Manifesto

FQPFSU83TB93 This is the welcome message of “the traveling blog”, which I regret to say is not going to be a very good blog about traveling. There are probably thousands of bloggers out there who write about traveling, post notes and photos of their trips, provide colorful descriptions and useful tips on how they got there and why they preferred this hotel over that and they are doing a great job. There might also be those other people who post about traveling but from a personal - subjective point of view. I like all of them and I will try to incorporate ideas and ways of posting from all these posters. All great creators steal ideas from others, and they do so because they understand and appreciate them.

But I’m not aiming as high as achieving great creator status. I ‘m not trying to create the best traveling blog ever and I won’t be meticulous about my posts, which will probably be spasmodic, varying in quality and quantity. I can’t even promise there will be a next post (a cliche - there will probably be another post). But as long as I travel around, I will try to post here something of value. I will share with you whatever I thing is valuable because whenever I find something worth noticing I want to share it with others. It also works the other way around: knowing that I have a little traveling blog waiting for my posts, I will always be aware of things and situations worth noticing. Will I be a good father to my creation? Will I give it meaning and a purpose in its artificial life?

Now I will describe the kind of things I will post here. I thing it would be nice to post photos and short descriptions of the places I wander. Sometimes I will describe the preparations, the means of transportation and all that is the core bone of traveling. Some texts might be bigger than others and some might be really extensive. As this functions also as a log, I will keep most of my posts in their initial condition, but I might remove or modify some big or extensive posts if I thing they are not as good as initially intended. Commends are welcome, even offensive ones. Discussions are encouraged (although I don’t expect much traffic). I will write in English, which is not my native language (so grammar and syntax mistakes are part of the decoration), but is the language I mostly use while traveling.

I happen to live in a famous tourist attraction and I can watch the behavior of the tourists arriving here every day. They usually behave like they are in a “traveling mode” which is different from their every-day-life mode. Every person defines his or her traveling mode in a different way, but when a person travels and wanders, the thoughts and habits adopt rarely interfere to everyday "normal" way of life. It happens to me too, but I don't like it. I don't like it when vacations are used to "refill my batteries" or "to do crazy staff".

I believe that life itself is a trip, and it should be lived that way. So, when I say “traveling” I like to think of it in a broader sense.

Traveling is moving from a place in space to another place in space, but also in time. Proceeding with ones life is, in that sense, traveling in time and space. But time and space are perceived in ways that vary from person to person. In other words, time and space are subjective. A trip might change you, but you also change the trip as you mature. But what does this mean in practice? It means that I will post my 4 hours car ride to a nearby village, so that it looks as important as my planed one week visit to Lisbon, Portugal, if I feel like it.