The day I sent out the first newsletter, I managed to peel a new layer of my travel onion.
I spent the whole Sunday in a non-touristy town, La Plata, with my friend's Argentine family. I got to experience typical Argentine activities that you can not experience on a standardized tourist trip.
The activities started when Matias and I were waiting for a bus in Buenos Aires to get to La Plata, which is about 60 km away. The interesting thing here is that you never seem to know when the bus will arrive. You stand in line and wait - it's very important to stand in line, I have found! What I found even more interesting is that even when you think the bus has come, you find out it's not the right one. So you are constantly in suspense about when the right one is going to come, and you are in anticipation. We waited about half an hour, talked a bit, and then the (right) bus came.
Here it’s not standardized and predictable like most public transport in Western Europe. I found it a very interesting experience and I actually felt happy when the bus came. Whereas in Europe I never experienced this happiness because you usually know when the bus will come. It gets kinda boring. If I was in a hurry to get somewhere, I probably wouldn't have felt so good or you have to plan your day differently. But that is what I meant in the first newsletter when I wrote that I felt like a child. Always in anticipation and never knowing what will happen around the corner.
Normally, we find waiting unnecessary. Here, in this situation, I felt that waiting is also an experience in itself. The anticipation of the next trip is an important part of the travel experience that we sometimes neglect, thinking that only the time when we are already at the destination is most important. There is no substitute for this pre-trip feeling and it is unique.
Needless to say, I had a very authentic experience in La Plata. Sunday barbecue, which is as important in Argentina every week as is the barbecue for the labor holiday in Slovenia, local desserts, local beer and wine, and for the first time I drank mate (yes, all together, in one day). I can not stress enough how grateful I am to have had the opportunity to experience such a day, which is usually difficult when you do not know any of the locals (thanks, Matias!). It's hard to imagine how else I could have had such an experience.
As someone who is involved in travel and experiences, I would like every traveler to have these kinds of experiences. In fact, I think it should be mandatory if we want travel to have a transformative effect on us. But I would also like this experience not to be pre-prepared and standardized and to happen spontaneously, as it happened to me, quite unexpectedly, without an itinerary and without a plan, because I believe that a pre-prepared experience can never invoke the same feelings as will the one that is unplanned. I’m not saying it’s better or worse because it depends on the person. Just different.
So I wonder what someone who organizes travel experiences can do to invoke such feelings. Maybe the best we can do is just create a setting where there is a chance that at least part of this spontaneous tourist experience will occur, but you do not plan the whole experience. And of course, we communicate that well. We only prepare a setting where there is a chance for serendipity (similar like we did in Leros recently). You might have a transformative experience, but you might not. It may also affect you in a negative way, which is one of the dangers of non-standardized experiences. That's the charm of the unplanned and unexpected.
One important thing also is that even if you experience something meaningful, it may not affect you as it could. The reason is that we simply haven't developed the receptivity to it. Alain de Botton stated that receptivity is the main characteristic of the travel mindset and that "the pleasure we derive from journeys is perhaps dependent more on the mindset with which we travel than on the destination we travel to." For example, when you read a book for the first time, sometimes it doesn't touch you in the same way because you're not ready to understand it. That's why we need to reread books and revisit destinations.
To end the day, I experienced the pulse of a street I have walked down a few times, but apparently, it takes on a whole different flavor on Sunday evenings and I have just started to appreciate it more. So we must also walk along the same street several times, at different times of the day to be conscious of its beauty.