Disclosure: I’ve traveled and I’ve lived abroad in two different countries and been dozens of places outside of my ‘home’.
But I don’t get this obsession people have with travel being the uber alles thing you can do and how if you don’t do it all the time or as much as possible you are a ignorant incurious person. I don’t see my travel as being this amazing thing… it was just a nice thing that I did and frankly I don’t remember very much about it and what I do remember I don’t think is a more important memory than lots of other things I did in life.
I don’t think I am superior or ‘worldly’ because of it compared to someone who has never traveled abroad. But it is an extremely common belief/attitude I encounter on a regular basis and it confuses the hell out of me. I’ve met plenty of people that just go on the attack when you don’t want to ‘exchange amazing travel stories’ with them or daydream with them about all the places you’d like to go. There are some places I’d like to go, but again, it’s not a big deal to me that I see it as some big important part of my life and I certain do not condescend towards people who aren’t as ‘well traveled’ as I am like it’s some contest or achievement.
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“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”
travel is expensive and cumbersome and energy intensive. if your worried about the roof over your head travel is the last thing on your mind and it gives pause for those up us trying to maintain a small energy footprint.
The more I travel (37 countries on four continents) the more I realize everyone is the same. For me, it’s like a mini-version of the overview effect.
Everyone has a hand wrap (pita, taco, wrap, sandwich).
Everyone has their customs that bleed into public life (religious, secular, religious-cum-secular)
Everyone has to take care of children
Everyone has a grocery store
Everyone likes to drink a hot liquid out of a mug. Everyone likes to drink a cold liquid out of a glass
Everyone has their pockets of disengaged youth who lash out at society, “normalcy” and the status quo
it’s not a weird, scary world. We are all people. We all live here. The content of my pita might be different from what’s in your taco, but it’s basically the same thing. The difference between my town and one a few kilometers away is not that much larger than one on the other side of the world. We are all people living our lives.
Drinking warm beer is not normal
Heh I meant coffee or tea
When I was more active on dating sites in my 20s, I encountered a lot of people who held up travel as this big, important thing in their lives. I recall at least one profile where a guy said, “Love of travel is a must.”
At first, I was annoyed - travel takes money and time, which I don’t have. Why limit potential dates in that way?
But then I realized, maybe that’s the point? Someone with the leisure time and spending money can easily filter dates to just those in their socio-economic status by making frequent recreational travel a requirement. My poor ass never had a chance.
Thank you for this post. I’ve never been a fan of traveling, but do enjoy day trips. I love how I have everything setup at my home and always want to retire there at the end of the day. Nothing is better or more comfortable than my custom setup, especially since traveling to certain places can cause me major inconvenience due to health issues.
I’d probably be more likely to see places farther away if teleporting existed. Traveling long hours is horrible in itself.
Human variation…
Some people are cool anywhere.
Some freak out when they leave home.
Some have to leave and never come back
And some have to ping pong all over the damn place constantly.
If everyone was the same we’d never have made it anywhere close to this far.
My ADHD prevents me from sitting still for more than a few minutes, even short road trips are torturous. To add to that, my driving limit due to my disability is about 2 hours and I physically can’t drive at night. I also can’t sleep during the day time.
How TF people survive 12+ hour flights is a mystery to me
It’s a mixture of “fancy” escapism and trying to signal being “cultured” (they just got wasted and fucked random people in a different country, perhaps with a museum visit in the middle of it all, lol). It’s nice to travel, just like it’s nice to go to a nice restaurant, but that’s it. Sometimes it does open up your mind because you lived in a racist, weird bubble your whole life, and in that case yeah, it’s definitely more transformative than just having good Indian food in a nice restaurant. And I’ve been around the world besides Asia and Africa, basically (but Morocco and China are my future destinations so that’s gonna happen too at some point), so it’s not like I’m just sour-graping over here.
If you have read it yet, you may find The Case Against Travel interesting.
Finally someone like me. I’m going through these comments reading things about wanting friends in other countries, having an experience, whatever.
