In late summer 2001, while I was living in South Beach, a young French couple rented a room in my house for a month. One day Adrian was looking over my bookshelves, particularly my large collection of travel books, when he said to Melanie, “Jeff must travel a lot.”

At that point, I felt that I had to speak up and tell the truth. “No, I don’t travel much at all. I just buy a lot of guidebooks.”

Guidebooks have been my first purchase when thinking about traveling somewhere. Since there’s hardly anywhere I don’t want to go, I buy guidebooks even in anticipation of a trip decades away. Paging through a travel guide is a form of entertainment, an attempt to satisfy that curiosity about the world.

I think my very first guidebook purchase was sometime around the age of 12. I remember being at Walden Books at Rivergate mall just north of Nashville and getting that slim, green Michelin Guide to Paris. I didn’t make it to Paris until I was 18 but I vividly recall tracing the walks along the maps and learning about the Musée de Cluny; I was a strange boy.

What I enjoy about guidebooks are the descriptions of places, the contextual info. I skip all those pages about transport, lodging, and food. Sometimes, that means I’m skipping three-fourths of the book. Those are practicalities that arise in a different phase of travel planning. Yet, those details – updated by diligent, poorly paid souls slogging from hostel to hotel – are the essence of the guidebook. So, I’ve found myself seeking out other sources to prepare me for my travels or my fantasies of setting foot someday on a distant soil.

I like to learn. I like to learn about the world. Is that a passion?

As a librarian, I had easy access to a large research collection. For a trip to India, I read William Dalyrmple’s City of Djinns and Bamber Gascoigne’s The Great Moghuls. I even found an enchanting book, Sadhus: Holy Men of India by Dolf Hartsuiker, that I obtained through interlibrary loan. That combination, along with a few other resources, really enhanced my experience riding on the back of a rickshaw along the jammed, narrow streets of Old Delhi. Rather than thinking about the pain in my backside from sitting on a bouncing narrow bench, mental images from my readings of India’s astonishing history mixed with the living culture moving all around me.

But most people don’t have access to research collections or would even known which books to read if they did. Guidebooks often do a very good job of referring readers to other books and that’s one of my favorite features of guidebooks. But who has time to read the best 40 books on Malaysia or even the best three?

The Internet offers lots of sources but, again, it’s time-consuming to filter through all the travel sites that are simply fronts for booking reservations. For each good blog such as Travelvice or Life on the Tibetan Plateau, there is a deluge of travel blogs with photos of Uncle Joe smiling over his steak at Cabaña Las Lilas.

There surely will be the emergence of even more Net-based resources that will help people prepare for a more enriching experience during their travels. But, the question is how will those resources be structured? How will they differ from and enhance existing resources available to travelers? How will they go beyond the limited coverage that can fit into a guidebook but also not be overwhelming?

Tucked down along the smelly river in La Boca is one of the oldest (or, dating from 1865, is it the oldest?) train stations in Buenos Aires, Barraca Peña. If you’re in the tourist center of La Boca, you’ll need to walk a ways along the river before you find it. Alternatively, you might be able to just walk down the railroad tracks but that may be more of an adventure than many of you want. Several sections of the tracks in La Boca are now remodeled with pedestrian walkways but I don’t think it extends as far as the station yet.

That fancy rail car is fitted for a cinema, hence the painting on the side.

The original wood structure (and I just reminded of how unusual it is to see a building in Buenos Aires made from wood) has been painted bright colors in keeping with the La Boca theme. Workmen still are fixing up parts of the interior. And, it seems, that a family is still living in part of the station? (That girl with the kid in the photo was another visitor to the station, not part of the family I heard watching TV in the back room).

That tent off to the side of the tracks is an exhibition of photos of the area from the late 1800s. Prototypes and drawings of plans to develop the area around the station are on display. I must say, however, that the quality of the exhibition is rather disappointing. Basically, it looks like a student project. I applaud the effort but it makes me wonder if the project is ever going to really materialize. Anyway, best of luck to this project. It’s worth keeping an eye on.

Why do we travel? Why do we have that desire, that yearning, to visit far away places?

What is it about our lives that we seek to fulfill elsewhere? Perhaps, it’s as simple as a curiosity about the world.

We’re faced with the appealing belief that there is more to life than the everyday encounters in our hometown, no matter how large. Tourists view Buenos Aires as an exotic destination, though porteños may twitch their noses, wondering why so many foreigners come here. Likewise, the curious porteño fills pulled elsewhere, possibly the very humdrum towns that we’ve gladly left behind. We all want to go somewhere else.

If travel is not about curiosity, experiencing a different culture, learning more about the world (and possibly ourselves), then is it nothing more than checking off a list of accomplishments – been there, done that?

For some, (many, most?), travel may manifest itself in that competitive breed of list checkers. But I would like to think that we have a deeper sense of purpose, even if our actions don’t always reveal that core. Yet, why do most travelers learn so little about the places they visit? Are they just not that curious? Do they not know what questions to ask, how to learn?

International travel costs thousands of dollars. If we pay that much for an experience, should it not damn well be life enhancing?

How should we prepare ourselves for encountering a distant part of the globe? How do we learn about a culture, a society, a place that is not ours?

In our travels how do we best engage our curiosity about the world?