The country I would like to visit

 

Bonjour mojojojos, 

Klau returns with more hate and stronge than ever, I hope you are well and you have the enough battery in your phone to finish reading this blog. As you can see in the title of this blog, today I talk about the country I would like to visit. And, the country is France. VIVE LE FRANCE! WE ARE IN PARIS!

I had some inconvenience to choose the country that I would like to visit because the truth is that I would like to know the whole world, among those countries were Egypt, Japan, (in fact Japan almost beat it), Italy, Mexico, anyway, the world is a very interesting place and it is difficult to choose a single place in which to feel interest. 

I love you so much Rimbaud,
 "the hand that holds the pen
 is worth as much as
 the one that plows".

The reason why I chose France is because I think it's a country that has my vibes, and I apologize for how disgustingly prescient that might have sounded, but it's true. Unlike the rest of the candidates who represent perhaps more curious or different destination, I feel that there is something beyond the cliché that France. I need to experience the atmosphere of France that lives in my imagination. 

My principal motivations to travel to France is because my favorite writers wrote while living in France. Poets like Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Verlaine and Ducasse. I need to know what is in France, what is so dark in France that such beautiful creations happened, referring especially to poetry.

In addition, I think France have interesting place that I have always wanted to visit and now a list:

Notredame Cathedral

I´m a really big fan of the architecture of the temples and specially the gothic architecture in general, I love stained glass windows and gargoyles. It is definitely a place that I need to visit before I die and go up to the top, I don't know if the reconstruction of Notredame will be finished, nor is it that I plan to go to France next week so it doesn't matter much. When things happen and I go to France Notredame will be my first stop. I'm going to parachute out of the plane and I'm going to land right on one of those gargoyles.

Louvre Museum 

It is an obvious destination for anyone who visits France, for me too. I would like to see the sculptures and paintings of some of the most influential artists, I don't know what else to add. I would like to know all the museums and visit all historical places. I´m a nerd but I´m free.

The Cliffs of Etrétat

I would like to visit this place, looks so nice and is represented in paintings by Monet so many times. And that he had captivated Maupassant (marzipan for friends).

I love the natural places, if I go to France one day, I want to see the beaches, the french Alps, the forests, etc. I would also like to know the smaller or not so touristic cities.

 

The Catacombs of Paris

I wasn't in Paris if I didn't go to the catacombs that simple, what the Eiffel Tower and what does it matter to me? I want to enter the catacombs in the dark and feel like I'm going down to the underworld when in reality I'm going up again towards the exit. I don't know if it's true, but it is said that they are designed in a certain way that you feel that you are going down more and more when in fact it reaches a certain point of depth and then you start going up again.

There are more places that I would like to visit, as you can see, I have studied the destinations that I would like to visit a lot, you never know when you may have a stroke of luck and have the opportunity to see so many places that are out there in the distance and that would be delicious . 

I believe that to really get to know a place one must live there, if I have the opportunity to do so, I would like to live for a while in France as well as in any other country that I visit. A culture is not really understood through the museums and tourist sites declared world heritage sites, the culture of a place is known in it's streets, in it's habitants, in it's daily life. That is the most important thing about traveling, letting yourself go for the life that is breathed in that place to be one more, to find the belonging everywhere.

If I visit France one day,  I would like to visit it alone or with people who plan to visit the same places as me. Travel experiences are often subject to the people who accompany you, and you can talk about travel not only in the literal sense of the word. 

The garage, the garage
 u la la sir french 

As much as it costs me to admit my personal culture is very Eurocentric. I do not want to be misunderstood, I definitely do not believe that European culture is superior to any other culture, but it is a fact that my education has always been linked to European culture, an issue that I consider to have been a consequence of my Occidental condition in which I still, as Latinos we continue to admire the cultures of dominant countries as the goal instead of pursuing our own identity.

 It may seem that my speech is contradictory, but, I have very personal reasons for wanting to know France, but it is true that I question myself if I place the same value on the most local culture that has much more to do with me on a historical level, it is interesting to analyze how culture becomes hegemonic in the modern world . The tradition of Occidental Culture has always been Eurocentric and mainly absorbed by cultures belonging to economically dominant countries.

(Rat-Mandrill)

On the other hand, I believe that rejecting the influence of international culture on a personal level in our culture is absurd, we cannot avoid cultural invasion, identity is built from influence, nothing is created out of nothing or is 100% pure. Cultures better than others is a subjective concept. 

In this sense, admiring other cultures and drinking from diverse influences is important to build one's own identity, but more important is that culture itself is a human manifestation and independent of our historical context, we can immerse ourselves in it and perhaps over time become part of it in a respectful way without appropriating it but drinking from it, building and contributing to its enrichment.

 Creating one's own, being one's own is finding that difference, that particular characteristic, that which makes us unique, but more beautiful than finding oneself in individuality, traveling and really making the trip an immersive experience on a cultural level makes us find ourselves in the community.

Even so, I wonder, why not Mexico or Peru?, which have such interesting cultures, and why in France I find more references?

I am in effect, since we are all slaves to the education we receive, we do not deny that education, I appreciate it, but there is also a challenge, our task of seeking roots and most importantly build culture, build identity. Perhaps a trip to a closer country could take me further.

Klau