Do you ever think about how relative distance and time is and how big the world is compared to yourself? Long pointless musing under the cut.
Like. I was thinking. It takes exactly 7 minutes for me to walk to the station ( Though I'm a fairly slow walker.) It's about 800 meters. meaning I travel rounded out 1 km in 10 minutes.
Amsterdam is, 36 km away from my house. Meaning it would take me 6 hours to walk there. ( I have a feeling it would take me even longer as I would get tired and need breaks and such)
With the train it only takes me 40 minutes.
but from Amsterdam to my house is only SUCH a tiny distance!? Like, it's something that's within my field of imagination of being able to walk it. But- what if I wanted to visit aph-us in the south of the land?
That would be about 161 km. using my previous math that would take me 26 hours! That's more than a day. And and if you count in that I wouldn't travel at night or get lost it would take me a week to walk there. That's far. But still- imaginable.
But now compare the size of the Netherlands to the rest of the Europe:
What if I was a student in 1820 and like every learned young men wanted to undertake a yourney to rome? According to the very reliable math of me measuring distances of the netherlands across the map it would take me 6 weeks to walk to Rome. Probably more because I didn't count sleep and having to go over the alps and stuff.
Now if you realise that Europe is rather tiny in comparison with the Us, or Asia or Africa.
There were times when travel was basically just this. walking, sometimes with adition of some horses. And yet people traveled the entire world.
In highschool people used to tell this weird urban legend about 'walkers'. People who due to a delusion just started walking one day and were to afraid to stop even for a minute. Afraid something would catch up on them. They didn't really go anywhere. We had one in our town called 'crazy Jerry'. The fact he was still around town said enough, but true enough, I've never seen him standing still.
When I was younger, when I was 4 years, I walked slower. My legs were shorter and I fell over a lot. A walk by the town canal took me about an hour. While it's a shorter distance than from my house to the station. I had fallen over and hurt my knee. My mom was used to me constantly falling over so she just walked on a bit slower waiting until I'd pick myself up. Instead I was picked up by crazy Jerry. He gently put me back on my feet and brushed me of. He said to my mother "Your baby is hurt." in an accusing way. Then he walked on.
Someone who cannot stop walking stopped to pick up a tiny hurt child. My tiny legs that weren't even good for taking a walk by the canal were just as good to him as his own legs. That walked so much he must've walked to Rome and back.
Our bodies are so small and the world is so big. Still we are powerfull enough to walk all the way. The time it takes might be long, it might me ten or twenty years if we turn out like oddyseus trying to make it home... But we are able to. To make it home.
