I've been traveling in Europe for 2 months now. Writing this in Gothenburg, Sweden. Not taking the plane since I've arrived and have taken my leisurely time across 8 countries serendipitously around Eastern Europe and Baltic. What I've come to realize is that travel disrupts my notion of normal. As Alan Kay puts it, "normal is just a construct".
Everything are different when you're traveling. From the obvious like language and culture, to the subtle like where to buy fruits. I feel like a child again when everything is new to be experimented.
That breaks down my usual routine and my expected notion of self completely. I am more stimulated, creative, self reflective, and outgoing (as /u/Paul_S also mentioned).
It's like when you move to a new team / school or fall in love with someone new. The first few weeks/months is like a Wonderland.
That's funny because I had the same feeling originally about there being no normal. But, when I traveled more, I came to a completely different conclusion. Maybe you will too?
I've travelled extensively over the last decade before settling down about a year ago - I spent time in Europe (west and east), Russia, China, Japan, Australia, Subsaharan Africa, the Amazon and North America. What I find fascinating is that you can figuratively draw sets of what each culture cares about. The intersection is, more-or-less, what it means to be human.
Obviously you need a significantly large sample size, but broadly speaking everyone wants somewhere comfortable to sleep and family and trusted, non-familial companions. Everyone wants what they consider to be good food (although the definition of 'good' changes somewhat). Everyone wants to look after their kids and have some sort of ritual to pass on knowledge culture and usually possessions to their offspring. Most cultures have music and dancing of some sort - both participatory and as entertainment. Every culture wants what it considers impressive to be considered impressive by outsiders. Every culture I've seen is more open to outsiders when they smile - I've learned to smile, to use body language and to relax more in unfamiliar surroundings.
Once I started to see these commonalities, I realised what's unique about my own culture - I started to understand myself better, and see myself more in relation to the society in which I was embedded. I became kinder, and more understanding of people seeming stupid or ill-educated; I became less tolerant of people behaving aggressively or using status-hierarchies to dominate others. And, like you, I became more creative and outgoing. I suggest keeping a diary of your attitudes, if you can. Travel diaries are very cool :-)
I had a similar realization as you. Sort of a cultural "wherever you go, there you are."
I do hate the elitist aspect of travel though. In a way it's sort of like experimenting with drugs, you really can't have a say on the experience unless you've actually done it.
I've had to be very careful about who I talk to about my travels because I've noticed that even the kindest people can become apprehensive. They act like I'm questioning their knowledge/experience/worth if they are less well-traveled than me. If anyone has any tips for dealing with this please let me know. Note that I'm already very sensitive to the subject and never bring it up unless asked and even then keep the details to a minimum.
There's a certain amount of one-upsmanship, and gotta-catch-'em-all to travel discussions. I also find it very difficult to talk about things without coming across as competitive. I have no idea how to fix that though! If I could, I would :-)
Perfect timing as I'm going on a holiday next week and I don't know what I want to do yet.
I travel because my friends live around the country. I have no other good reason. I have lots of bad reasons though. Foremost is that my attitude changes once I no longer feel I'm at home. I don't know why that happens. I wouldn't go to a cafe/pub during the day in my hometown but I feel free to do so on my holidays. I chat people up, I meet strangers, I even hitch-hike. There is NOTHING stopping me from doing all this here, yet I don't. As soon as I get on a train and move a few dozen miles and I all my inhibitions are gone.
I don't know what is better about traveling (specifically the leisurely kind) - is it that there is some kind of comfort in escaping your daily life or is it the new experiences you find in a new place with new people?
I know someone who goes from Singapore to Germany every year for pleasure. He has done it for the past 8 years. It's his "favorite" destination. I guess for someone like him absolute "newness" is less important but "escape" is more important.
For others who live by the count of number of cities/countries/continents they have "covered" traveling seems to be a mission in itself. They travel for "newness".
I would say that a common answer to the "why" might be that we all like to escape our lives at some point or the other. Traveling provides that along with entertainment.
