Layers of Travel

Uncovering ''The Onion of Travel''

Arriving on a new continent, in a new country with a completely different culture and a different way of life, makes you feel like a child again. Suddenly you're curious about everything, trying to explore your surroundings and running around like a child. You don't know which street to go down, you don't know who to talk to. Most of us probably forget this feeling when we've been in the same place for a while.

Yes, I'm referring to my trip to Buenos Aires. When I arrived here on my first day, I was lost. The size of the city was overwhelming. Since I plan to stay here for a few months, I've different needs than if I were just here for a short holiday. That's why I was running around like a headless chicken for the first two days. Maybe I took on too much, but I was so eager to explore and get my stuff sorted out.

It's only now that I've been forced to get to grips with the day-to-day things that even the locals have to deal with to some extent (sim cards, currency, transport, gym membership, etc.) in a foreign country where I don't speak the language, that I realize the level of comfort I was living in at home.

I shared this experience with Dejan, my mentor, on the phone, and we talked about the different layers of a place we visit and how we uncover them layer by layer, like an onion (maybe we can call it ‘‘The Onion of Travel’’).

When you come to a place for a week or two on holiday, you don't have to figure out so many things. Basically, you can just live in a bubble. On this kind of trip, you uncover the first layer of the place and the culture. It's the layer that's already mostly presented to us in guidebooks, travel blogs, travel agencies, etc. These are the main tourist attractions, the main beaches and the restaurants that have an English menu.

I think that the more meaningful travel experience begins when we've uncovered the layer above and we begin to discover the more authentic layers. The layers that even locals need to uncover. To reach this stage, we need to stay longer and see things that aren't in the guidebooks. Slow Travel could be the right term for it. And this stage isn't only about beautiful, perfect travel landscapes and locals pretending to be happy, but can also be rough and give us some discomfort.

Albert Camus said that "what gives value to travel is fear". I don't think we necessarily need to fear for our lives when we travel, but I do think that experiencing a certain amount of discomfort can bring us a lot of positivity in the long run. How much discomfort we want is mostly up to us and our travel style.