Alyona CheMeeting people all over the world
In our opinion, the most exciting part of traveling is meeting new people. People of different cultures, often with contrasting perspective, particular habits and different income level. We have mentioned many times, that what we love the most during our trips is sharing our experiences, discussing history, current socio-economic issues, our impressions of other countries, learning the foreign way of life.
In the end, finding so many common things with each and every person we have met.
It is interesting, how much more open-minded and easy-going person one can become, when actually meeting people who think in a different way.
Acceptance
Easy to be said in general, “I do not like/do not understand vegetarians and I will never refuse meat”, but what an experience to be hosted in a house of vegans, eat the food they eat, listen to their point of view and why they chose this path. The sympathy that is born between real people when they get to know each other just a little better, never let us say again in general “I do not like/accept vegetarians”. All the same holds for different skin color, religion, music preferences or whatever else.
After traveling so much, we have noticed that many people, everywhere in the world, just do not have a chance to see or hear this “different story”. Some people are not able to travel that often, some people do not speak foreign languages to communicate freely, others are restricted to traveling within their homeland or specific continent, some other can be just too shy to get to know any local, and this list can go on and on.
Touching different cultures
Traveling is so common today, but still, there are not many people who actually “touch” different cultures, who do not stay within the touristic zone, who enter foreign houses, who make local friends. With all the social media and internet, it is fascinating how much more difficult it is to get to know the real life of people while traveling and hear simple people’s stories.
For a long time now, we have been thinking to share some of those simple, but unique stories that we have been collecting during our trips. Stories of ordinary people like you and me, their thoughts on the same problems that bother us, their routine and their adventures. The stories we have been spreading to our friends, relatives, guests, other travelers hundreds of times. And then we thought, why not to write them down?
Our new beginning
We hope that, through this series of articles we will be posting in a new category “People of the world”, everyone can have a chance to get closer to someone who is far away, to hear one more story, to learn. To become a little bit more open-minded and a little bit less prejudiced, or, at least, just less judgemental. To us, this is a precious throwback to our adventures, our memories of other people, opinions that have already influenced us in one or another way.
The TED Talk below was the one that finally made us move on, contact our hosts, friends, gather the material, our notes, review photos, and, finally, write the first article.
Because, “a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”. Let’s see where this one will take us ?