The first few paragraphs strike a chord, but don't propose a lot of answers, and the end is just a collection of destinations: Why do we travel? (Am talking about recreational travel, not business)
A friend of mine was mentioning incoming holidays, to which I asked an open "Anything planned?" question. In her answer there wasn't even the _mention_ of planning to travel, it seemed such an evidence that she just started listing potential destinations, to the point that I got a you're-such-a-party-pooper look when I asked if she considered something else from traveling. This, and a few other similar experiences with friends/colleagues who consume all their time off traveling.
Of course, these are just a few data points, and maybe there's no generalization to do (some people like to travel a lot, some less, fair enough). Also, I traveled a fair share too and generally enjoyed & learned from it, but so do I when I simply spend holidays staying in my hometown reading, socializing/partying with friends, spending time with loved ones, coding, gaming, and resting.
Now, focusing on the population subset that does feel this urge to always travel, what are the most common "why" for this? Difficulty to "disconnect" if still close to their daily routine? Pure habit? Social pressure? Fear of being unable to find anything meaningful to do and end up disappointed about themselves? Are globe-trotters simply better at feeling energized and reaping benefits from travel that I do?
As an aside, will we start to see these travel binges less leniently (and consider less fuel-y alternatives) when we start realizing their ecological impact?
I didn't take the end as "just a collection of destinations", but rather a selection of vignettes illustrating the various reasons one might travel to a particular destination. There are a multitude of reasons one might travel, and the author's pointing out some good ones, along with a personal reflection on that. The sections on the beach and the pumping station particularly spoke to me; the former because I'd previously seen a beach vacation as an indulgent waste of time (but have since come around), and the latter because, though it seems almost like a platitude, not enough people encourage others to make a trip planned around what they find particularly interesting.
To your latter point, I'd say that a lot of the time people embark on travel for the "wrong" reasons (some of which you mention, like boredom, social pressure, etc.) but end up discovering better reasons along the way (those illustrated in the destinations section). I think there is a stroke of admonishment in the article--asking the reader "why" _they_ travel. Personally, the more I demand myself to travel with purpose (as I have), the less I end up traveling. And my trips have been a lot more fulfilling as a result. But it's a little ironic in that, it's taken a lot of traveling to get to that point.
Fair question. I don't travel a lot. I live 1.5 miles from the centre of a city of a million in the UK. We have been staying for a week at a time at various seasons just outside a small town (2,500 population) in a national park a few hundred miles away for the last two and a half decades. Green fields outside the door and a river with (last week) a couple of herons hunting.
So I travel for contrast and to the same locus for continuity and to observe changes. The sudden appearance of disinfectant mats at the start of the foot and mouth epidemic, the slow turnover of farm transport from green Land Rovers to quad-bikes, a new generation taking over some of the older houses (micro-breweries and food pubs). The rise of serious bicycle riding as a local sport.
The ecological impact is a very important question actually that doesn't get as much attention as it deserves. Is there any way to travel currently while minimizing ecological impact?
After all, air travel causes a large percentage of greenhouse emissions.
Sewage treatment is important, fire dept is important, everything is important.
That's why we have people with jobs, taking care of these things. You do your part, I do mine.
The idea of a person who likes to travel, having to care about pollution is insane.
It is a lot like a cult that is so paranoid with not hurting anyone, that they watch every step they take - god forbid you step on an ant!
That's an extreme example of what you're proposing.
The only way to make things work (imho) is if most people do a good job and we actively discourage mediocrity. That way when I travel, I don't have to worry about the pilot screwing up, that's most important when I'm on an airplane but I don't want to care - most things I rely upon just work and when they don't - it's because people whose job it is to make it work suck, not because select individuals didn't individually make enough good decisions everywhere they went.
Thank you for confirming that I'm not alone in my curiosity as to why people feel the need to travel at every opportunity.
As a recent college graduate, I've watched a disproportionate number of my peers (willing to say ~75+%) default to traveling as their #1 form of recreation if given the opportunity. I guess I understand the college years are a time for people to "find themselves" but I also cannot find a good, common "why" for this fetishized trend of excessive travel.
