Three Things Thursday: On Traveling

My dislike of traveling has only grown more intense as I’ve gotten older. The bustle of airports, the cost, and the constant specter of logistical complications (of various forms and causes) usually exhausts me at least as much as the actual travel.

To attempt to approach the start of my summer with a more positive mindset, I’m going to attempt a more positive assessment of travel for a little Three Things Thursday blog post.  

1. Patience. Many years ago, when facing a particularly daunting itinerary, I decided to simply repeat in my head the Jesus Prayer during my trip. It was a simple form of devotional practice, but the result of it was nearly miraculous. I was amazed at how the simple prayer reduced my stress during travel. 

Without proclaiming this a miracle or devolving into full-on amateur psychology, my guess is that this simple routine distracted me from more stress inducing habits such as imagining various catastrophic scenarios or attempting to figure out how I could control my fate. Every year, I remind myself to repeat this practice and so far, I haven’t. Maybe it’s just because I don’t want to do it again and find it lacking. Or maybe because I have greater faith in my own capacity for patience than God’s direct concern with my stress levels. Either way, traveling builds patience and helps me develop ways to endure things that I can’t entirely control. 

2. Books. I often imagine that I will somehow use my early summer travel to get some writing done. My dependence on my laptop, the logistical struggle of writing on a plane, and my fatigue always conspires to discourage me from doing that. Instead, my early summer traveling kicks off my summer reading season. On my flights this week, I read a useful chunk of Walter Scheidel’s new book, What is Ancient History?(2025) and most of Adrian Tchaikovsky’s, Children of Ruin (2019). My summer reading list is long and a bit daunting, but at least I have a head start on it!

3. Nescafe. Most of my long trips are to Greece or Cyprus and when I first started traveling to these countries, Nescafe remained a staple of most hotels available to a then aspiring archaeologist (as well as the foundational ingredient in a frappe). Times have changed and the humble frappe has given way to the cappuccino freddo and Nescafe to the now ubiquitous coffee shops. Cyprus has always felt slightly ahead of Greece in this regard, but even in the villages where we work, there are plenty of opportunities to get a decent cup of brewed coffee.

That said, my first cup of coffee on my first morning “in country” is always Nescafe. It’s bad coffee, but it reminds me of fieldwork, of old friends and mentors, and starts my summer season off on the right foot.