I once knew a guy who took a job in Israel. At his going away party, I asked him if he had any second thoughts or worries about going to Israel amidst all the churn and turmoil going on over there. My friend responded with something that I have often thought about through the years that I have been traveling: “If you worry about stuff like that, you will never go anywhere.”
Thus, I never thought about bad things happening when I was travelling. And by bad I mean the ugly, terrorist-related kinds of things. Buzzy had taught me well through the course of our travels that when you travel, things are going to go wrong at some time or another. “Shit’s going to happen” he said long before Forrest Gump claimed it. Thus, he taught me that the experienced traveler goes with the flow. Buzzy of course was talking mostly about mishap kind of things like lost luggage, missed flights, schedule delays, hotel snafus etc.. His attitude was – hope for the best, expect the worst and take what you get.
On previous trips then, I never allowed those kind of worries to get to me. However, last year when Pam and I were in a French train station and I saw four armed French soldiers walking about the place, it gave me pause. I suggested to Pam that we move to a less open area. I was a little worried that our armed guards were there in the sense that “Hey, they’re here for a reason.”
And yet I may be getting over that anxiety. Just the other day as we traipsed around the city of Aix en Provence, I saw 3 French soldiers armed with automatic weapons and didn’t think anything of it. Perhaps I have gotten used to seeing it.
Nooooo! It’s just that having seen it once before, this second time around I wasn’t as taken aback by it as I was the first time that I saw it. It’s still a little scary when you stop and think just why they have to be there.
Aix en Provence was an amazing place with a huge pedestrian area as shown in this video. I have some photo’s that I will upload later.
