World Flavor

This week’s Indie Travel Challenge prompt asks if you could go back in time, where and when would you go? This is a cool prompt because I find the concept of time travel really fascinating. I love watching Doctor Who and reading time travel romance novels, among other things. There’s a few places I would be interested in going to. First, I’m really curious about the dinosaurs, so I would go back to the Jurassic period (anywhere really) to look at some dinosaurs.

Like this, but with more skin.

I just finished reading Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford, which Jeff reviewed before. I would be really interested to go to Mongolia or China or the cities of Central Asia at the height of the Mongol empire, and see what it was like. It seems fascinating.

Did the horses they rode look more like the takhi or Przewalski’s horse?

Finally, as a Classical Civilization major, I would absolutely love to go see ancient Greece and Rome at the height of their glory. I want to know if the things I’ve studied were accurate! And they’re both just such interesting places.

I can ask the owners of the ‘Villa of the Mysteries’ in Pompeii why they really painted room 5 like they did! Then I can see if my final paper for my Pompeii and Herculaneum class was full of crap or not.

I’d need to make sure, of course, that I didn’t interfere with anything and then create a paradox or change history. I’m totally ready to go on these trips, though. Who’s got a time machine?

Where would you go if you could go back in time?

This week’s Indie Challenge prompt is specifically about Eastern Europe. But since I wrote about that in a previous Indie Challenge post, I’m going to answer the “more general” part of the prompt: how much does knowing about the history of a place inspire your future travels?

I was a Classics major at William and Mary. Well, okay, I double-majored (the other was Anthropology), but one was Classics. Therefore, a good portion of my college career was spent learning about and researching the history and culture of ancient Greece and Rome.

This has definitely influenced me in where I decide to go when I’m in Europe. I’ve actually been to Italy before, as I’ve mentioned. But that was in high school, and while at that point I was already a Classics nerd (I’d been taking Latin for a while – the Sibyl’s Cave as featured in the Aeneid was kind of a highlight of the trip as we had just translated that part), I hadn’t learned a lot about Ancient Rome yet.

But now, I know a lot more. Instead of just having heard a bit about Pompeii (okay, and translating a passage about it), I’ve now taken a whole class about Pompeii, with a bit of Herculaneum thrown in. This all culminates in a strong desire to go back. I need to see these places with fresh, more knowledgeable eyes. And I need to do it soon, before I forget everything (even now I’ll have to refresh my memory a bit). Between that and my need to eat Italian food – must have authentic pesto in Genoa – it’s put Italy on the list of countries that’s making the cut for Europe.

I also studied Ancient Greece – in fact, I learned more Greek history than Roman. However, I think we’re going to have to miss Greece this time around, sadly. The Schengen visa is convenient but it certainly does limit our time in Europe. So we’re focusing on three countries (and our stomachs are kind of guiding us in the direction of cheese) in the Schengen area – Italy, France, and Spain. That doesn’t mean we won’t have a day or two elsewhere, just that an in-depth look at Greece is not in the cards.

If you can go to places you know the history of, you should. It both gives you great context for the sites you’re seeing and adds visual elements to your historical knowledge, which will probably help you remember it. Conversely, you should also research the history of the places you go. It makes your experience much richer – that random building over there that people are taking pictures of will have a story instead of just looking cool! For me, then, history is an important part of travel.

What historical site do you most want to see?