My posts have been absent for a few months primarily due to my reluctance to face my current economic situation and mourning the death of my travel budget. Tiring of my sackcloth and ashes, I turn to writing again about where I’ve been if not where I’m going.

My most memorable birthdays have involved snow. Not blizzards, but a light, white blanket like the spun cotton skirts that festoon Christmas tree pedestals, whose memory in February is still fresh as the snow itself. For my birthday in 1999, I awoke in Luxembourg to just such a scene. Looking out our third-floor hotel window down onto the town square, pure white covered everything. The scene appeared so perfect and unexpected it was almost like seeing snow for the first time.

What makes a travel memory indelible? Journeys to exotic locales impress with the different and unusual, but often the most unforgettable trips involve the mundane and familiar demanding our attention in a strange context. Those quotidian images and sensations we force from our conscious minds every day slip upon us when our psychological sentries stand down.

Another memorable experience materialized outside a small church in Venice, Italy. I have no idea of the exact location of the church – after all, not knowing or caring exactly where you are is the point of Venice. My partner, Stan, and friend, Terry, and I, wandering about the city’s moonlit corridors one night after all the day-trippers had returned to the cruise ships, slipped into a current of music flowing from the age-old windows and doors of a canal-side church. Entranced, we lingered awash in flute notes and percussion crescendos. Sitting at peace on an embankment with elbows on knees, I paused as dark water lapped the rock walls below.

The moment wasn’t manufactured. It couldn’t have been photographed or even videotaped for YouTube. It required all the senses in concert and a complete immersion in that moment. Although together, I’m sure each of our experiences was unique. A day earlier or later or choosing to rush back to our room would have missed it.

Other memories may involve fleeting but important connections with the people of a place. For a semester in early 1996, I studied European Community law in Amsterdam. I participated on occasion in a discussion/social group at the COC – the gay community center in Amsterdam. We would all meet at the COC and talk in English about whatever we wanted, from gay academic theory to Dutch cinema. After exercising our brains, we would head out to a bar for the social part of the evening. As my birthday that year just happened to coincide with the scheduled meeting day, the social part of the evening became a birthday celebration, which lasted until 4 a.m.

As I traipsed about the city with one companion who was taking a holiday from teaching English in Saudi Arabia and another study-abroad student from China, both enjoyed activities – such as gathering with homosexuals – prohibited in the countries to which each was returning. In Saudi Arabia, gays can get the death penalty and imprisonment is not an uncommon fate of Chinese homosexuals. After saying goodnight/good morning at a bus stop, I returned to my dorm courtesy of a crowded, jostling night-bus swaying to the mandatory twists of the city’s narrow streets.

Sometimes the most profound experiences occur in the places where we least expect them. The Checkpoint Charlie Museum in Berlin, which marks the spot of the official transition point between East and West Berlin, is too easily overlooked by the serious Berlin visitor. The crowds outside look intimidating and the first few rooms pack full with tour-bus refugees. But if you persevere further into the museum the crowd thins and you gain the necessary space and quiet for contemplation. The museum could very easily emphasize the triumph of the capitalist countries over the communism of the Soviet-block or consist merely as a repository of evidence of the evils of communist totalitarianism. And while there are strains of both perspectives in the curatorial structure, what becomes truly evident is the indomitable nature of the human spirit that refuses to be limited or cowed by any dogma in its search for self-determination.

In the special exhibition area, which was almost empty of visitors, the museum chronicled human struggles and triumphs from American Civil Rights to Indian Independence, from the Solidarity Movement to Tiananmen Square. This overwhelming testament to humanity’s common desire for freedom from oppression moved me to tears.

As travel frees us from the myriad distractions of home, we are prepared for the incomparable moment, the scene that may never be replicated. And that’s why I have never been able to view travel as a luxury but as an indispensable part of life. That’s why I travel.