I remember my Mom would always tell me how, when she was a kid, she would crane her neck up while walking along this one particular street in the city she grew up in, to look at the tops of the townhouses. She never understood why she liked them and local history was foreign to her, but she did it nonetheless.
Fast forward to when we lived in the same town as a family many years later and she’d found sources of local history and would tell us stories about particular houses and immensely enjoy just walking around the streets, pointing out facades and ornaments on old brick walls.
I have to be honest, I never really understood it nor did I particularly enjoy it when I was younger. Always the same stories, the same townhouses, the same amazement of being able to finally understand what one was looking at, reconnecting with a part of one’s identity that was lost for many years. But it must have rubbed off on me in some way because now I enjoy doing it too, walking around cities and just looking at buildings, getting to know local stories and being just as amazed, every time I get to do it.
But more so than that, I never used to like travelling, hiking, being spontaneous or any of that, and now I couldn’t imagine doing, and being, anything but.
Which leads me to today’s topic, local tourism. There’s not really a definition I found that’s actually saying what I mean with the term, perhaps apart from an article on a tourism marketing blog (which gives ideas on how to harness the power of people’s interest in local activities and flavors), but then, it’s not really encompassing all of it, either. So, I’ll try to come up with my own definition and I’ll try to be as precise as possible: “Local tourism is the practice of applying ideas, activities and methods of big-scale tourism to your local area, both in the city and outside.” To say it more simply, I wouldn’t count a walk in the neighborhood park you’ve been to a hundred times before as local tourism, but going to a local art gallery for the first time – yes.
There’s a world of local activity pretty similar to what I’m describing, though I’ve learned about it only recently. It is also way more nature- and exercise-related than the thing I have in mind, and the idea is called microadventures. I first stumbled upon it last year by randomly buying a book from the travel section (since big travel sorta wasn’t happening at the time) which was called ‘Raus und machen’ (‘Go out and do’) by Christo Foerster. I felt pretty inspired by the whole thing, and so seemed the author, as the first guy to popularize the idea in general is a British adventurer named Alistair Humphreys.
Later I learned that there is also a Polish version of the movement – microexpeditions. It’s a blog/webpage by a couple of explorers, Asia and Łukasz Długowski, who offer trips to stalk deer and wolves in untouched parts of forests. They also run a charity focused on preserving the wild outdoors, and seem to be generally motivated to teach people how to take care of the environment, apart from having fun while camping under the stars and getting paid for it.
All of those guys have a bit of a different idea of what microadventures mean, though essentially they’re the same. Alistair writes on the topic: “A microadventure is an adventure that is short, simple, local, cheap – yet still fun, exciting, challenging, refreshing and rewarding.” Christo has expanded the definition a bit by setting up certain rules for himself, which separate general outdoor trips from microadventures, and these rules are: “1) only public transit, including railway (no car, no plane); 2) sleeping outside (no tent); 3) all in all the trip can last at most 72 hours; 4) and, of course, #leavenotrace, meaning to leave everything the way it was found.” Lastly, Asia and Łukasz propose more of an insight or vibe than specific rules: “Because adventure is everywhere. In the mountains, at sea and in the city. It’s possible to have an adventure after work, before work or at night. You don’t have to be an athlete or a daredevil. All you need is a stone’s throw away from home and a couple of hours of free time.”
Christo also writes a lot about sleeping in hammocks in the wild, an idea I find incredibly fascinating and inspiring, though have yet to put into practice. I’m a bit afraid, I have to admit, not being much of an outside-sleeper myself, but I think I’ll get there. This article is more or less a testament to how small steps in travelling can spark an interest in (and the necessary courage for) big travels anyway, and so I’m sure, sooner or later, I’ll be able to hang around between some trees as well.
It may seem that the topic of this post is very convenient, or quite the opposite, depending on your sensibilities. I’d just like to clarify that this has nothing to do with the pandemic, I’ve been trying to get out like this for years, and the fact that all of this comes in handy in times like these is just a lucky coincidence. I also never knew before, similarly to the data stuff last month, that people were already doing this. Not that I thought I’d come up with some new travelling style, it’s just something I was fortunate to discover for myself and hone over the last few years.
So without further ado, a bit of stories, a bit of insight, and a whole lot of travelling.
- Being a tourist in your own city
I have to thank my first travel buddy for teaching me how to get out and just book tickets for stuff, and encouraging me to find places to see and actually going there, though I suppose my very first tourism adventures started even a little while before that. I was lucky enough that someone from my family moved to one of the most touristic cities in Europe, Vienna, and so I had a very convenient gateway to learn how to get around a big city. And, even more conveniently, they hadn’t visited their own city yet either, just living there, cruising from university to the dorm and back, and so we had the chance to discover the place together.
