Have you seen those tourism bucket-list things doing the rounds on social media? The ones where you are supposed to say how many of these 30 destinations you've visited, so that your virtual friends can be impressed?
Well, I have absolutely no desire to visit Thailand, Venezuela, the Philippines, Nigeria, Dubai, Beijing, Vietnam or New York before I die. I don't fancy Egypt or Israel, nor do I wish to mingle with tourist crowds in summer in Venice, Rome or Paris. I don't like crowds. I don't like crowded beaches or crowded mountain trails.
Kraków I know well; often I will get to my business destination on foot from the station, passing through the old town. Electric carts full of tourists glide through the narrow streets, their heads looking left, then right, as their tour guide points out the 15th century basilica and the 16th century convent. No one is really interested. Most are only there because everyone says "you must do Kraków". Leaflets advertising restaurants, bars or tours are thrust into your face. 'Auschwitz - Schindler's Factory - Salt Mines CHEAP!' It's all too much.
Why are you going there?
Spirit of place is what draws me. There has to be a spiritual calling to visit - a subliminal desire to commune with a location, on my own, or else in the presence of someone else who gets it. Tourism for the sake of variety, for the sake of ticking off a box on a bucket list, is morally wrong on so many levels. There's tourism for the ego, and tourism for the soul. The latter is the only sort of interest to me.
[If you do harbour an intense, spiritual, longing to visit Kraków, do so in mid-January, the low-low season, before Polish ferie winter holidays begin. You should have the place pretty much to yourself and to the locals.]
I've often written that the travel destination of the future will be the past. Spiritual longings for places as they were are rarely rewarded with a repeat of the hoped-for experience. I remember my first trip to the US in 1978 (45 years ago right now!); already by then, America had changed from what I was seeking. Today, the America of the 1930s, '40s and '50s has vanished, replaced by identical strip-malls, SUVs and billboards advertising prescription medicines, peopled by the overweight. I have no ambition to return to the US, like, ever.
Google Maps Street View (where available) gives a beautiful visual insight into spirit of place, of course without other sensory inputs, you're only getting a fifth of the experience. But it - plus access to myriad photos and films online offers glimpses of places that the pre-internet world couldn't match. My basic curiosity about places can easily be assuaged by diving online.
So where would I go? Rural - deeply rural - Europe. Villages in Spain, Portugal, Italy, France - right off the tourist trail, scarcely known of, still abiding in traditional rural ways. How would I get there? Train, bus, bicycle. I'd want to stay for several days, get an understanding of the place. Scandinavia? Maybe. And there's still vast swathes of Poland and its immediate neighbours to visit.
I have foresworn air travel (Jet Zero). We haven't got 'until 2050' - what's needed is immediate action, bottom up, by the two billion richest individuals on this planet; we must change our behaviour and dramatically curtail our CO2 emissions.
I'm doing my bit - I hope you're doing yours.
"Do not go unless your heart tells you so."
UPDATE: In the comments, Michał Karski rightly mentions pilgrimage. Yes! A crucial idea (entering the word pilgrimage into my blog's search box yields many posts). We all need our own pilgrimage destinations, even it's just down the road and round the corner to catch the sun setting over Wola Pieczyska or Sułkowice. Some thoughts about places spiritual here.
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4 comments:
The first tourists were arguably (?) pilgrims, walking to a destination with a definite sense of purpose. You may be familiar with a book which I was recently given and which is all about the pleasures and benefits of walking. It's called '52 Ways to Walk' by Annabel Streets. It might be right up your (forgive the pun) street.
PS - The pilgrims might have travelled on horseback, of course, as in 'The Canterbury Tales'. At any rate, none of them were travelling to tick a city off a bucket list. (I'm reminded of the 1969 film title 'If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium')
cheers from MK
@ Michal Karski
Thank you! Excellent point re: pilgrimages. Entirely concur. Annabel Streets book - had a look at the online summary on Google Books - looks excellent (and highly needed)!
I think original pilgrimages, whether to Canterbury, Rome, Jerusalem or Mecca were those one-in-a-lifetime trips one needed to do - for some a spiritual calling - for others a mere bucket-list thing, sadly.
No doubt the Annabel Streets book made me think about pilgrimages. As a matter of fact, there's a chapter devoted to the subject: 'Week 40 - Walk Like a Pilgrim'. I'll just quote a small section if I may:
"So what makes a pilgrimage different from a walk? Firstly, a pilgrimage requires a destination with meaning. In the past this was typically a holy place, but today it might be an ancient tree, the house of an admired painter or architect, somewhere that holds special memories for us, or the site of a rare orchid. Secondly, a pilgrimage requires an intention. This can be as simple as plotting out our day's work, or emptying our mind before bed."
etc.
Altogether an interesting read. I don't suppose everyone would necessarily adopt all of the walking methods given (there's a chapter about walking backwards, for instance), but there's much food for thought between the covers.
Enjoy your walking - and keep blogging!
M
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