An Ode to Anthony Bourdain: My inspiration for traveling

I have many dreams and aspirations, and an essential piece to make those dreams come true is having a mentor of some kind. A person to look toward for motivation and to remind me that what I want is possible and okay to desire. As an artist, as a writer, and even as a traveller, having mentors has been essential. If I had a vision board with images of people who’ve inspired me, Anthony Bourdain’s photo would probably be in the center and very large.

I discovered Anthony Bourdain’s travel and food show, “No Reservations,” just before moving from Los Angeles to Portland in 2005. I had been bitten by the travel bug in my twenties and started traveling internationally for the first time in the early 2000s. As a result, I thought about travel all the time. Finding his show was the encouragement I needed to keep that travel aspiration alive. Once my husband and I moved to Portland, for a number of reasons, our regular travel adventures stopped, and we only travelled domestically for the next eleven years. In that time, I dreamed. I listened to radio programs about travel and watched travel and food shows. My favorites were, of course, No Reservations and then Parts Unknown.

There are several things about Anthony Bourdain that continue to inspire me today.

Anthony Bourdain was curious. When it came to travel, he said yes more than no. He was willing to try things at least once and be uncomfortable. He was game for just about anything. I remember watching the Iceland episode of No Reservations where he tried hákari, which is fermented shark. He later said it was the worst thing he’d ever put in his mouth. But the willingness to try something, even if it’s horrible is a valuable experience. If we don’t at least try, we won’t know, and then we end up limiting ourselves in more ways than we realize.

His shows weren’t just about food. And they weren’t just about having a sweet, cushy vacation. On more than one episode he was asked to eat things he’d never eaten, along with doing things he’d never done. He often looked a bit uncomfortable while he did it, but he did it. Sometimes he’d be pleasantly surprised by an experience he might not have attempted if it wasn’t for a television show. Not to mention the connections with people he would not have had otherwise.

At first glance, Anthony Bourdain might appear to be just an opinionated, tough, cool guy with an acerbic wit. But on his programs, when he met with people from other countries, he was always kind and respectful. On the Uzbekistan episode, he went to a mosque with his fixer (Bourdain was not religious at all.) Afterwards, he seemed to appreciate the beauty of the experience and said that he knew when to shut up and listen. He was always aware that he was an outsider, bringing himself to a situation, yet exercising as much respect as he could in each circumstance.

“I like learning about stuff. It makes me happy. I like being wrong about stuff.”

This quote exemplifies the quality I admired most about him. We live in an age where people heave their unconscious biases and personal views around like nuggets of wisdom, and that they can’t be wrong about anything. I was reminded by Anthony Bourdain that people in other places see things differently because their lived experience is different than ours. Their history is different than ours, therefore how they see the world is different. The ideas we have about a place that’s foreign and far away often comes from media, from movies and TV. If that’s all we see of someone’s culture, we’re not truly understanding that place. But if you actually talk to someone from that place, or better yet, go to that place and spend a bit of time there, you can learn so much, and you’ll probably realize your view of the place is incomplete or just plain wrong. If someone as opinionated as Anthony Bourdain could admit to being wrong, maybe there’s hope for the rest of us.

Another thing I appreciated about Anthony Bourdain was his love of all food, from the high-end Michelin stars to the humble homecooked meals and street food made by regular folks. He wasn’t the kind of guy who would turn up his nose at a tasty bag of popular chips or a hot dog stand. He appreciated all of it. On many of the episodes of No Reservations and Parts Unknown he connected with people in their homes over a homecooked meal. Those scenes are some of my favorites to watch because it really looked intimate, and he appeared to be enjoying himself the most.

In 2014, after eleven years, my husband and I had an opportunity to travel back to Europe for a few weeks. It was amazing to return and be reminded that we could figure out ways to make it more of a regular thing. In 2017, we decided to leave the U.S. and become nomads. We’ve passed our seventh year as nomads, mostly in Europe.

Since living as nomads quotes by Anthony Bourdain connect with me even more. “Travel changes you. As you move through this life and this world you change things slightly, you leave marks behind, however small. And in return, life — and travel — leaves marks on you.” This is the thing that currently resonates most of all. Travel has changed me in ways I could never have imagined. I could write a whole series on the subject.

I don’t think I can avoid the mention of his passing in 2018. It hit me really hard. I’m still not over it. He was someone I never even met but had such a great impact on me, on my life, and how I live.

Part of why I’m writing this is as an ode to a mentor, but also an acknowledgement that maybe what I share and create can have a positive impact on someone else. Maybe there’s someone who dreams of travel or appreciates beauty, art, and food and reads this and feels a bit of inspiration. Even though Anthony Bourdain is gone, he continues to live on in the thoughtful, intelligent and humorous ways he saw the world. The realizations he’s had about travel and life are inside me, continuing to do their work and inspire my art and writing.

I wrote the first draft of this essay in a café in Tirana, Albania. I completed the final draft in my apartment in Tbilisi, Georgia.

Written by Roxanne Patruznick

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