I remember a few early trips, the historic center, the Hofburg, the zoo, one winter with frozen lanes connecting a few ice rinks poured out in front of City Hall, and I remember feeling very adventurous. I mean I wasn’t of age yet and I was sort of living the dream. I haven’t stopped visiting the city since, getting more into the cultural aspect of it, Pride for a few years, the Ronacher musical theatre, Schönbrunn, finally, and a very special viewing of the original The Kiss painting by Klimt.
In the days of those early travels I also started to learn more about the industrial and folkloristic history of my hometown at the time, and I grew fond of walking around the streets and pointing out buildings. I also had the opportunity to visit a local porcelain factory, which has by now become a cultural hotspot, and local coal mining settlements, one of which is a nation-famous movie set.
When I moved out to study at university I inadvertently found myself at the center of yet another touristic city. I didn’t make much use of it, staying inside most of the time, and anyway, it’d seen it on a school trip several years before, so what else was there to discover, really?
But, having boatloads of free time, learning to appreciate local culture, starting to learn how to travel, and playing with the idea of becoming a local guide myself, I started exploring the city a little. I bought tourist guides, visited the Tourism Information Center and simply started walking. I did what I thought tourists always did – visit churches and galleries and take loads of pictures. I didn’t succeed fully, as there are many things to discover still, and it’s easier to become a tourist in your own city when you’re showing someone else around, but I got around a bit anyway.
I climbed church and university towers; knew the zoo animals by name; took panorama shots of the city; saw a local mural exhibit in the artsy, run-down part of town; I’ve walked through almost every park; discovered several left-over German inscriptions on the old townhouses and have even seen a local play or two. Not so long ago I also managed to become a full-fledged resident of the city by climbing the local mountain with friends and getting to learn some of the local history from a stereotypically crazy archeologist we chanced upon on the way. Moreover, most of the local castle ruins and far-out city districts are known to me, too, and once I went on a walk along the river which took me about two hours and onto many yet untreaded paths. The 2020 situation didn’t limit the possibility of local exploration either, as my friends and I decided to bike around locally until we came to know every gravel road in a couple-mile radius.
Which isn’t to say that visiting your hometown as a tourist is the end all, be all of traveling, of course. And I certainly know it’s not the grand, picturesque adventure people want, saving up to go to an exotic country for two weeks instead (which I get), but still, it has many advantages that make it worth giving it a shot.
It’s easy and cheap, and it gets you moving. Not to mention that it’s more sustainable, which, willing or not, we have to face, since global tourism is one of the least eco-friendly industries possible. There are many sources on the topic, and I’ll offer up three to support my claim: an easy overview of the impacts of tourism on the environment, collected by BBC’s study support resource called ‘Bitesize’ (which is quite a nifty name, considering the way they format their content), for a more elaborate insight – a blog article by Tourism Teacher, in which the author explains the negative environmental impacts of tourism more in-depth (and with plenty of examples and resources on where to go next to learn more), and if anyone feels compelled to read up even more, lastly I’m proposing a summary of the negative impacts of tourism in a paper published in a journal related to Agronomic Studies in the Mediterranean, one of many papers covering the subject, though that particular one manages, in my view, to give a rather succinct view of the topic.
To sum up this point, of course being a tourist in your own city doesn’t have to include walking around semi-aimlessly, looking at buildings. Everyone likes a different way of spending their vacation time. I’m simply saying that this method is a great way to learn something new, to entangle yourself in the roots of the place you call home, while saving some bucks and a piece of the planet. It doesn’t always have to be Bali. Sometimes it can be the local lake instead.
- Applying the same rules when going abroad
As much as I am aware, and wary, of the impact travelling, especially by plane, has on the environment, I still enjoy it immensely. I like the thrill of the unknown, and seeing something new, getting outside of my comfort zone. I’ve been lucky enough to see a good chunk of the Earth already, though I think I haven’t always fully appreciated the opportunities that I’ve had. Especially abroad I used to be a very goal-oriented, efficient traveller. Get a good guide, pick what you ‘absolutely have to see’, check it all off, have pictures to prove it and fall into the hotel-bed dead-tired, just to do it all over again the next day. Which is, nothing wrong with that, if you enjoy that sort of travelling. I can especially empathize when you have to save up for a trip like that and don’t see yourself visiting a second time. Trips like those have their upsides, of course, you really get to plan ahead and have in mind what you actually want to see, you get a lot of choice and freedom, when you take control over what you plan to do. And I’m totally for that.
But the principles of local tourism are a bit different, I found, more focussed on spontaneity and serendipity, if anything else, and a mindset aimed at experiencing things in the moment rather than having a checklist to complete.
