It is really hard to say goodbye to someone you admire. When you don’t know a person, it is rare that their death will hit you hard. For me though, Anthony Bourdain’s suicide has floored me. For the past few weeks, I have been trying to put into terms exactly why saying goodbye has been so hard. I am certainly not the only one who feels this way. There have been countless articles about his impact both at an individual and global level. However, I feel I would be doing him a disservice by not adding my voice into the mix. Anthony Bourdain influenced me to my core, and without his show, I would not have experienced the things that I have.
My introduction to Anthony Bourdain was watching No Reservations in college with friends. Watching the way he travelled made me feel something. Before that, I had never really understood that travelling wasn’t the same as vacationing. Up until that point, I had vacationed. I went to the beach with my family. We hung out, we ate, we didn’t do much else. There is nothing wrong with vacationing, but it is distinctly different from travelling. Travelling involves meeting the people who live in that place. It involves immersing yourself in their culture. Travelling is a deeper experience than vacationing. It requires the participants to go into the experience with an open mind. More than that though, you have to roll with the punches. Sometimes the best memories come from the things you don’t plan for.
Sometimes your plans will go awry. Maybe you’ll miss a flight and spend half a night crisscrossing a city trying to find a hotel room. Possibly you will take a terrifying bus ride up a mountainside to see the gorgeous castle where the kings and queens of Portugal once vactioned. The locals may tell you about a bookstore that is off the beaten trail, a brewery you just have to visit, or a local cuisine you’d be crazy not to try. Every once in a while you make friends with a guy who stops you and your friend from walking into a really bad neighborhood in Marrakech. All of these things are more than vacationing. They are a full immersion into your locations. You are travelling.
As I began to fall deeper and deeper into my near worship of Anthony Bourdain, I realized I could travel like that too. Just because I didn’t have the backing of the Travel Channel or CNN did not mean that I couldn’t do some of these things. I lived in Milan for four months in law school. During that time, I went to some truly beautiful countries and saw some amazing things. I tried to eat the local delicacies, visit the things the locals said I couldn’t miss, and allow myself to get pulled into the city I was in. Did that mean that I didn’t go to any of the tourist spots? No. Typically the locals would say, “There is a reason the tourists do this. Try between the hours of x and y so maybe the crowds won’t be awful, but you need to see it.”
I also got to see and experience some things I would have never expected. I met some American ex-Pats in Florence, when a friend and I stopped into a bar to catch a college football game. The tour group leader on a Roman Forum tour ended up leading us on a tour of Cathedrals after dark. Because of him, I tried Kilkenny Irish Cream Ale for the first time. In Asheville, a friend and I asked every bartender we met what their favorite brewery was. We tried out some places we never expected because we wanted to experience the city like the locals.
Anthony Bourdain wasn’t just a traveller or a chef or a journalist. To me, he was a modern day Rennaissance Man. It seemed like experiencing, learning, and growing were things he made sure to do every single day. He produced so much more than just entertainment, he produced a way to live. He was 61 years old, but infinitely cooler than anyone I know. At the end of the day, he taught me to grow, learn, and explore.
