I sometimes wonder why I'd rather take pictures of fading stickers on street lamps, half peeled off and rubbed matte by the rain, instead of breathtaking valleys or church spires. Why I'd rather watch people weave across the street in their messy tangles, instead of seeing formations of sleek birds wheel around in the clear sky.

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Maybe it’s because I think things should be ugly. Humanity is, for sure. 

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Travel is, too. It’s ugly not to sleep between scratchy sheets, to need flip flops in the shower to avoid some deadly disease, to shuffle between barely cleaned hostels with strangers who could steal my passport or strangle me. It’s ugly to spend all night talking to those strangers, forming some sort of misfit camaraderie,
and know that I’ll probably never speak to them again. To feel so clueless, so foreign. To be unable to be understood or understand. To start longing for any sort of acknowledgement, from those you’re traveling with, or those you left behind. It’s ugly to miss home – or maybe even worse – not to.

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I think the ugliest thing about travel, and one of the ugliest about humanity, is regret. When you go into the ocean, you find yourself unable to look back. Maybe because its vastness holds your eyes; more because if
you turn towards the shore, you’re going to be struck by a wave sooner or later. Travel is like that too.

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The more you turn back the pages of your notebook, or scroll through your photos, or examine your memories, the more you open yourself up to a direct hit from a swell of regret. Trivial things like not eating a bigger breakfast before a long day of travel, not eating a smaller lunch before a bumpy ferry ride. Not realizing that you were really going to need sunscreen before a scorching hike. Not going into that store, not taking more notes, not visiting that museum or attraction. Not doing more, not doing less. If you overthink, there’s something wrong with everything.

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Is it worth it then? It’s an inescapable, inevitable feeling. Regret. A heavy, consuming, ugly feeling. But if you stay home, you’ll regret not going to begin with.

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I do think both humanity and travel can be beautiful too, but I breathe more easily when there’s something unappealing to avert my eyes from. 

 

I prefer cities. When I find myself posing for a picture in front of the Italian Alps, I don’t think anything of it. Looking back later, I’m the ugliest thing in the frame. Of course, no one could compare. The beauty of the mountains can’t be diminished, though we’ve tunneled into them, detonated bombs, blasted holes in their sides in order to more effectively kill each other. Even though the remnants of our roads and bunkers mar their essence. We’re responsible for so many eyesores. The sky gives us its best blue; grass and trees and flowers bloom bright. And we contribute… what? We take materials from the earth and build dull square buildings of brick and stone, black cars, and grey trains.

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I’ve never seen a city without graffiti. Sometimes it’s almost as beautiful as nature, swirls of color and steady lines forming a piece of someone’s identity. It can be more like a mural, gradient symbols taking up whole highway signs. It can convey a clear message in block letters or a secret in twisted script. It makes me want
to wear my brightest clothes and stand in front of splattered overpasses so I can be camouflaged in a new way. One that doesn’t involve association to our dedication to creating blood spatter between ourselves. Sometimes the graffiti is poorly covered up, a greyed-out rainbow. A renewed nothing where something used to be. It can be layers painted over each other, a shouting match. Sometimes though, it’s unmistakably ugly –just a crudely drawn dick on a playground wall.

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If ugliness is my one condition for travel, Bredene, Belgium was the perfect weekend destination.

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The lack of iced beverages in a beach environment was deplorable. Everyone was sunburnt, or peeling, or blotchy. All the men appeared to be bald. The beach had silky sand, and there were plenty of lovely shells.
The ocean, while grey and choppy, was the perfect temperature. But a bunch of creepy Slavic men, obviously drunk, leered for hours. A trio of heavyset dads threw a frisbee dangerously close. Most of the male beachgoers, regardless of age, wore the same uniform: ill-fitting speedos seemingly designed to ruin the lives of those around them. To the back were bathrooms that you had to pay for. Even further behind was, fittingly, a Porta Potty.

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The Airbnb was inside a trailer park. The number was 2356; if there were actually over two thousand trailers in that lot, I wouldn't be surprised. If someone told me that there were more trailers than people in the town, I wouldn’t be shocked. The rows and rows of them felt bigger than the ocean, especially on arrival. The first walk from the tram to the trailer was perhaps the ugliest thing of all. Weighed down by a peculiar experience in East Flanders, sunburns, backpacks, grocery bags, annoyance at each other, and uncertainty about the trailer’s whereabouts, we lurched along with all the excitement of soldiers heading to their deaths.

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We dragged our feet by a red sign pointing towards a group of tents. “Fiesta Europa: Europese Specialiteitenmarkt,” it proudly, borderline unintelligibly, proclaimed. When we returned the next day, we found a market. Flags depicting the country of each vendor snapped frantically in the salty air. Soap from France, meat from Mexico, and cider from the UK. There was a guy singing a cover of Get Lucky by Daft Punk; the flag above the stage was unrecognizable to someone with an American education. Spanish music played in a large booth selling jewelry, but the man running it spoke in fluent, fluid Dutch. Still no iced coffee, but plenty of mimosas. Colorful screen-printed t-shirts that seemed to only come in one size. Supple, heavy leather bags, belts, and butcher’s aprons. Wooden toys, loose tea, fudge, cheese, churros, crystals.

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The market was packed to the brim with patrons, both locals or tourists. They led their dogs on leashes and pushed their obnoxious kids in strollers. They held hands and laughed too loudly and glared at people who jostled them. The vendors fought to gain their attention, offering samples, waving their products in faces that often held little-to-no interest. Everyone was sunburnt, yelling, trying to be heard, trying to be understood, to understand. It was too loud, too much. Everything was ugly. I bought two bars of soap from the Frenchman speaking broken English and drifted farther into the fray.