And so, even being abroad, two trips stand out where I’ve applied these ideas of local tourism to the places I visited and I was equally as pleased with the results. Perhaps I didn’t see the most relevant things or didn’t have planned experiences but does that matter, really?
The first one was when I did a semester abroad in Germany. Perhaps not the first example of a ‘trip’ anyone would think of, more like a short ‘living there’, but still. Choosing that particular school and town was an adventure in itself, because I just pretty much picked it at random. I didn’t know where I was going at all but I liked the university patron – Johannes Gutenberg. On the list of the available universities that was the only name that rang a bell. Also, despite growing up in Germany for a few years, it was an entirely different city, and an entirely different experience, to be there on my own and as an adult, at that.
In order to get to know the city, and because I had no Internet for the first week or so, I tried to take part in any activity that I could possibly sign up for. There were ‘class trip’-type excursions, guided tours through the city and just me, walkin’, till I knew the nearby roads by heart.
Later, as the semester progressed and I started having friends, I got to have even more chances to practice my local tourism. I took the guys on trips around the city, explaining what the tour guides had told me, but I was also told local stories; I took tons of pictures, for school projects and just so; there was one trip to a nearby city on a rainy day; trips down the Rhine; lots of local entertainment, mainly organized as part of the university – literary readings, film project showings, that sort of thing; I learned to partake in the local practice of ‘market breakfasts’, which, to put it elegantly, is deeply connected with the city’s rich vinification tradition; and one very intense day where a friend from China took us to a Chinese all-you-can-eat restaurant outside the city, where we did nothing but eat and listen to stories.
The second trip I want to mention, to Rhodes, was an entirely different kettle of fish, though one thing was the same – I had absolutely zero clue where I was going at first. I just told the travel agent back home, when I was very spontaneously booking the deal – I don’t care where I’m going, as long as it’s Greece. It was the first time I went on a plane-vacation on my own, I had bought a sort-of package holiday, but of the budget kind. Which meant that we all flew together on a chartered flight and we could book the same trips from the travelling agency, but apart from that everyone was staying at different hotels and mine was all the way in fucking nowhere in Ialysos, a town just outside of Rhodes.
In the end I was happy with it, able to steer clear of the hustle and bustle of the capital, but I remember that on the first day I was absolutely pissed. It was hot and uncomfortable and I didn’t know what to do with myself. A whole week! By myself, in a country where I didn’t speak the language! What was I thinking!
Somehow, on autopilot I guess, the years of local tourism practices kicked in and I just started walking around. On my first day my back got burned and I hated everything, but it was worth it in the end. I booked some all-day trips to fill the week and whenever a nearby name of a place struck my fancy I would just go there. And it all worked out. I saw a city all about sponges; a monastery after which half the population on the island was called; I visited the base of the Colossus of Rhodes; I jumped into bays from ships; I watched football in a British bar; I visited an acropolis in a town made up of sugar-cube houses and, after hearing a tour guide mention a thermal bath ‘off there on a cliff’ as we were cruising past on a big boat, I simply went there a couple of days later. And it turned out to be one of the highlights of the trip.
Local tourism, the way I understand it, isn’t much different from regular old sightseeing, especially when practiced abroad, I get it. But as I wrote before, there is a certain spontaneity to it, and the fact that it’s not a ‘big thing’, it’s about discovering things, mostly by walking, and staying local to where you are in the given moment. It’s more about letting things happen and allowing the place to come to you, instead of having high expectations and collecting postcard-like memories, just to be able to later list what you have seen and such. So despite having those two experiences in faraway places, I feel like the spirit of the type of tourism was pretty much the same as if I had walked around my own home town.
- Setting a theme
Over the years of just ‘going outside and doing something’, which is how I initially started my local tourism experience, I inadvertently found an idea that made travelling like that all the more fun. I simply started setting a theme to each exploration, because it felt right, but when I think back on it now, I suppose that was also the aspect that distinguished it from regular sightseeing. There are several themes I have picked over time, related to objects, modes of transportation and media, and I’ve compiled a handful below, as they all show the overall idea I’m trying to express.
The first theme that I can remember, and one that was chosen for me and that I hated as a child, was how when we were with our grandparents, we took the train for 5 minutes, just to walk back home through a valley for 1.5 hours or so. I used to dread it, as it was something we used to do quite often back in the day, and I hated walking.
But last year, when I visited my grandpa again for the first time in a long time, the first thing I asked him to do was to take that same train, to walk through that same valley. Suddenly it seemed laughably small and short, and the trees and mills seemed to have withered; but I’m genuinely happy that I got to do it again.
