Child-like Enthusiasm

 

Just a few days into my sick child's leave, I felt the rush of anticipation for the day's first hot cup of coffee and our morning dose of Ninjago.

For the uninitiated, Ninjago is a cartoon featuring a few Lego ninjas with special powers and their own primary colour. They fight all sorts of magicians, stone Samurai, robo-ninjas, and anthropomorphic snakes with their signature martial art: Spinjitsu.

We're into the fifth season, and it's fair to say I'm just as hooked as my nearly 4-year-old son. 

The level of enthusiasm for Ninjago in the household has been slowly building. First, it was the occasional reference after a day at the Kita. Then, there were the drawings and the priced pages of a colouring book. Then we started watching the show on Netlfix.

But, the tipping point into Ninjago fan-boy-dad-territory was the savage virus that knocked out almost all the kids, and parents, at our Kita. We've now been marathon-watching these Lego martial artists between naps, pleas to nap, matchbox car races, book-reading, and other activities meant to tire out a child that refuses to act like he's sick.

I've gone from a white belt to a black belt in Ninjago knowledge. How serious is it? I've moved beyond merely mastering the ninjas' names, colours, and powers, to thinking, "He's acting like a Cole..."

 

I've also had some deeply serious conversations about what the Green Ninja's superpower is. The answer? "The Green Ninja's power is Boom-boom."

There's so much about fatherhood you're not prepared for. At best, you think you're prepared for something, but find out you're not. 

 

But here is a situation I didn't know I should be prepared for: This powerful, unabashed enthusiasm for something — dinosaurs, cars, Ninjago, whatever — that's so strong that you happily get pulled into it. It's like getting sucked into the Darkness (season 2 for the Ninjago noobs), but far less ominous.

Simple pleasures of a Hungarian train

Magic hour at Keleti train station, in Budapest

The train has only pulled out of the station a few minutes ago, and it already takes on the familiar feeling of a Hungarian train.

The polite exchange of seats, as those with reservations ask those without reservations to get out of their seats.

The sound of a can of Dreher being opened. Then another. Then another. 

A lady sitting down across the table from us, pulling out a tin-foiled bundle and unwrapping a sandwich.

At the next station, a man sits beside her. As the train pulls out, he too pulls a tin-foiled sandwich from his luggage, unwraps it, and takes a bite.

We already finished our snacks and sandwiches.

Train travel is easily romanticized, as if it's still like solving mysteries on the Orient Express or watching the world blur past you on a bullet train.

But for most of us, it's a necessity. No Belgian detectives solving mysteries. And it's the local, so there's plenty of stops and no bullet speed.

So if you must take the train, why not make the most of it and stretch out and crack open a beer? You have to pay for the train ticket, so pay for train food when you can eat a delicious sandwich?

Any kind of travel doesn't need pricey upgrades or faux luxury. Often, it's the simple pleasures that make the trip worthwhile.

A ride on a Hungarian train is a refreshing return to that grounded normalcy. 

Once, on a flight from Budapest to Rome, I unwrapped my own tin-foiled wrapped salami sandwich. The old lady across the aisle from me nodded in approval. The flight attendant man gave me the stink eye.

It's not his fault. Airlines have managed to monetize every last bit of enjoyment of travel, while removing the last shred of dignity from the experience of flying. 

Passengers are treated like cattle, milked for every cent.

In the process, they've priced out the simple pleasures. Can you really, truly enjoy a $10 beer? Or do you feel compelled to tell yourself that it's a good beer?

And what about those sandwiches made under questionable circumstances with unidentifiable ingredients?

Train companies have yet to crush the joy of traveling and the simple pleasures that come with it: leg room, a homemade lunch, and cold beer. 

These things aren't sacred or even necessary, but they add something unmistakable to a train ride. That's something Hungarian train passengers haven't forgotten.

The places we want to visit

I was going to write a post about how Florence had changed since the last time I visited the city.
  
I'd write about how the price to walk around the roof of Duomo jumped in just a few years from 8 € to 30 €. I'd write about the enormous hordes of tourists descending on the markets, tavernas, and tourist sights. Buying every little knick-knack and drinking the town dry of Aperol spritz.
  
I'd write about how on my first visit, I bought a wallet for 15 € from the leather market that was made in Florence. And how the same market was choked with tourists perusing suspiciously identical-looking, marked-up leather goods.

But I'm not writing that post. 

I've been thinking more about the impact of my traveling decisions. Especially my purchase decisions while I travel. 

Do any of us visit a place like Florence for the cheap magnets, the machine-crafted leather goods, the silly Panama hats, the shot glasses, miniature Davids, cheap sunglasses, or anything else arrived on a super-freighter from a faraway sweatshop? 

Yet, we mindlessly buy this shit. Myself included. I bought a same-same machine-made leather wallet to replace that older wallet I bought years earlier from the same market. I instantly regretted buying it. 

 

We can loathe the pushy street sellers and roll our eyes at the ridiculous novelty items, but they're selling them because we're buying them. 

Worse, we're buying things we don't need from people who like as though they don't want to be selling these things.
 

We can lament the death of neighborhoods in Lisbon, Barcelona, or Florence and wonder why Dubrovnik or Venice doesn't feel "authentic." 

But, we're the ones staying in cheap Airbnbs, putting our money into souvenir shops, and pretty much avoiding the local businesses that cater to the local and made that neighbourhood in that city worth visiting.

What can we do?

We can stop believing that tired argument that buying garbage from a souvenir shop is putting needed money into the local economy. We can start making purchase decisions that will leave the place we're visiting a little better off than when we left it. Let's use our judgment, before we use our money.