2023-10-02 06:31:21
In l‘episode number 17 of Girona Valley, Eduard Batlle conversation with the journalist Xavier Moret (Barcelona, 1952), one of the Catalan writers than more travel books has divulged and his very personal success is based on the way he explains his experiences through a calm, cultural, respectful and passionate look at each country he has discovered. Pioneer, reference and innovator since the publication of the famous “America, America” which, through a generational family trip, explains the one in California at the end of the 90s. Since then he admits that “I’m traveling and explaining it”. Since he couldn’t travel during the pandemic, his latest books deal with a nearby destination and he says “it hasn’t been easy” because many people know him: “Mallorca, open all year”a look at the island “to break the stereotypes, because it is beautiful and has wonderful coves” and the noir “Mystery in Deià“. After so many years traveling, he has chosen the Plan de l’Estany to live where he feels very good with the calm of the neighborhood of Centenys (Esponellà) and from where his very personal travels are born, since he still has many countries to visit and describe.
Moret considers that traveling is the best university in life because “you learn by traveling” and allows you to discover “other ways of living, other cultures, makes you interested in the other and that enriches you”. And he reasons this after 25 years of making a living as a travel writer and, after all this time, as much as the way of traveling has changed in our society, he wants to continue doing it far from fads. For this reason, he has not stopped innovating, wanting to discover new places, customs, ways of relating to the native people and the spirit of wanting to learn. Although he admits that, when it comes to traveling, “we all know each other because in one way or another we all like it”.
Three trips per book
Of each book he has written, he assesses that “it forces you to travel three times“. The first “trip” is the cultural preparation prior before leaving. The second, once you are in the country, is that of talk to people, look for interesting topics, travel deepers… And the third “journey” is to see that the diary he has made is not useful as a book but that you have to filter and give it a narrative structure to make it work.
Logically, each trip is different and unique and his method is to “give the spotlight to the country you’re going to”. He doesn’t like the “I” in every book and what he likes is meeting people and making friends. “What I love about travel is the contrast of cultures” and that’s why he really likes going to Africa “because it has given me great lessons in anti-consumerism and anti-materialism.” As always, Africa is his favorite continent and you can spend hours and hours talking about its nature and contrasts. “What I like most about traveling is learning things and trying to condense them into a book,” he emphasizes.
“Cold” Challenges
The summer is over and it’s a good time to appreciate the holidays even though he, as always, has stayed with the calm of Centenys because he doesn’t like traveling in the summer because of the heat, because of the crowds and also because he already does it throughout the year. As a future challenge, he would like it prepare a new book about the “cold countries” of Northern Europe because he has already visited warm countries for many years.
#Xavier #Moret #Traveling #university #life