On July 20, 1969, the day Neil Armstrong first set foot on the moon, I was five and a half years old. I watched the event the following evening on the main television news at my grandparents’ house, where the extended family had gathered for this special occasion. It was the culmination of a whole week of daily reports that covered the entire Apollo 11 mission. I did not speak English and could not decipher what the astronauts were mumbling. But the Greek commentator was translating a few of their words and I understood that Armstrong and his partner Aldrin had finally reached the moon and now they were really walking on its surface. I could not believe my eyes – there were astronauts walking on the moon! That same moon I stared at every night, so magical and so remote.

After that hot summer evening, I would always give the same answer to the frequent question of adults, “What do you want to become when you grow up?”

“An astronaut!”

I don’t think I was alone. Many children of my generation grew up watching the same black and white scenes of rockets shooting off to space and of humans in strange-looking spacesuits and helmets floating in zero gravity or walking on the moon. Seriously, was there a job more fascinating than literally … flying to the stars? Suddenly, the fairytales my grandma and aunts used to tell me, with hares and tortoises and ducklings and swans, seemed so uninteresting. The real fairytale was the one being shown on television – that magical box that connected Morfou, the small town of my early childhood in Cyprus, to the larger world that I had just begun to discover existed beyond.

My fascination with space continued into my early teenage years in the 70s when I started spending most of my pocket money on illustrated books explaining the American and Soviet space programs. The new space frontier seemed to be inexhaustible. The universe turned into a mysterious and magical place once again – ready to be revealed to those who spent time exploring it. *

As I delved deeper into the subject, however, I would gradually realize that to achieve my dream of becoming an astronaut, I would have to be a US or a Soviet citizen plus an Air Force pilot. The first was already ruled out, the second was not at all to my liking – although I had taken up flying as a hobby (thanks to the encouragement of my best friend who wanted to become an airline pilot) and earned a private pilot’s license in my late teens.

I therefore revised a bit my childhood dream by deciding to become an astronomer instead. At least that way I could be closer to imagining myself an astronaut. But, yet again, I soon discovered that there was no undergraduate course in astronomy in the UK, where I was set to study. The fall was complete: I ended up making the final compromise and studied physics. Physics was useful and served me well, providing the best foundation to subsequently learn about the other sciences. Yet physics never fascinated me, nor did it nourish my imagination as much as astronomy or space exploration. After years of studying science in general, I realized that my childhood dream would never materialize. I put it aside and almost entirely forgot about it as I moved along in life.

But our childhood dreams never really vanish. They are like the live embers hidden beneath the ashes of last night’s fire. Lurking underneath the commonality of everyday life, they may be rekindled with the slightest spark when the time is ripe. So, when later in life I decided to travel around the world, something very unexpected happened. The more I explored the planet, the more I realized that I actually knew nothing about it – the Earth was basically unknown to me. Suddenly, my childhood dream seemed to materialize in a way I could never have imagined: Instead of becoming an Earthian astronaut visiting other planets, I now became an extraterrestrial astronaut from another planet who had just landed on Earth and began exploring it for the first time! Furthermore, this was not a trick of the imagination nor a game of words. It was real: Planet Earth, my own birthplace, had turned out to be as alien to me as any faraway planet I dreamed of visiting as a child.

As I roamed this unknown planet and marveled at its varied beauty, its natural wonders, its inexhaustible wealth of peoples and cultures, I understood that I was not alone in my ignorance: All of us are extraterrestrials on Earth! The overwhelming majority of people I encountered in my travels had never traveled outside their own country, and sometimes not even outside their small region. Many did not even understand why they should travel and had no inclination to do so. Paradoxically, those who had traveled the least felt they knew the most about the rest of the world by watching TV or reading magazines – there seemed to be a proportional relationship between ignorance and arrogance. Many of the least traveled even thought that their country was the best in the world – their arrogance turning into grandiosity.

Being extraterrestrials, we are all therefore potential astronauts. And Earth, our Larger Home, is the planet on which our spaceship has already landed. As such, we quickly discover that our planet’s natural and cultural wealth is so immense that there is no end to our exploration. Though it may seem finite, our planet is actually infinite with respect to our time-bound and space-bound life – it is, in fact, the ultimate Infinite Microcosm.

