Word: visitations
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...30pm: Outside Nikola Tesla Airport, cab drivers approach us in quick succession after I arrive with my boyfriend and his sister for a three-day trip to visit his friend from college. We've been warned to be wary of unmetered 'gypsy' cabs run by drivers eager to overcharge clueless tourists. My boyfriend tries to reason with one, insisting that his friend, a Belgrade native, assured us that a cab would cost no more than 1,500 dinars— nothing close to the 2,500 the cabbie has quoted. The driver retorts, "Well, why doesn't your friend pick...
...communication does not erode my international connections. Two Australians I worked with in Honduras came to New York City last year and I made a six-hour bus journey from Boston to see them for an evening. In contrast, for a year I’ve neglected to visit close high school friends who live nearby. When I exchange updates with folks abroad, no matter how long it’s been since we’ve spoken, I’m struck by how easily we can pick up where we left...
...Henry James wrote in The Italian Hours that of all the cities in the world, Venice is the easiest to visit without actually going there. Indeed, even if one has never set foot onto the sinking metropolis, it is hard not to have a pretty good idea of what it’s like: canals, gondolas, bridges, sleepy alleyways, crowded piazzas. The sights and images of Venice are everywhere in our own culture...
...This attitude is reminiscent of Czech writer Milan Kundera’s character Sabina in The Unbearable Lightness of Being, whose lover wants her to visit Palermo. He asks how she can possibly live without seeing it, to which Sabina responds, “I have seen Palermo. A friend of mine once sent me a postcard from there. It's taped up over the toilet...
...while we often aim to visit other places through literature, it seems that, in this case, words and phrases might actually give us a truer experience of the city—allow us to move past the superficiality of the average tourist experience without, as James said, ever visiting...