![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
How Varied is My Mileage
Apr. 6th, 2008 03:51 pmContext: I'm currently in the UK on vacation, and have had some desperately needed downtime. I'm pretty sure that I'm having the vacation that I wanted.
In traveling, I have found that there are two extremes for approaching travel in a foreign city:
1. The Cultural Blitzkrieg: "We've got 75 tourist attractions to see on this checklist, AND I WILL NOT BE COMPLETE AS A HUMAN BEING unless I see every one of them!!!! We've only got 10 hours of daylight GO GO GO GO!"
Pros: You really do see a lot of (likely one-of-a-kind) things and if you're handy with a camera, you'll even be able to recall a lot of them later. In addition, if it's a place to which you'll never return ("maybe in a decade or two" = "never"), it's quite possibly the most value for your money in terms of "seeing things you can't see anywhere else".
Cons: I don't know about you, but the times that I've done that I've not really remembered anything about the trip besides the "GO GO GO GO!" part. I remember running around a lot, and I have the ephemera of the trip (tickets, booklets, receipts, currency), but I really didn't get the sense that I actually did anything besides, well, run around a lot.
2. Mindless Bumbling About: "Just relax. A city is a vibrant place with a rhythm all its own. If you just walk around and let the city come to you, you'll be able to experience it just the same as if you did the 10 Kilometer Multi-Stage Tourist Relay(tm)."
Pros: Lower blood pressure. Not feeling like you've just travelled n-thousand miles to a 12 hour/day job. Leaving yourself open to the random experiences that happen when you just pay attention. Having a lot of stories to tell.
Cons: If you're not careful, you end up in roughly the same spot as the Blitzkreigers... you don't remember all that much beyond "walking around some city", and you don't even get the consolation prize of seeing a whole bunch of stuff you vaguely remember. If you're extra special not careful, you get back home, sit on the couch, look around, and say "Did I actually go anywhere?"
So, where does that leave me? I have a decided allergy to the former, and have already experienced the bad parts of the latter. The happy medium I've chosen is "Bumbling About While Paying Attention". I think of it as the intersection of "being armed with a map" and "not particularly caring where I am."
It's the thing that allows me to completely fail at finding The Economist Bookstore on Regent Street and then find myself sitting on the same park bench in St. James Park as the guy in the bowler hat at the beginning of The Great Muppet Caper when Kermit &c. splash down in the pond.
It's the thing that has me inadvertently taking the longest route possible to find the Shaftesbury Theatre, and in the process finding Neal's Yard, i.e. a concentrated node of brightly colored earthy crunchy woo-woo in the middle of London.
It's the thing that allows me to pay attention to everything that normally gets filtered out. Put another way, it's consciously deciding to put away the urge to "get things done" for a while, and telling myself that it's okay just to explore.
It's the thing that keeps the stories coming.
In traveling, I have found that there are two extremes for approaching travel in a foreign city:
1. The Cultural Blitzkrieg: "We've got 75 tourist attractions to see on this checklist, AND I WILL NOT BE COMPLETE AS A HUMAN BEING unless I see every one of them!!!! We've only got 10 hours of daylight GO GO GO GO!"
Pros: You really do see a lot of (likely one-of-a-kind) things and if you're handy with a camera, you'll even be able to recall a lot of them later. In addition, if it's a place to which you'll never return ("maybe in a decade or two" = "never"), it's quite possibly the most value for your money in terms of "seeing things you can't see anywhere else".
Cons: I don't know about you, but the times that I've done that I've not really remembered anything about the trip besides the "GO GO GO GO!" part. I remember running around a lot, and I have the ephemera of the trip (tickets, booklets, receipts, currency), but I really didn't get the sense that I actually did anything besides, well, run around a lot.
2. Mindless Bumbling About: "Just relax. A city is a vibrant place with a rhythm all its own. If you just walk around and let the city come to you, you'll be able to experience it just the same as if you did the 10 Kilometer Multi-Stage Tourist Relay(tm)."
Pros: Lower blood pressure. Not feeling like you've just travelled n-thousand miles to a 12 hour/day job. Leaving yourself open to the random experiences that happen when you just pay attention. Having a lot of stories to tell.
Cons: If you're not careful, you end up in roughly the same spot as the Blitzkreigers... you don't remember all that much beyond "walking around some city", and you don't even get the consolation prize of seeing a whole bunch of stuff you vaguely remember. If you're extra special not careful, you get back home, sit on the couch, look around, and say "Did I actually go anywhere?"
So, where does that leave me? I have a decided allergy to the former, and have already experienced the bad parts of the latter. The happy medium I've chosen is "Bumbling About While Paying Attention". I think of it as the intersection of "being armed with a map" and "not particularly caring where I am."
It's the thing that allows me to completely fail at finding The Economist Bookstore on Regent Street and then find myself sitting on the same park bench in St. James Park as the guy in the bowler hat at the beginning of The Great Muppet Caper when Kermit &c. splash down in the pond.
It's the thing that has me inadvertently taking the longest route possible to find the Shaftesbury Theatre, and in the process finding Neal's Yard, i.e. a concentrated node of brightly colored earthy crunchy woo-woo in the middle of London.
It's the thing that allows me to pay attention to everything that normally gets filtered out. Put another way, it's consciously deciding to put away the urge to "get things done" for a while, and telling myself that it's okay just to explore.
It's the thing that keeps the stories coming.
