My maternal grandfather was born in 1890 in Minsk, White Russia (now Belarus). In his mid-70s, he decided to take my grandmother to Minsk for the first time. They scheduled a trip but then canceled it due to myriad mundane excuses. The trip was rebooked for the following July; my grandmother died that June.
I was 20 at the time but the postponement impacted me emotionally. I vowed not to put off for tomorrow the places I had the time and money to see today. I promised not to play Russian roulette with time.
I’ve harvested many cherished travel memories as I approach my 80th birthday. Memories matter more to me than money. Money, of course, has significance in our lives partly because of what it buys. My material appetites have been modest. I don’t own a yacht because I can’t afford or want one. Ditto for a Rolls-Royce. I never stay at five-star hotels because I think of myself as a three-star person. I want to enjoy material pleasures that are compatible with who I am, not who I am not.
I went to Oktoberfest in Munich with my wife, Alyn, and stayed at a hotel a few blocks from the event. I still recall the Paulaner tent where 25 years ago I sat with men consuming schooner after schooner of beer and never having to use the bathroom. My admiration for the bladders of German men is still quite profound.
Queen’s Day in Amsterdam (now named King’s Day) is a street party celebrated on water. The canals are filled with boats decked out in orange, the national color of the country. The crowds lining the canals are so packed that movement is not an option. I stood cemented in place taking in all the excitement shoulder to shoulder with throngs of happy Dutch revelers. It seemed like an encapsulation of New Year’s Eve, Mardi Gras and the Fourth of July.
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The streets and sidewalks of Hanoi are jammed with people on motorbikes masquerading as moving vans carrying riders and bulky boxes filled with possessions. The bikers don’t stop for pedestrians and the traffic lights are casually obeyed. Getting across the street safely is an exercise requiring steel nerves. The trick is to walk at a consistent pace in a straight line and trust in the bikers’ skill to whiz by without knocking you on your tush. Your reward in making it to the other side in one piece is that you get to see entire families camped out on the sidewalks enjoying a nighttime barbecue.
Istanbul is literally where Europe and Asia stare at each other from across the continental divide created by the Bosporus Sea. It’s the place where old and new merge; where the sacred and the profane exist as compatible companions; where minarets mingle with massage parlors. One night at our hotel, ’60s rock and roll music blared from a disco nearby until 4 a.m. An hour later, the sound of the call to prayers could be heard beckoning people to their mosques.
Petra in Jordan looks like the setting for the film “Lawrence of Arabia.” It wasn’t. But “Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade” was. It’s an ancient city that was carved from red, white and pink sand cliffs in 400 BC. A 5-mile narrow road takes tourists through the canyon-draped temples and tombs. It’s not pedestrian-friendly because of the constant cavalcade of recklessly driven horse-drawn carriages and crazy camel jockeys that careen through the canyon.
I remember taking a midnight taxi in Buenos Aires to a tango palace named Confiteria Ideal. We worried that we’d be too late to enjoy the music and dancers. It was a wasted worry, because the band didn’t arrive until 2 a.m. We left at 6 a.m. when the palace closed.
Shanghai is the third-largest city in the world with an estimated population of 30 million. It’s the only city I’ve visited that made New York seem slow and New Yorkers laid back. Pedestrians walked at such a madcap pace that just watching them exhausted me. The “Shanghai Number 1” department store in the heart of the city was ridiculously large and attracted massive numbers of shoppers. Macy’s by comparison would be reduced to a small shop on Main Street in rural America.
Dr. Seuss expressed the essence of what I’ve gained from my travels: “Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory.” The moments that have formed memories are the diary of my life as it draws to a close. Time and money are the yin and yang we constantly try to balance. We can’t take either one with us when we die. When placed in our coffins time has expired and nobody lines the coffin with $100 bills so the deceased will have spending money in the afterlife.
Jay Wissot is a resident of Denver and Vail. Email him at jayhwissot@mac.com.
