents and from diverse backgrounds makes me want to sing “It’s a Small World After all.”  I won’t, of course.  No one wants to hear my sad little tone-deaf voice attempt anything musical.  Plus, I’ve been told most people consider that song annoying.  It has never bothered me, but I digress. . .  My point here is that it can be really fascinating to see the world (i.e. food, holidays, politics, the news) through a completely different perspective.  I believe that my Dad has friends in Spain and Norway that he met on his travels and who he keeps in touch with via social media.  Currently I have social media friends in Sweden and Scotland. 

As previously written about, I took a bus tour into the Irish countryside once.  If you missed it, you could read that story here.  On this trip, our bus driver was kind enough to pick up two female hikers who had gotten stranded.  They (like us) were heading back to the village of Ennis, anyway.  Later that evening, Mr. HomeFree took me to a pub for my birthday dinner.  Lo and behold, we ran into the two hikers from that afternoon!  The four of us had a drink, listened to some traditional Irish music and talked about life in Florida versus life in Sweden.  Lena and Maria talked a lot about how important the Summer Solstice (June) is in their culture.  You can see why a big, colorful celebration around a warm, especially long day would catch on in a place where it is cold so much of the year.  To this day, it is still not uncommon for me to get a special note on social media from one of them when the solstice rolls around.  Sweden is still on my travel wish list.  I have personal guides waiting to show me around, after all.  I hope that someday old happy friendship memories will meet up with an opportunity to make new happy friendship memories.

Once upon a time, Mr. HomeFree and I rented a room in a tiny guesthouse in Scotland.  We talked for hours and hours with the owner, Fiona.  Today, I get a unique perspective on world events by staying in touch with Fiona who is super, duper politically active.  Seriously, at least half of her posts contain pictures of her marching with a sign about something.  She appreciates the fact that she lives in a place where you can express dissatisfaction, or simply and opposing opinion, and live to tell the tale.  It is really quite admirable that she doesn’t take that sort of thing for granted.  Now, I don’t entirely understand all the ins and outs of Scottish politics, but that’s okay.  Every little bit of global perspective helps educate me.  Truthfully, I am not even sure that people in the UK understand what the heck is happening with Brexit anymore.   I mentioned the historic struggle among Scots to be free from British rule in my post on the Outlander book series.  You can read about that here.  Reading Fiona’s political posts suddenly became much more emotional for me when I realized that Scots have been fighting nearly the same fight for at least 300 years. 

Travel reminds me that I am a global citizen, not just a citizen of the southern United States. It also reminds me that I need to be better about reading up on the history & culture of my upcoming destinations BEFORE I leave home.  It makes the experience when you get there richer and there is a whole heck of a lot to learn.  Lucky for me, I have acquaintances around the globe who can help me out when I need it and they are just a social media click away.