P005

Passage 5   Experiences Speak

There are many different ways of seeing a town for the first time. One of them is to walk around it, guidebook in hand. Of course, we may study with our guidebooks the history and special developments of a town and get to know them. But then, if we take out time and stay in a town for a while, we may get to know it better. When we look it as a whole, we begin to have some questions, which even the best guidebooks do not answer. Why is the town just like this, this shape, this plan, this size?

Here even the best guide-book fails us. We can’t find in it the information about how a town has developed to the present appearance. However, we may get some idea of what it used to look like by walking around the town. A personal visit to a town may help one better understand why it is attractive than just reading about it in a guidebook.