Keep Rolling On

As a traveler, I’m finding more and more people want to know about the safety of visiting places in Europe. What’s it like traveling on the Metro or the Tube? Did you feel insecure about being in a crowded square? Were you suspicious of people who look different to you?

I am quickly becoming an authority on answering these questions. I was in London many years ago at the time of the horrific bombing of the Tube and buses (the 7/7 tragedy), I was in Paris the same day that there was an incident at the Louvre, and I was in London the day after the recent attack at London Bridge. As statistics will bear out, the truth is that it’s safer to travel in all of these cities than it is to step in your car or ride your bike through New York City. Life goes on. Imagine the alternatives – we lock ourselves away, we stop traveling, we stop interacting, and we prepare for the worst by surrounding ourselves with a moat. How crazy is that?

I walked across London Bridge on the Monday after the incident. Commuters were going to work, the bridge had temporarily become a pedestrian zone, and I looked across the river to Tower Bridge on one side and St. Paul’s on the other. The Shard towering above the ancient river as if it had been there forever. Everything seemed normal. Just then, a young girl on a skateboard rolled past me and I smiled to myself. That’s what we have to do – forget the moat, keep rolling along.

Leave a Reply