Smell

There is rarely a time when people don’t see me without headphones dangling from my ears. Usually this is the case since I have overheard some of the worst conversations that would turn anyone’s brain to mush. Example? Sure. Take this snippet of conversation I heard while walking through my high school, “I have a fetish for walking.” I am pretty sure that person has no idea what a fetish is, and probably won’t know until someone corrects her. Because of this and many other examples, I walk through hallways, buildings, and between buildings with the soothing sounds of Paramore blasting into my ears.

There is an exception to this rule, traveling. When I go to new places I love to listen to the city or country around me. This doesn’t hold when I’m on a vehicle, but I like to listen to the new place. You get some interesting rhythms when you do this. There’s the vibrant honking of horns, obnoxious laugh of some guy, another person hawking their wares, and possibly even a panhandler coming up to ask for money. In the country you get the silence, oh the brilliant silence of nature. It looms over you as you listen deep in thought. So invigorating.

Of course what I love the most about going to a new place, are the smells. Smell can really tell a lot about a place, especially if it’s a big city. Take London for example, you could smell the fumes of cars, the food, and even some of the wares. I get a lot of my information of the world around me from smelling it. The sounds can be warnings or even annoyances, but my nose knows exactly where I want to be. I won’t eat something new if it smells like garbage, and sometimes I smell food to guess what might be in it.

All in all, my nose had an adventure when it went to the UK.