billboard
posted just outside
Cochin India
Get Away to Paris
Where Romance is in the Air
there is most certainly
its twin
posted on the curved Metro wall
Come to Colorful India
Where Romance
Is in our very Air.
Inspiration: Freeway billboard
Wherever we are, there is somewhere else we want to go. As we drove up from Cochin to Mumbai, I was struck by the language on billboard advertising a romantic trip to Paris looming over the many lane freeway. And I knew, without a shadow of a doubt that there was a twin somewhere in the metro in Paris assuring the commuter that better, more romantic days could be found in India.
Even though the reader LIVES in one of the most romantic cities in the world.
But daily life is so different from vacationing.
I try to remember this as I recklessly fall in love with another city, another country. I love the old elegant buildings leaning into each other, the street access, the hills, the stairs.
I forget the poor plumbing, hauling groceries and briefcases up five flights. Spotty internet. No attached garage. Street parking.
What is charming and picturesque while on vacation, can be read as annoying, shabby and a neighborhood nuisance in real life.
We want to go, we want to stay, we don’t know what we want.
So we keep traveling as if we can’t help it.