Before the invention of the printing press, how did people living in one area get to find out about what was going on in the rest of the world?

by AsianWarrior24

We are talking about an era where it was cumbersome to mass produce books and newspapers. Were the people, E.G a person from Europe know about what was happening in Asia, able to keep abreast of current events and secondly were they interested in knowing or not? Edit: OK the timescale is from 1000 AD till the invention of the printing press. The region is Asia and Europe.

illu45

"Before the invention of the printing press" is a pretty broad time-scale. It might help if you're able to narrow down your question to a specific century/era and maybe also to a specific region.