Two extraordinary realizations concerning the Earth soon began to stand out, both of which augmented my new status as an alien astronaut: **

The first was that the Earth actually encompasses more than one planet – so, in effect, I was exploring many planets. The reason for this is that our planet possesses an extreme variety of landscapes, natural wonders, human cultures, customs and ceremonies, which are often so far removed from the world we are accustomed to that they seem as if they belong to other worlds. This may sound paradoxical, since everything on our planet belongs to it by default. Still, when I first experienced these remote and alien-to-me “other worlds,” I felt that I was on a Star Trek that took me light-years beyond Earth’s gravity. And the most incredible of all is that I did not even have to board Jean Luc-Picard’s spaceship Enterprise to achieve it.

The spaceship, surprisingly, turned out to be a simple boat! I only needed to climb aboard, visit White Island off the coast of New Zealand, and don a gas mask to protect me from the volcanic fumes to travel to another planet. This planet actually belongs to … another galaxy, the center of which lies a little bit further south, on the North Island of New Zealand: the extended volcanic area of Rotorua, with its steaming valleys, lakes, and many other odd features.

A boat, but also a snorkeling mask! Exploring, even with these simple goggles, the other-worldly Great Barrier Reef in Australia, or even the stranger vertical reefs off the north coast of Sulawesi in Indonesia, is like entering a magical kingdom. Our oceans’ inexhaustible marine-scapes are only a dive away.

But also a drive away! One need only rent a car to drive through some of the most extraordinary extraterrestrial landscapes in the world – the wondrous national parks of Utah. Going through the Arches NP, Bryce, Zion, the Grand Canyon, Monument Valley, and more, feels like a journey through different planets belonging to other solar systems.

But one’s bare eyes and simple attention are all that is usually needed: Rare natural phenomena, such as the phantasmagoria of a lightning-filled sky during an electrical storm, when experienced with an open spirit of exploration and wonder, may also be considered portals that transport us to other worlds. There are also special cultural ceremonies that have the same effect: The strange Balinese Ketchak choral dance drama, where men behave like wild monkeys while playing with fire; or the Fiesta of the Virgin of Paucartambo in Peru, with its theatrical parades, marching bands, and fireworks, make the astronaut-traveler feel as if he has left the Earth.

The second, even more impressive realization, was that I could time travel! I was not just an ordinary astronaut, but one with abilities that are currently beyond the range of scientific possibility. When I climbed the active volcano Pacaya in Guatemala or witnessed the overflowing red lava of the Arenal volcano in Costa Rica, I came to experience what the Earth looked like millions of years ago. Similarly, when I walked on a glacier, I felt how the first humans may have lived during the Ice Age. When I visited a Stone Age tribe in the Solomon Islands and slept next to pigs on the lumpy floor of a thatched hut, I had traveled to humanity’s distant past. And in Fez in Morocco, I soon realized that I had entered a living medieval city whose residents live and work in almost the same fashion their ancestors did centuries ago. On the other end of the spectrum, in Japan, I got a sense of what the whole world might look like in the future (say, the twenty-second century). It is not just the technological advancements of the Japanese that set them apart. Often bypassed are their social mores: the way they rear their children, their sophisticated and detailed rules of propriety, their sense of aesthetics in everyday tasks, their elaborate work ethic, and their advanced sense of duty. Japan is a positive version of the future of humanity.

But I did not need to visit remote places or cultures that actually live in the past or in the future. A big part of ordinary travel already contains an element of time-travel. One of the reasons people travel to the ancient sites of Europe or explore the ruins of Mesoamerica is to somehow travel to the eras in which these architectural marvels were constructed and to imagine themselves being there. Throughout the centuries, archaeological and historic sites have lured educated travelers to other countries because these places ignite the imagination and help relate book knowledge to the space and time of older civilizations.

With the 50th anniversary of the Moon landing celebrated in 2019, I am overwhelmed with a sense of gratitude that I did actually achieve my childhood dream. I may not have been rocketed into space, I may not have traveled to the moon like Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins. But I did become an astronaut who has explored a multitude of planets, and a time-traveler who effortlessly jumped from one epoch to another by virtue of the simple act of becoming a world-traveler.

* It was during this period that I also discovered that behind the US space program lay the brains of more than 1,600 German scientists who were effectively “abducted” by the Americans immediately after WWII. The landing on the moon was actually the product of a collaboration between a group of great German minds headed by Wernher von Braun and American financial prowess and steadfast determination. Unfortunately, the Germans are rarely given their due nowadays. For example, in the otherwise excellent recent documentary, Apollo 11, there is not a single mention to the major contributions of the German team!

** In this section of the essay I have incorporated in modified form some passages from the first chapter of my book.