This is the end

One journey ends, another begins

I stepped on a plane on October 24, 2022, to fly to Buenos Aires. I had no idea what to expect there, what I would do there, or how long I would stay. Little did I know that it was going to be a 5-month journey.

After a few days, once I got settled in, I started this Substack journal. The intent was to reflect on my daily experiences while on the road. And there was a lot to reflect on.

Everything I did, either going to the gym, buying groceries, using public transport or buying a SIM card. Everything I did during the day invoked in me something to reflect upon. Everything was a novelty and everything in my head counted as a tourist experience.

But what really is a tourist experience?

Experiences are very subjective. They depend on our expectations, previous experiences, character, current mood, life values, etc. Thus, generalizing what is a good, bad, or transformational experience is impossible.

Ever since the beginning of tourism, academics have been researching and trying to find out what is a tourist experience. There is no unified definition. They say it’s ‘‘a complicated psychological process’’.

The closest and simplest one I would agree with is that ‘‘a tourist experience is different from everyday experiences’’ (Cohen, 1979). These experiences can happen on a week-long vacation or while walking in the park after work.

Most of the time we associate these different-then-everyday experiences only with actual tourism infrastructure or professional services offered by the tourism industry. This ranges from hotels, campsites, restaurants, tour guides, museums, etc. And we think that it can happen only when we take the specific time for it, like a vacation.

In a world where remote and hybrid work is blurring the line between work & leisure, I think we cannot call it a tourist experience anymore. It’s harder and harder to define when we are in the role of a tourist, resident, digital nomad, expat, or anything else for that matter.  

In my opinion, every interaction with the outer world, in our home or in a foreign environment, can be a profound and transformative experience. What do I mean by this?

2 weeks ago, I had a day full of interesting and novel experiences which probably no one from the travel sector would consider a tourist experience because they are not considered as such.

First, I went to a barber shop in a very small town called Dripping Springs in Texas. The barber shop was in a small trailer outside of town. By exchanging 20 minutes of her cutting my hair and talking about tattoos, I had a very memorable experience, even though we just talked.

Next, I visited The Home Depot store in the same town because Dean, our naturalist, had to go get seeds for his garden. I’m not a hardware or garden enthusiast at all but I felt like a little kid in that store. I was just observing how locals go about their business, how this is a big part of their day, what are they buying, and how are they buying. Everything was worth observing.

Then there were the cashiers. The first cashier at the garden section started commenting on the selection of our seeds and that she would love to come to check out our garden when it starts sprouting. Then the second cashier at the hardware section made a small mistake with counting our items. She commented on it: sorry about that, you can tell that I was schooled in Texas.

The same day we had dinner with friends and I said these two experiences, especially Home Depot, were a very good insight into the local culture for me. Why, they asked me.

Because when you go to a place where locals go and they do their own thing, without it being considered a tourist experience, they are doing what they are doing every day. It’s as authentic as it gets based on that moment in time. No bullshit.

We always ask people what is there to see in a certain place. Is it worth visiting? And sometimes we hear someone say: oh, there’s nothing to see in this place. I’m always skeptical about that answer. Yes, if you skim a place like you skim a book, we may not find anything interesting. But maybe I’m just being subjective.

I actually struggle a lot when someone asks me if there’s anything to see in a place or if it’s worth visiting. Should I say: yes, if you go to the US, you should definitely go and visit a Home Depot store!? It would be a very unpopular answer and it’s also wrong to recommend this because probably a lot of people would not have enjoyed it in the same way I have. And that’s perfectly normal!

It’s very subjective and it’s hard to recommend to people what to visit. If we wanted to do that, we would have to know them very well: their personal interests, what they do for work, their state of mind, their previous travel experiences and much more.

Maybe we will be able to soon feed all of this data to AI and it will recommend us things like Home Depot and not just pull general data from standard tourism offers.

My point here is to state that it’s not just the organized tourism experiences that make a good journey. There’s more to a destination than the top 20 TripAdvisor list. We shouldn’t be rating destinations based on how many landmarks or attractions it has. In the end, we should be just following our general curiosity and not be burdened by mine or anyone else’s recommendations.

Speaking of the end, this blog will already be published when I’ll be back in Slovenia. I started in October alone but finished it with an intentional group of people. It was hard saying goodbye to folks at Cabin. I did get a proper send-off from them though:

Off I go again in solo mode in the same mood I left home: with no idea what to expect there, what I would do there, or how long I would stay. I’m learning more and more to be comfortable with not knowing. Being proactive, but patiently waiting for what’s next.

I try not to look at it as ‘’the end’’ though. Rather I try to look at it as another valuable experience and one small part of a bigger journey.

Bye world, Hi home.

Created by Blue Willow AI: This is the end