Each new place I visit brings something valuable into my life. I always feel I learn more and evolve as a person while travelling. All the new views, smells and thoughts come to my mind and leave me in a great awe of how diversed our world is. Such encounters seem to empty my mind from all the problems that seemed vague back at home and I feel incredibly free and inspired. The one small problem I always faced was dealing with a fact that it’s not possible to share all of it with the loved ones back home. Breathtaking views, challenging situations, strange encounters. How many times I thought: how I wish he/she was here.
I take pictures and show them after returning. I write notes – I’ve thought I’d publish them one day so finally everyone would get a clue of what it felt like being there.
I write emails…But somehow I felt always lacked a good medium of sharing my travelling experiences in a more profound way.
Until one day, when I realized someone was experiencing my trips with almost equal excitement, joy and pride. I came to my aunt’s home – I haven’t seen her in years. At her age she decided she wouldn’t even bother with internet communication and ever since her hearing became weak I thought we kind of lost contact. I sent her postcards though. I thought she’d keep them in a drawer…
When I met her, accidently enough it turned out that she is the one who was the most fascinated and eager to listen and discuss my trips. All because of the postcards. I kept a short list of people I would send them to from each new city or country I lay my feet. She was among them. With excitement she showed me a photo album with the postcards from me, neatly organized, dating 15 years back. She started asking questions about little details I wrote there, I myself almost forgot about…It felt incredible, reading those short notes and looking at images of the places that left a mark in my heart forever. But the best part was seeing her happiness while browsing the album, as if she knew all of the postcards by heart, as if she had done it hundreds of times already. As if she was there with me.
Finally she showed me a huge collage picture frame on the wall – filled with some of the nicest looking ones. Bangkok, Buenos Aires, Cape Town…She was proud of it and proud of me.
- Oh, I should visit you more often – I said before leaving. She hugged me and said:
- But if you didn’t travel how would I see the world?
I hope the beautiful tradition of sending postcards will never die and I will also be a lucky one to receive a breeze from a distant lands from someone I love straight from my mailbox.
