世博英语札记【32】1999年12月10日札记

1999年12月10日

The only way to travel is on foot
(续昨日)

The future history books might also record that we were deprived of the use of our eyes.In our hurry to get from one place to another,we failed to see anything on the way.Air travel gives you a bird's-eye view of the world-or even less if the wing of the aircraft happens to get in your way.When you travel by car or train a blurred image of the countryside constantly smears the windows.Car drivers,in particular,are forever obsessed with the urge to go on and on:they never want to stop.Is it the lure of the great motorways,or what?And as for sea travel,it hardly deserves mention.It is perfectly summed up in the words of the old song:"I joined the navy to see the world,and what did I see?I saw the sea."The typical twentieth-century traveller is the man who always says "I've been there."You mention the remotest,most evocative place-names in the world like El Dorado,Kabul,Irkutsk and someone is bound to say "I've been there"-meaning,"I drove through it at 100 miles an hour on the way to somewhere else."(待续)