Travel isn’t just fun and exciting (and occasionally harrowing), it can broaden your horizons and improve your life skills in surprising ways.
Let’s ignore Immanuel Kant’s ridiculous expectation that one “make sense” of their culture before traveling. How are you supposed to make sense of your culture if you’ve never been outside of it? Really, anyone who thinks they’ve “made sense” of anything as dynamic and complicated as culture is fooling themselves. The point Kant is making is that being in an environment with different assumptions than exist in your usual environment will almost certainly make you look at things differently when you get home. If you’ve never spent a significant amount of time in a place that’s significantly different to what you’re used to, I highly recommend it. It’s a trip (pun intended).
There’s nothing like traveling for learning to deal with things going wrong. It seems like the train is really late but nope, you’re on the wrong platform and it’s long gone. Believe me, you’re going to remember that humiliating lesson in paying attention.
And speaking of paying attention, try to notice if what you’re doing is annoying the locals around you. Politeness norms can be surprisingly different. Check our infographic on Cell Phone Etiquette before you travel to dodge some easily avoided faux pas.