In reality it is practically impossible really to understand a culture removed to a great degree from your own. Nevertheless you can learn a great deal about a culture by traveling, but it will always be assimilated within the framework of your own cultural background. What is really great about travel is immersing yourself in another culture and being able to place the narrow and “strange” concerns of your own culture in a new perspective. This is really why travel and breaking far away from your “cultural comfort zone” is so mentally liberating and refreshing! Lack of real cultural understanding can and probably will taint your experiences, since it is always our most deeply seated cultural assumptions that we are most ignorant of and least able to overcome. For which is the very reason we should always be wary in making sweeping judgement.
