Ever since my trip to Switzerland back in the fall of 2018, I realized I was about to be done with traveling blindly to all over the places but becoming selective from then on.
I was at the end of nearly two decades of my frequent traveling mode for ailing overseas parents support back then. I was, however, yet to validate my swiss trip reflections.
Then the pandemic arrived.
Like everyone else, I started to mourn for the days I could instantly book the flight, grabbed a few traveling necessities, hopped on a plane, and was gone.
Fast forwarded two years later, finally, I got a chance to fly to Barcelona for a whole week plus two weekends. This is, by far, the most time luxurious trip for leisure on my travel calendar.
I started the planning almost a month ago. I even built a google map plan with each day's to-do places nailed, plus a dedicated layer to list out about 30 tapas places I collected from the internet.
I was amazed by my meticulously detailed trip plan, which was unprecedented. It's a residue of the mental issues caused by the twenty-four months of locked down.
One day before my trip, Russia invaded Ukraine.
With a heavy heart, I flew into the EU continent.
This ongoing and ever-escalating twenty-four by seven tick-tocking warfare took a heavy toll on me. It profoundly changed my view of traveling.
The medieval gothic churches no longer look anciently cool to me. Even today, they breathe suppression of cultural diversity, liberty, and freedom of thinking. The almost a thousand-year-old Muralles de la Girona was no longer a breathtaking vintage view of Girona's beautiful ancient city skyline but a bloodshed place for the numerous times of sieges and captures.
And the 1936–1939 Spanish Civil War eventually led to the zealous participant turning bitter disillusioned George Orwell’s classic dystopian fiction novel "1984". Orwell also endured it from Barcelona and Catalonia.
Have we humans ever learned anything from these bloody historical events?
Did differences in ideologies drive all these wars?
The entire world is watching with waring eyes on the possible nuclear escalation in one of the best lands on earth. Even in 21 century, there is a proven danger that one person’s unchecked will would have the chance to overrule and bring millions of people’s lives in misery and suffering. And worse yet, none of us could have an easy way to stop him and his regime.
So unthinkable.
Does God have better plans to solve these issues at present?
The atheist almost more pantheist I decided to stay through the whole course of a Saturday service at the famed Montserrat monastery trying to pick up some signs.
It was proven too hard.