I find this response to be rather strange, especially as someone who very much enjoys traveling. It's (obviously) not something everybody thinks is fun or worthwhile, but to conflate your peers' desire to see other parts of the world with a 'fetishized trend' that is 'excessive' is very hyperbolic.
If I had to guess, I would say a disproportionate amount of your peers travel during their college years because it's one of the few times that you are adult enough to travel on your own and are capable of taking sustained periods away from work/school, most people find themselves saddled with responsibilities once they enter the workforce. That being said, plenty of people continue to travel for their entire life, it's not something reserved for college students.
I could give a myriad of reasons why I enjoy it, but I don't think it would be helpful. Suffice it to say, I enjoy experiencing other cultures/foods/geography/people/climates and find it refreshing to be away from home for a period of time.
I wish I could say that I overstated my claim but that's honestly what it seems like to me.
I understand the desire to seek out novelty through exploration but from what I've witnessed it looks like social media prevalence is a strong driving force (for our generation at least).
The note about responsibilities during that time period strikes me as a valid reason I suppose.
One of the things I hate about travelling as "growth" is that you can't refute it unless you've done it.
So as someone who has traveled around the world for many years let me give you permission to never leave home. The truth is wherever you go, there you are. As someone above mentioned, there is a very common cross section of interests regarding humans.
In my own subjective experience I now see travel as the physical equivalent of channel flipping. It's the replacing of any kind of real introspection or work with novelty. Novelty can be very useful but it can also be acquired for a fraction of the thousands of dollars necessary to travel.
Speaking as someone more than a decade older than the average college graduate: I like to travel to see and experience things. Until this year I'd never been snorkeling (did that in Hawaii), and I'd never been to an opera in New York (did that on Valentine's Day).
Also, given that I work primarily from home, it's nice to take a break and not be where I work.
Younger people are just hungry for new experiences in general. Nothing wrong with that.
That most of your peers can afford traveling is curious - I guess they're ok with living with their parents or leeching off of them for quite some time.
That's the one dirty secret of travel nobody seems to talk about - how are you able to afford it exactly?
That's what I find hilarious is that the people I know who have travelled a fair bit - are still living with their parents or have gotten significant support from them.
So yeah, spoiled brats if you ask me :) Being broke would teach them more than travelling.
We have this wonderful world around us and I'm willing to bet that most people have not seen more than their hometown, its surroundings and maybe a few holiday spots. A large number do not have the means to travel, but if you exclude those a better question would be why not to travel? Even for the things you mentioned, why not do them at a place you have never been before? Are you not curious about the world? Do you not like to try new things?
Re-read my question, I think you're slightly misunderstanding my point. To quote my original post, "I traveled a fair share too and generally enjoyed & learned from it, but so do I when I simply spend holidays staying in my hometown reading, socializing/partying with friends, spending time with loved ones, coding, gaming, and resting."
I'm not excluding the occasional travel and am very much enjoying it and trying new things. What I am questioning is the extreme prevalence of travel in off-time for some people for whom travel seems to be the only way to spend holidays.
More poetically (but probably a bit patronizing, thus my original post which instead asks questions): traveling is cool, and staying at home is fine too. Next time you're planning holidays, what if you gave yourself the chance to appreciate your surroundings in a way you're not necessarily doing while in your regular job routine? You don't have to board a plane to see new things. Chill out. Meditate or try to build something if that's your kick. Go have a walk around the neighborhood. Take your time.
> What I am questioning is the extreme prevalence of travel in off-time for some people for whom travel seems to be the only way to spend holidays.
For myself, it's simply that vacation days are too scarce to waste on anything I could feasibly do during the evening or on weekends. It might be nice to take time off for the activities you mentioned, but it's not essential, I could do them at the weekend. Each year I have 240 working, 100 weekend, 10 public holidays and 15 vacation days. I have some "required travel" that uses vacation days too (e.g. I'm taking three days off next week to go to a friend's wedding and visit family), so I make sure I maximise my "pure travel" with the remaining days.
