By Abe Villarreal

I've been thinking about places I want to visit simply because I haven't been to them. Like Alburg, New York. I don't know much about it but I have a friend that grew up there, and he always smiles when he's telling stories of his youth.

He once showed me a picture of the street where he was raised. It seemed like one of those places you see on old TV shows. A place where the streets were perfectly lined up, the corner light was always lit, and the milkman showed up at the same time each day.

Recently, he moved back to that place. He said that he was closer to his "beloved" lake and his Quebec culture. He seems happier than he's ever been. Makes me want to visit that place.

I also want to visit Cumpas, Mexico. My grandmother was born there and through the years stories were shared about the good times, the ranches, and the food. The lessons learned, the barrios, and the beginnings of many things.

It's good to go back to beginnings. Where we were born. The origin of our families, our heritage, our names. The places that made us who we are today. We don't really know all the reasons for our existence. Why we are inclined to like certain things. Why some of us are quieter than the rest of our siblings. Why we stand taller. Why we like writing, thinking, traveling. 

There is something in all of us that originates from a place we haven't visited. I'd like to visit those places. Not just because I haven't been there, but because for some reason I feel like I need to be there.

Maybe I'll find out how my name originated if I get lucky enough to travel to the city of Villarreal in the east of Spain. I read that it was founded in 1274 and that the people from there are called villarrealenses. It's a coastal city and has a river passing through it.

The buildings in Villarreal are like those that you see in story books of princes, and princesses, battles and romance, from a long time ago. The people there are in the orange trading business and in the ceramic tile manufacturing industry. If I get to go there, I might learn some things about me. About why I am the way I am today.

It's a good reason to visit places, even if you have no relation or no history to the people or the region. A visit to a new place always leaves you learning more about yourself than you expected. When I visited Las Vegas, I realized that I wasn't really the gambling type. After my first visit to Middlesex, New Jersey, I accepted that I knew less about others, people from another culture, than I had learned from reading books and watching YouTube videos.

Italian people are all the stereotypes that you could imagine, but they are also quiet in their own ways, thoughtful, generous, and more loving than a lot of people I have met. I learned some things about myself on that trip.

This summer, I want to visit places that aren't world renown. Places not popular enough to make it on printed maps. Places where people are people and they are the way they are because that's the way they have always been.

I want to learn more about the way I have always been and why I have always been that way. I can only do that by visiting new places.

Abe Villarreal writes about life and culture in America. He can be reached at abevillarreal@hotmail.com.