I’ve always been fascinated with travel. But without any high-flying ideals – my tour guides hew towards Kerouac’s On The Road and Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises and away from anything you’ll on glossy printed pages.

I used to joke that I’m in it for the (relatively) free trip – though the older I get, the basic tourism is the stuff I tend to forget first. I’m interested in really living in a country – eating the cheap stuff that is a staple for most citizens but never makes it to the pages of Condé Nast Traveler. Reading the paper, dodging the tourist traps, and generally, appearing as un-American as I can. When you can laugh along with some new friends at the political gaffe of the day, courtesy of YouTube and an Internet café, you know you’ve made it.

Though it’s hardly original, I still like the million-and-one-spinoffs of that Socratic wisdom: “the more I learn, the more I realize there is to learn.” I hope to have that disoriented, blissful feeling, that notion of a constantly expanding world and the thirst for traveling it, as often as time allows.

And if not, there’s always uncommonly alcoholic Belgian beer.