Reason to Travel - Connecting with History

There are many reasons why we travel (when we are allowed to!).  No one person has only 1 reason, there are usually several reasons, and the combine to make your UNIQUE reason you travel.  If you are lucky you will travel with another person (or many people) who's reasons align with yours.... but that is for another Blog post... this post is about one of the reasons I like to travel.

​For me, one reason, is that I like to connect to the history of the place.  To visualize and connect from the large historical event, to the event in the eyes of one or few individuals.  We often lose the soul of an event in terms of the individuals while we try to get our heads around the big picture.   Take this photo for example …

Artistically, there are definitely quality questions with the photo (though it isn't terrible).  I can say that, as I took the photo.  It is from a wall that holds up a neighborhood in Budapest called Castle Hill.  The main Hungarian government buildings are in this area, just behind where I took the photo.

The interesting part for me is that random rubble that makes up the lower 90% of the wall.  It looks ugly, but in reality it is history.  Those chucks of cement, and brick, and stone are the debris created by WWII.  Budapest was just hammered by bombing, and a long siege.  In the process, the vast majority of the buildings were significantly damaged, or destroyed.  The city was literally drowning in its own rubble, and needed to do something with it.  Something economical, something close... so they flattened out an area of Castle Hill, and filled it with the old buildings.  Those blocks of stone and brick are the pieces of houses, stores, restaurants, and more.  It isn't a finely crafter artistic statement on the war... it's pieces of homes.  It is the actual old city pre-war.  I find that interesting.  Imagine the photos you have seen of destroyed cities, and piles of bricks, and people looking beaten down and demoralized, sweeping up massive amounts of rubble. Those hands, are the ones who built this wall.  Those are the ones who dug out from the horror, and made something from it.  They suffered unthinkable destruction... and they touched those very bricks.  No signs, no monuments... just the back story of an ordinary wall.

That is understanding at a level that you don't get from a book, only from being there. … and there are more stories like it, but that is enough for this post.

I post regularly on Instagram … follow me there for more photos, and short stories.  I will be posting more here as well periodically.
https://www.instagram.com/vanceworldtravel/

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