Personally, I like to travel whenever I can, but traveling for me does not mean getting on a plane. I much prefer road or hiking trips. If I stay home, I tend to fall into a routine. Activities like you mentioned are typical weekend things. If I have more time available, it doesn't make sense for me to stay home. I'd much rather go anywhere else and get back with a new experience.
> most people have not seen more than their hometown
I can easily see this in the United States, since any public transportation beyond the local level is so expensive it's a luxury for a big chunk of the population, and the distances between interesting places tend to be a lot bigger. For example, I could spend a couple of hundred dollars and take the train to the nearest other "big" city, but it would be a three hour ride and there's nothing to do there except go to the mall and watch a movie, or drink in a sports bar with a bunch of strangers. It's harder for me to imagine someone growing up literally anywhere in Western Europe and never traveling.
I can never read travel writing. It just puts me into this manic state where I glaze out and start thinking about getting back on the road. If I'm going to find out about a place, the only way to do so is to go there.
So if you're asking why folks like me travel (75 countries, 3 laps around the world, maybe 5 years total abroad and moving over the 10 years before I simply moved overseas for good), the answer is that I've never even considered the question before.
Ask an alcoholic why he likes alcohol. Ask your little cousin why he likes his phone. It's the thing you arrange your life so that you can do. It's that important. If you have to ask why, that's just a sign that it's not for you.
No. My folks did "vacations" of the standard 2-weeks-on-a-beach variety. Usually without the kids. I didn't start traveling on my own until I was like 25.
That was a 3 week trip to Thailand. Then a couple years later I did 2 months across Europe. Then a few years later 9 months across Africa and the Mideast, but by then all hope of working a regular job with regular time off expectations was lost.
The "how" is easily explained though. I program computers for a living. That's the only skill I know of that pays more than four times what regular people make, and is happy to dish it up in the form of 3 month contracts. It's the ultimate enabler for the modern addicted traveler.
Add in the more recent trend toward remote work, and you can pretty much travel as much as you like. As long as there's internet, everything works out.
Alain is one of my favorite contemporary authors. Check out "The Art of Travel" from 2002 for more in this vein. "The Architecture of Happiness" and "The News" are also excellent.
Actually, everything I have read of his has been thought provoking and well written.
Agreed. I also really enjoyed Status Anxiety. For those who want to condense the reading experience, here is a 2.5 hr documentary version https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1MqJPHxy6g.
I fly about 105 times a year (I mean, 105 "legs", not 105 roundtrips), and have been doing so for the past 7.5 years. I would say AMA, but... Not joking... I am taking a flight in 2 hours. SFO to JFK.
I don't say this to beat my chest. Traveling for work, like this, is terrible in the long term. I wish there was a better way.
I've been at the 100k-mile tier with US Airways (and now American Airlines, courtesy of the merger) the past two years in a row. Thankfully, this year I'm dropping down below that; I'll probably clock in around 60-70 thousand miles flown in 2015, depending on how much I do in the final quarter of the year.
On one hand, it's much more relaxing to not be constantly away from home and shuffling between hotels and airports. On the other hand, I'm going to miss the perks; might have to switch over to Delta for next year, since AA only provides free upgrades at the very top tier.
I tried many things. In essence, I try to eat healthy, and exercise in moderation. The biggest though is trying to sleep properly as much as possible.
I found that when traveling too heavy for too long, it's hard to do any of these three things above.
I don't travel as much as I used to and I think it's mainly because I'm too shy, and I feel more like a sightseer and less like a traveler that wants to connect with each new place. I've come come back from trips and wished I had been more adventerous in meeting new people; even places where I speak the language.
Also, flying is a pain in economy. Flights are busier, more crammed and less comfortable than 7/8+ years ago.
I'm glad I did a lot of traveling including living abroad when I was younger. I still crave foreign culture, but I can seek that out at home through language/cultural exchanges, hosting travelers, and of course movies/news/etc online.
