The best part of traveling is meeting people from different cultures and backgrounds—people who leave a lasting impact on you with snippets of their life stories.
Like my Airbnb hostess in Budapest, a corporate lawyer who became a lawyer by default. After a decade in the profession, she now wants to be independent and is buying another property to make Airbnb her full-time venture. (I can so relate to this.)
Or my Airbnb hostess in Dubrovnik, who dreams of her children doing well in life. She knows that a good education and exposure to English will open up the world for them. She quit her supermarket job to spend quality time with her kids and wants them to be respectful of cultures everywhere. She’s even planning to take them on their first cruise to Italy.
Then there was Anne from England, whom I started chatting with while we both sat contentedly by the pier in Dubrovnik, gazing at the spectacular blue waters of the Adriatic. She shared that this was her first time traveling alone after a recent divorce following over 30 years of marriage. Though she felt lonely, missed companionship, and was initially scared to travel solo, she did it because she loves to travel.
I also met a young local girl from Dubrovnik who adored her city and shared her plans to start a new venture as a guide for visitors.
There was the young ex-military guy in Dubrovnik who, at a street crossing, told me how much he loved the city for its big-city vibe and party scene, and how much he would miss it when he returned to his village in eastern Croatia—a place he described as dead for young people.
In Edinburgh, I had a memorable conversation with a Scottish painter who admired the hard work and ethics of Indians living in Scotland and hoped his own government would take similar steps to improve the economy as the Indian government was taking.
I’ll never forget the glee of a Spanish photographer in London when he realized his photos would be hung in a home in India.
After a week of seeing only white faces in Slovenia, I caught the eye of a black man across the street. We exchanged smiles—a silent kinship, recognizing a familiar face in a foreign land.
There was also a happy, giggly group of middle-aged women from Taiwan, thrilled to be on a women-only trip, leaving their husbands and families behind. They loved taking and posing for photos, and seemed pleased when I told them I knew of Taiwan and where it was.
Or the moment in Ljubljana when I overheard a Swiss guy waiting for his bus say he was going to “Zurich—home.” It struck me how universal it is to mention “home” after the name of your city or country when you’re heading back.
The more you interact with people, the more you realize that no matter how different our countries and cultures are, at our core, we’re all the same—sharing similar insecurities, questions, stories, and expectations from life.
Same same, but different… aren’t we?