Travel has lost some of its old appeal in the global age, aided by instantaneous internet communication and the relative ease of travelling long distances.
In the old days, travel had a special meaning, particularly when the destination was a faraway country and the journey itself involved flying across continents.
Globalization, we are told, has killed distance. These days, hardly any place seems truly far away. Internet-mediated communication has also, in a sense, diminished culture shock.
Whether viscerally, in person, or virtually, we have already seen so much of the world. We can watch its streets, its people, its food, its politics and its landscapes on our screens.
Yet travelogue is not dead yet.
It is the unexpected encounters and experiences for which we are rarely prepared that make travelling worthwhile.
Zadar: Where nature plays music
In Zadar, an ancient Croatian city on the Adriatic coast, we encountered something that could hardly be experienced through a computer screen: The Sea Organ.
Built into the waterfront, it produces music through the movement of the waves. The sea itself becomes the musician.
As the waves enter the organ's pipes, they generate sounds that rise and fall unpredictably. Nearby, the Sun Salutation -- another remarkable installation -- responds to sunlight with a different kind of spectacle.
Between the sea, the sunset and the installations, Zadar offers something close to a symphony of nature and human creativity.
The waves of the Adriatic not only catch the eye; they soothe the ear.
That is perhaps what travel does best. It brings together things that we may know intellectually but have never actually experienced.
Education, sport, and Croatia
We attended a workshop at the University of Zadar, an institution that goes back to 1396, one of the oldest universities in East Europe.
Later, we met members of the city council. Their offices were decorated with large posters of famous Croatian football stars. It was football season, and the national team was very much on people's minds.
I asked a simple question: How does a country of fewer than four million people repeatedly produce athletes capable of competing at the highest level of international sport?
Football, of course, is only part of the story. Croatia has also produced world-class athletes in tennis, skiing, rowing, water polo, handball, athletics, and other sports. The country's sporting achievements are remarkable relative to its small population.
Sport is taken seriously as part of children's education and community life. Croatia has a national sports program that explicitly links sport with the educational system and sets responsibilities for national and local authorities, while its education system includes physical education and opportunities for students to pursue sport more intensively.
The idea that education, sport, music, and community life could be treated as complementary components of a child's development struck me.
Migrants far from home
Croatia also has experienced a significant increase in foreign workers, including workers from Nepal who are quite visible. Bangladeshis were present too though in much smaller numbers.
I had conversations with Bangladeshi workers in Malaysia during their work breaks. They seemed pleasantly surprised that people they described as bhadralok -- people from the educated and relatively privileged sections of society -- would simply stop and talk to them on the sidewalk.
Many described precarious lives: Insecure employment, uncertain immigration status, and limited social support.
One worker told me something that stayed with me. When ministers and senior officials from Dhaka visited Malaysia, he said, they often met Bengali businesspeople, community leaders, and embassy officials but had little time to meet the ordinary workers whose remittances make such an important contribution to Bangladesh's economy.
I wondered: Why should it be so difficult to talk to the people who do some of the hardest work and whose earnings contribute so substantially to the country's foreign-exchange reserves?
Perhaps governments everywhere need to remember that migrants are not merely sources of remittances. They are citizens, workers, and human beings whose experiences provide an important measure of how a country values its people.
Australia: Democracy and the welfare state
In Australia, I spent some quiet time at the Museum of Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House in Canberra.
The building was Australia's federal Parliament from 1927 until 1988, when Parliament moved to the new Parliament House on Capital Hill. In 2009, the old building became the home of the Museum of Australian Democracy.
Walking through the museum was an encounter with Australia's political memory. I came across displays devoted to former prime ministers, including references to their education and careers.
Among them was Robert -- Bob -- Hawke, whom I had briefly encountered in Adelaide in 2015. Hawke, then in a wheelchair, appeared at a conference I was attending. He came to our session, and I had the opportunity to shake his hand and exchange a few words with him.
When I met him, I reminded him that I had been a graduate student in the United States when he became prime minister and had read about his life in The New York Times. That was how I knew about his Rhodes Scholarship.
He seemed pleased that I remembered it. But I had the impression that, for Hawke, being a Rhodes Scholar was not what defined his life.
His real accomplishments, in his own eyes, were his leadership of the trade union movement and his service as prime minister.
That distinction is worth remembering. Education can open doors, but what a person does with that education is ultimately more important than the credential itself.
Australia also offers an interesting example of the welfare state in everyday life.
Habibul Haque Khondker is a sociologist and columnist.