It's so very timely for me that this showed up today. I'm on the first day of a 3-4 month around-the-world trek, sitting in an airport between flights, and this is exactly why I travel: to stretch myself; to step outside of my habituated, and ultimately unconscious norms; to be available for all the unexpected little gifts that life can shower you with if you just get the hell out there and get in their way.
I remember when i got myself a bike in Singapore (cars are very expensive here $100k+ for a Volkawagen Polo and most people take the bus, train or cabs), i felt so happy because i gained a new degree of freedom. I could eat at new places and see new things.
When i drive a car back home in India, i feel an even greater sense of freedom because i can go farther.
Extrapolate to flights.
Maybe, the farther you can go to look for newness, the happier you feel.
Am I the only one who couldn't read the article? It only pointed me to some registration pay wall. and when I did skip it brings me to the sites main page and not the article? :(
I agree with the principle of your comments but not with the wealth aspect. My experiences have told me that the world of traveling is restricted to those with the right passports, i.e., North America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and a few other countries considered privileged. If your passport is from the wrong country, like mine, throughout your travels, you'll come across incredible barriers irrespective of how much money you have. You'll constantly be reminded that you don't "belong" in the club of travelers.
If you have travelled to enough different countries, (60 for me and counting), you will have several instances of being detained by immigration, yelled at by consular officers, beaten up by border guards, have your passport flung at your face by police, and several such adventures. The fact that you went to great lengths to get the right visa papers (which could involve filling lengthy forms divulging every aspect of your finances and your life till date and wait months for a decision granting you permission to visit a country for a week) doesn't count. The fact that you have a PhD from a US university doesn't count. The fact that you have a great job at a fortune 5 firm in silicon valley doesn't count. The fact that you make a high income and have a lot of savings doesn't count.
In fact these could count against you, because immigration / consular officers will think someone with your passport is obviously making it up. That you are just trying to sneak into the country to get an under the table job washing dishes. This happens even when the country you are trying to enter gets a massive amount of financial aid from your own country.
So it's not a rich vs poor aspect. Traveling is a type of large-scale consumption that re-affirms self-worth through having the right passport.
I keep seeing this attitude any time travel comes up on HN and I still have no idea where it comes from. The idea that travel is nothing more than banal consumption for the purpose of puffing up your Instagram account is absurd on the face of it.
Don't be silly. Hop a flight some day and you'll find no shortage of Plumber's Mates dirtbagging along on a few hundred bucks a month, picking up hostel desk & bartending jobs every few months to squirrel away some extra savings. Head down to Peru and you'll run in to gap year kids from Uraguay who are traveling around on their own savings. Uraguayan highschool job savings, which I hope we can stipulate doesn't fall in to the category of "wealth display"
You're thinking of "vacations", which are in fact expensive. Traveling in the fun parts of the developing world is really quite cheap.
What about people who travel cheaply. I went on a 3 week holiday last year (I work full time) and it cost me 1200 pounds. OK, I might have spent a couple hundred more to buy things like a backpack and boots since it was the first time in my life I went on a holiday (not counting holidays with my parents when I was a teenager) but I'm getting a lot of use out of them and plan to get even more.
In the UK, where I live, pretty much everyone (you get at least 20 days holiday each year, usually more + bank holidays). Who else am I supposed to exercise this "wealth display" over? Where does the earth's population come into this. They are not my peers. Also I can't leave Europe because I have no passport so even if you took the population of the country being visited into account it would still impress no one. They can't know how long my holiday is, all they see is a guy with a backpack, hitch-hiking or using public transport. That would impress no one. Your idea of wealth is somewhat skewed.
That's not entirely true. Travel can be done on the cheap, many people don't even explore their own city. People who don't travel find a million excuses, but it usually boils down to fear of the unknown.
Everything are different when you're traveling. From the obvious like language and culture, to the subtle like where to buy fruits. I feel like a child again when everything is new to be experimented.
That breaks down my usual routine and my expected notion of self completely. I am more stimulated, creative, self reflective, and outgoing (as /u/Paul_S also mentioned).
It's like when you move to a new team / school or fall in love with someone new. The first few weeks/months is like a Wonderland.