Traveling in the Peloponnesos (Viewpoint Essay‪)‬

EVEN AT A TIME when globalization overwhelms local distinctions and modernity crushes cultural diversity, travel can still provide some welcome refutation of such claims. Surely, most airports are virtually identical in design and ambience, as are superhighways, power stations, and hydroelectric dams. Such structures are uniform and offer few insights into the history and culture of the region where they are located; the means of mass transportation on land, water, or in the air also tend to be identical, as are telephones, TV sets, microwave ovens, and other consumer goods. Although we depend on these devices, few of us understand how they work, what laws of physics they obey and the scientific discoveries they embody. Perhaps here lies one source of aversion to modernity: it makes us humiliatingly dependent on all kinds of machines and instruments that we cannot comprehend; it also makes us further dependent on the specialized few who can make them work or fix them when they fail to do so. This, however, is not the whole story. Technology does not completely erase traditional ways of life even when widely relied upon, and it is not equally widely relied upon everywhere notwithstanding its availability and affordability. Even thoroughly modernized Europe abounds in spots and corners sufficiently different from North America (and other parts of Europe) to gladden the heart of the traveler looking for remnants of the past and settings different from those he is familiar with. To be sure, technologically untouched areas are impossible to find in Europe--but, in any event, one would not want to spend much time in such places. There are limits to the pursuit of authenticity and heart-warming traditional ways of life even for romantic critics of modernity. On the other hand, there is an appealing element of adventure and modest risks associated with travel in less modernized parts of the world where the means of transportation are more primitive and the prevailing notions of timeliness make travel less predictable.