the.com/travel bug
The disease where home starts feeling like a waiting room between flights.
means A persistent craving to keep going somewhere else — the itch that makes you book flights before you've even unpacked.
from A 20th-century coinage riding on 'bug' meaning an infectious craze or obsession (as in 'the acting bug'), itself borrowed from the older idea of disease-causing bugs — tiny creatures that get into you and change your behavior. 'Travel bug' also later named a literal trackable token passed between geocachers, but the figurative 'can't-stop-wandering' sense came first, building on a long tradition of calling any contagious enthusiasm a 'bug.'
- origin
- predates literal bedbugs in hostel beds, unfortunately coincidental
- symptom
- checking flight prices for places you have no reason visiting
- cure
- none found, only temporary remission called a trip
- contagion
- spreads fastest through other people's vacation photos