Most of my travels were w my first partner and they were mostly luxury hotels and bus tours through parts of one country or another. These things might have their merit, but dreams are a product of the circumstances in which a life is lived in – and those were not mine. Growing up or living in scarcity, lack of food and calories makes “international cuisine buffets” (read western cuisine, read US cuisine) utopian. If your life is full of stress, having to take care of a thousand things and getting pulled in every direction, then two weeks with nothing to do and having waiters walk around the premises and bring you drinks might be great.
But those were not my lives, whilst being in the hotels I was bored and couldn’t do the things I would have liked to work on. And an abundance of fries and pasta every day (granted, amongst other options) is smth I can get at home w ease.
And the “seeing the country” mostly boiled down to sitting in a bus for hours, getting shooed out to look at and photograph one thing or another, get shooed back into the bus and sit for more hours until the next thing. Then, staying the night in some small hotel and on the next morning start all over again.
Similar to my my issues with museums, also these are neither nowhere near entertaining nor educational enough to be worth it. Most of what I’ve seen of a dozen or so countries was vegetation, landscapes, villages rushing by all seen through a slightly tinted bus window. I tried to take it in, but most of the impressions and memories of even the sights the bus brought us to left little-to-no impression.
I’d have seen more of the country, learned more about it, understood its culture better by just watching a single documentary rather than be on a multi-day bus tour.
The couple of times I travelled w friends were nice, but it was more the fact that I was w friends and wasn’t already so used to the environment around me that it would automatically get tuned out, but that can be done w a fraction of the time, stress, and financial costs of the kind of travel I was used to.
The few times I travelled with friends were different, those were much more worthwhile. But I don’t think it was the travel. It was the company, and that I wasn’t already so used to the environment around me that it got automatically tuned out. Neither of those require the cost, the planning, the time away from other things I want to do.
Dreams are a product of the circumstances in which a life is lived in and with a streamlined, safe modern life, adventure is what is calling me. Not a cushy bus ride pre-planned by some agency to visit the most important sites I lack the historical appreciation for.
Sometimes I wonder how much having already seen images and videos of all over the Earth detracts from seeing places; how much having watched movies in strange landscapes, played games in all sorts of fantastical settings, has taken away from the wonder the real world has to offer. A generational-scale hedonic treadmill:
In times past, when travel was done by foot or horseback, getting a handful of towns away from where you lived, seeing the slight changes in vegetation already inspired wonder and novelty. Seeing even just a mildly large church must have been mind-blowing. Now, it’s just large-ish European church #42.
When having visited a friend in Ghent recently, I was able to deliberately try and see the church w fresh eyes, to get a little bit of that wonder that a medieval peasant might have felt.
Maybe that’s what I’m actually looking for, not the place, but the state of attention. It was the same church, but to them it was impressive because they never had this type of impression before. Standing in Ghent, trying to look at the church like I’d never seen a church before, I got a real sliver of it. It took work. But it felt more real than any Mayan temple complex we as tourists got herded through ever did.
Sometimes I wonder how much have already seen all these movies in strange landscapes, played games in all sorts of time periods and fantastical settings detracts from seeing places, if we don’t deliberately see them w fresh eyes.