Well-travelled | Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/madmack/

Travel is the best teacher, that we all acknowledge. Sinjoro Eng explains how we can learn more through travel with Esperanto.

What is the most expensive expenditure when you are travelling overseas ?

Lodging fees.

Right. Many people replied as such when I interviewed them.

Can we save some travelling expenditure during our journey ?

Yes, the answer is certain. Not only we can save some travelling expenditure on lodging, we can also make more friends, and the best thing is we can get gain a better understanding of the cultures of the people whom we are connecting with.

Esperanto speakers have started this travelling event long before the 2nd World War and certainly long before couchsurfing. The introduction of Pasporta Servo only occured in 1974, offering better organisation and easier management.

If your memory does not fail you, you should remember the incident of an Arabic word claimed only to be used by a certain group of people. Do you think the person in charge of pronouncing the ban on the word from being used by others is well-travelled? Certainly not, he/she might be flying 1st class on airplanes and staying in five-star hotels. But he/she did not enter a local’s home to know what is served at breakfast on the ordinary person’s table.

How ignorant this person is, such that he/she did not know that a tribal word cannot apply for patent rights. This has shamed me a lot as my friends were curious to know whether they can make the letter ‘I’ be the right of the group only.

I like the poem Si Tenganggang’s Home Coming by Muhamad Haji Salleh.

the journey was a loyal teacher

who was never tardy

in explaining cultures or variousness

The poet even put the I as a small letter ‘i’ to express his humbleness.

When one travels but not as a tourist, the journey would change his/her perspective of life. The people he/she meets on the way would be teachers of life.

Now, if our country can introduce Esperanto in the school system, not only we can host more people in our beautiful country, but our youngsters can also travel far and wide. When they return home, they would have become a different person.

Here’s a video explaining how Esperanto and the Pasport Servo system functions to facilitate travel:

[youtube]DvucViWrpho[/youtube]

The year-end school holidays are round the corner. So make yourself a time table and start to learn Esperanto, either online or in groups. The coming spring, you maybe in Terni, Japan for the Internacia Junalo Kongreso (Esperanto International Youth Congress). Don’t forget the biggest event of International Esperanto Congree (UK) which will be held in Hanoi, Vietnam from the 28th of July to the 4th of August in 2012. Besides, the world-wide Esperanto written test will be held on the 9th of June, 2012.

Allow me to end with the celebrated poem of Robert Frost:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

After watching the 8 minutes short film of the late Dr Claude Piron on the chanllenge of language, Sinjoro ENG has himself revolutionised. Watch it and see whether the short film will touch you too. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YHALnLV9XU

5 replies on “Travelling with Pasporta Servo”

  1. Even the services to the essay on time is the good and the has been provided to the essays services and the get the good essays and the students all over in world to the studying essays on times.

  2. I would like to beg for apology to my hearing impaired friends who cannot hear the youtube short film. I did not know whether it is my fault for not including the site of pasporta servo or some other editing reasons.

    Here you are my friends of hearing, you can read it and wish good luck to travel with Esperanto pasporta servo
    http://www.pasportaservo.org The text is in Esperanto
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pasporta_Servo The text is in English
    http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%AD%B7%E7%85%A7%E… The text is in Chinese ???

  3. Sinjoro Eng is right about the popularity about Esperanto the international language. The World Esperanto Association now enjoys consultative relations with the United Nations .http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eR7vD9kChBA&feature=related

    During a short period of 124 years Esperanto is now in the top 100 languages, out of 6,800 worldwide. It is the 22nd most used language in Wikipedia, ahead of Danish and Arabic. It is a language choice of Google, Skype, Firefox, Ubuntu and Facebook.

    Native Esperanto speakers, (people who have used the language from birth), include World Chess Champion Susan Polger, Ulrich Brandenberg the new German Ambassador to and Nobel Laureate Daniel Bovet. Financier George Soros learnt Esperanto as a child.

    Esperanto is a living language – see http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-88374389

    Their new online course http://www.lernu.net has 125 000 hits per day and Esperanto Wikipedia enjoys 400 000 hits per day. That can't be bad :)

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