Once in Malaysia I simply missed the bus. Instead I took a taxi and received a free two-hour lecture about the country. The driver explained how the sultans take turns ruling, almost like a relay race of monarchs. No arbitrariness, no golden carriages, but a system that works with surprising stability.
At the airport I saw locals flying across the country in brand-new aircraft for a few euros. Not business-class luxury, but genuine participation. Tradition was not a burden there; it had become an engine.
At the same time there was severity: posters against drugs everywhere, multilingual and unambiguous. Whoever dealt drugs knew what awaited them. And then the contrast: young offenders were not merely locked away, but sent into the rainforest to plant oranges. If they managed it for ten years, they received the land. Whoever failed disappeared from the programme. Whoever persevered had a future. Harsh, clear, but honest.
In Egypt, shortly before the so-called Arab Spring, a diving instructor told me: “If the government falls, the students will finally obey me.” I thought: poor fellow, who put that nonsense into your head? But I remained silent. It would only have caused an argument. History itself gave him the answer: chaos, fewer tourists, less income. His small revolution never arrived.
So I submerged with my opinion, quite literally, among coral and fish. Sometimes silence is more respectful than any argument.
Then there was George W. Bush, who boasted that he had hardly left Texas before becoming president. Someone like that was supposed to understand and lead the world. No wonder some decisions sounded as though they had been made at a ranch barbecue. Whoever does not know the world cannot understand it.
That is what I repeatedly felt on my journeys: the facts in the news may be correct, but the perspective is entirely different. “Strict drug laws,” says the newspaper. “Protection for our children,” says the taxi driver. “Cheap flights destroy the climate,” says the headline. “That is how I can visit my sick mother,” says the passenger.
That is why one hour of news a day is enough for me now. Not to find the truth, because it is never that simple, but to notice where headlines shine and where they distort.
The rest is memory: how it smelled, sounded and tasted when I was really somewhere. Travel does not automatically make a person wise. But it makes it harder to believe that one’s own view is the only possible one.