And I’m like, I worked so hard to be comfortable at home, why would I spend 4 figures to leave? I absolutely have bought things 5 years ago that I still use and enjoy.
I’m lucky enough to live in a city with tonnnnns of museums, food from all over, and cultural hotspots in different neighborhoods.
Life is so absolutely chaotic these days that I’d rather just relax at home with the things I worked hard to get.
And of course, all that said, I am going on vacation in a week to a place further away than I’ve ever been before, so, ya know. Maybe once every few years is fine, but I’m not going to foam over it the whole time between.
When air travel became available, it was super expensive, which meant that only rich people could do it. Several decades later, it became cheap enough that middle-class people could travel occasionally. Because of that history, travelling got a shimmering magic aura in our minds.
It’s what rich people do, and most people want to be like them in one way or another.
I live 20 minutes from the French and the Swiss borders. When I visit Basel or Straßburg I’m not “being like rich people”.
Attitudes have changed a bit since short distance flights aren’t prohibitively expensive any more. However, that’s still a bit of an exception. To many “air travel” refers to flying to a tourist destination once a year instead of attending a quarterly business meeting.
Compared to some bumpkin who’s never been more than 100 miles from home, though, you definitely have more perspective on the world.
This is the biggest selling point of travel for me. Traveling expands your worldview and allows you to see firsthand other people and cultures. To realize that all humans are the same no matter where we’re from.
I’ve never met anyone snobby about travel, but the experience and worldview is why I’m passionate about it and think everyone should do it at least a little. Empathy is severely lacking in the world.
I mean it is all in the internet.
What if the non-traveler had an internet connection and wasn’t mentally incompetent? What if the person who travels just does it so they can be hedonistic somewhere nobody knows them (as it tends to happen, like Brits in Spain and all the “eat, pray, love” girlies)? Sometimes it’s a cultural experience, most of the time it isn’t, from what I’ve seen.
It is definitely possible to travel and not experience culture.
Thinking you understand culture byecuwse you have the internet is sort of admitting your that type of person.
The problem with talking to randoms online is the things they don’t say because it’s their normal. Experiencing those differences in normals is what is being discussed here.
When I was in school this was a literally social studies topic discuss many times over all the years we learned about other cultures which really reinforces that some people dont pay enough attention to receive any value from travel.
That doesn’t mean other can’t or don’t.
For me, travel is a luxury. Even if it’s not luxurious, it’s still more expensive than being at home. I’m not rich by any means. So, it’s special.
Travel is the perfect product.
It can be luxurious, yet is affordable enough for most people in some form. People love to tell everyone the places they’ve visited; some people, given the chance, will talk about nothing else. It’s endlessly novel and requires little physical investment. It’s literally impossible to run out of places to visit. There are practically no limits to how much money you can spend on travel.
That is to say, it’s consumerism dressed up as virtue.
This is very interesting to read, I thought I was alone in this, I do not get excited when I travel, being with friends and family is what matters, not where I am, I have traveled many times (been to four continents and more than 10 countries at least once) but never really felt much about the traveling part, and I never get FOMO when someone tells me about their trip. But everyone seem to want to travel all the time.
I do like trying new things a lot, going to different restaurants, eating and drinking different types of food, testing different forms of entertainment or sports, and so on, learning about someone’s experience, I just do not care for traveling.
But I do believe in diversity and that we should all get to experience many cultures so we can understand each other, seeing is believing, I think more people need to experience other perspectives.
That said, I still do not find traveling abroad appealing, I’m not against it, I’m just weirdly neutral on the topic, while my friends dream of traveling.
I think there’s people who look at ‘traveller’ as an identity, much like a lot of folks do with other interests. I’d argue there’s some classism involved as well, as travel is a status symbol. However, there’s also the (frankly true) idea that travel can broaden your perspective as you meet people from different cultures living life slightly (or dramatically) differently than you do at home.
Ultimately, people who deride people with little travel experience are rude. A better approach is to encourage people who voice an interest in travel but seem uncertain. There’s also something to be said about a solid knowledge and appreciation of one’s own backyard and community.
