David and Carol Bard: The Traveling Couple

The couples board of where they traveled.
Photo Courtesy of Anastasiia Vorobeva

Athens is a small town, but there are some outstanding people who proudly call it home. David and Carol Bard, both in their seventies, have a lot of stories to tell about their adventurous lives – getting a knife from a child in Africa, meeting a queen of Thailand, taking a cruise around Russia and many other things which would be enough to make an eventful life not for 2 people, but for ten. These two energetic people traveled to seventy two countries together, and they are not planning to stop exploring the world.

    When I met David and Carol and told them I am Russian, they told me straight away that they visited Russia several times. “Amazing place,” David said smiling to me. Later, when I came to their house for an interview, they took me straight to their “Russian room” – a dining room with Russian style china cabinets, paintings of winter, and plates covered with Russian folk ornaments. David and Carol used to be a host family for a Russian girl named Irina, who stayed with them for a year when she was going to Concord. At some point, she broke her jaw and they took good care of her. When Irina’s father came to see his daughter, he brought David and Carol a present – the national emblem of Russia before the revolution. This artsy piece of metal was more than a hundred years old. “It is one of the most valuable pieces I have, in terms of the history of it,” says David.

    Bards’ house reminds the travelers with an atmosphere from Sherlock Holmes stories – there is a corner of African masks and knives, Chinese carpet, a box which was given to David personally by the queen of Thailand, maps which are all covered with pins to mark the places where Bards already have been or places they are planning to visit.

    Elegant Carol served several terms as a mayor of Athens, and David used to teach history at Concord. He was the one who started the Study Abroad program, trying to change lives of American students, taking them to see the world outside of the U.S. Once, David took Concord students to Britain. “I took them once to the Museum of London, and they didn’t bring their maps…I said ‘Okay. We are going for the drink at this restaurant’. We stopped, and I left. They had to find their way back.” Of course, they did find their way back. During the month of their stay in Britain, David tried to motivate students to get out of their comfort zone. After the first week, they became comfortable to help other tourists to find directions and later to figure out their way to Paris on a bus and back. These trips influenced students a lot. David says “They are going to write me a letter saying ‘it changed my life’ and it is one of the proudest things when I have a student saying this. ‘What we did changed my life’. And that’s the whole point of going.”

    David and Carol got their “travel bug” from their parents. David’s family traveled all over the U.S. and Canada, and Carol’s family originally came from Norway. Their background pushed them to be hungry for adventures. When David and Carol showed me dozens of albums with travel pictures and notes they have, I asked them why they travel. “[The] main reason to travel is to expose ourselves to various ways of doing things and to see how other people live. And to realize how closely we are connected to everybody else,” says Carol, “We all enjoy the same basic things in life, because everybody does it a little bit differently and so that broadens your prospective”.

    It is sad that many people in West Virginia don’t travel much and David and Carol agree. Many people are afraid of things which can happen to them abroad, how much it is going to cost or afraid of language. Yet, all these reasons are just excuses. 

    “No matter where you are, there are going to be somebody, somebody speaking English,” says David. Once in China, David asked people around him on a cruise ship “Does anybody want to speak to American?” and a guy came, who was a refrigerator factory worker and who very eagerly told David about his life. 

    Another recommendation David gave was “Never drink, no alcohol. If you drink, you are gonna get in trouble.” And most importantly, traveling is not as expensive as many people think – there are so many online services as Airbnb or Couchsurfing which would help to make a trip cheaper.

    To prepare for the trip, Bards carry out research. “We get a reading list”, says David. Carol usually reads more than David, though they have different topics of interest – David is interested in history of the place, and Carol reads novels to learn about culture. Once in a new place, David recommends to “Try to get into bazaar, try to get into food sellers area, it is always fun. And try shopping.” Carol smiles and adds “Be adventurous, try new things, and talk to a lot of people. Don’t be afraid.”