by admin | June 19th, 2010
How many times have you said to yourself upon thinking about a previous travel experience: ” I can still “____” every time I think about “____”. Fill in the first blank with “smell”, “taste”, “see”, or ” hear” and the second with any location you have visited in the past. Your fives senses have just acted as triggers to an instant recall of your travel experience. It happens to all of us.
My first experience abroad was Mexico. I was nineteen years of age, had just finished my first year in the University, and was going to spend the summer with the family of a student friend of mine. My first night in Nogales, Mexico my friend’s brother took me to eat at an outside dining area next to the Plaza de Toros (bullring). I had not had any previous experience whatsoever of Mexican culture — not in any form.
As the mariachi bands began to play, it sent chills up my spine. My youthful spirit of adventure took over. I don’t remember what we ate, but to this day I still have the same excited feeling when I hear a mariachi band play. No other Latin music does that to me, even though I have spent time in many Latin countries since that time. It was that first Mexican musical experience that now triggers pleasant thoughts of the experience every time I hear mariachi music.
One of the oddest recall triggers for me is eating a banana with a vanilla wafer. That combination never fails to bring up vivid pictures of the countryside of Southern India. Now, you don’t normally associate bananas and vanilla wafers with India, so why would I think of India? Why not think of India while eating curried food?
The answer is simple but enlightening. I was traveling with a group of American educators in Southern India and as part of the educational experience, we were visiting numerous local villages, some of which had previously had little contact with Americans. Frequently the villagers would greet us with a group of musicians and lead us into the village playing the local music.
So, why bananas and vanilla wafers as a trigger? Why not the music like in Mexico? The one common element as we went from village to visit was that in all of these villages we were offered bananas and vanilla wafers (they called them by the British term, biscuits), as soon as we arrived. So, the bananas and vanilla wafers became a trigger to help me remember the music, people, and cultural experiences. You never know what your trigger will be? I didn’t plan it that way. It just happened.
While going through international travel (or even local) experiences, we can’t always anticipate what the trigger for remembering that experience will be. The things that are the most obvious to us while living the experience may never be remembered while some smell, taste, sound, or sight which seemed insignificant at the time may become the trigger to reliving many joyful memories. They could also be the trigger for negative memories, but let’s not dwell on that possibility.
Wherever you travel, try always to include as many sensory experiences as you can. Taste the new foods, listen to the new music, and carefully look at the new sights. You never know which of your sensory experiences will later trigger the cherished memories.