I also applied this idea on other occasions, for example during my semester abroad when I didn’t have any sort of Internet connection yet and nothing to do on the weekend, so I just took a train for a couple of minutes and walked back to my dorm, through a seemingly endless sea of vineyards.
Around that time, those weeks living on my own, I also developed a fancy for doing something I call ‘photo hikes’, the next theme on my list. Pretty self-explanatory, and simple overall, but also a very specific kind of joy. I don’t know what it is about the process, about the focus of trying to find good pictures, playing with angles and settings and scales, but it just adds something special to a hike, at least for me. It puts me in flow, too, which is another nice bonus.
And it’s not even so much about the pictures (even though I do like nice pictures), but it’s simply the action of releasing the shutter that’s very satisfying. Catching views and seeing them immortalized in a way is a very interesting thing. Also, it’s, like, one of my few only hobbies. I mean, writing is one, too – just for now, I hope – but photography is actually one of those things that I like doing just for the sake of it, I don’t need to be good at it, it’s just supposed to be fun. But I digress.
Another thing I’ve had a passion for for a while is everything fantasy/medieval-related. I mean, I like the Lord of the Rings and all, and several other iterations of the genre, and in terms of structures that I fancy there’s hardly anything better than a castle. As it were, moving to study at university not only did I choose a touristic city, but I found myself at the very heart of a region rich in history and historic buildings of all shapes and sizes, including castles, so the plans for many weekends were pretty clear.
At the time I even owned a castle-map and it was very pleasant and engaging to scour the nearby lands for anything from mere remnants of former glory, all the way to beautifully restored palaces in which to rest for a couple of hours. Oh, the memories, there were so many castles in my life, not just around here but in general. I can remember tough hikes; carrying swords; getting fascinated by stories of kings and princesses; slipping through terrifying dungeons; stealing apples from orchards; spending a nice picnic-y afternoon with friends at the same castles years later; and a seemingly endless collection of pictures upon pictures of views of rivers and ruins and lands stretching beneath my feet. I don’t plan my trips around castles much anymore but whenever I have the chance to see a new one – I’ll be certain to check it out.
Along the same vein I have now switched my interests from castles to forests and it’s been one of my great pleasures to explore the local forests, to visit them wherever I am, to go on a autumn walk with a flask of hot, sweet tea, just to enjoy the serenity of the trees. I remember the first summer I did this, where I visited every forest around town I could get to, and how I discovered the most beautiful places, completely sheltered from the busy, noisy day-to-day in the city. I remember even as a kid riding through mighty forests on horseback, looking around and admiring the trees or hiding in the them, climbing rocky outcroppings and being generally calm there – well except for that one tree, but that’s a story for another day – because the only thing truly terrifying when you’re alone in the woods is happening on other people. But the trees themselves – well, they always remind me of Ents, and Ents are the pinnacle of tranquility, after all.
But not only representations of times past or thickets of friendly, gangly saplings beckoned me, I very often get influenced by pop culture and media to visit certain places. Even though I wouldn’t count it as local tourism, the most prevalent example of me doing this was to visit 500 Boylston Street, the building which housed the fictional law firm Crane, Poole & Schmidt, from the series Boston Legal, which is one of my absolute favorites. And yes, despite all of the things I got to see in Boston and the States in general back then, to get to stand under that building (where they didn’t even film or anything, mind you) was pretty much the best part of it all. Oh and Broadway, but then again, story for another day.
In a more local sense two pieces of media stand out. One was, and it was also how I started travelling on my own in general, when I started following this band around Poland. Not a very extraordinary thing, I realize, being a groupie, even if it’s for an ensemble singing international classics from musicals in Polish. In a year I went to about 12 or so of their concerts, to plenty of cities all around. I always stayed the night, at some wacky rooms or hotels, visiting cities I’d never seen before. The group is called Studio Accantus, and I was so into what they did that it inadvertently taught me how to travel solo. Which is nice, and I also got to listen to some good music on the way.
The other one, which is a long story deserving of its own post, was when I visited some old Korean orphanage buildings in a tiny town in Lower Silesia. I’d got to know about the story by meeting the author on a university trip and it so absolutely ruined me that I couldn’t let it go for a long time. The Reader’s Digest version is that there was a bunch of Korean kids brought to Poland in the 50’s, communist bro-countries helping each other out, and all that. One of the kids got sick and had to be taken to a hospital in Wrocław, where she unfortunately died. Her grave is still there, and so is the grave of the doctor who took care of her, and so are the ruined buildings of the orphanage which used to house the kids in the town some ways away. I visited all of them and I saw all of it. It’s crass to call it ‘local tourism’ but essentially that’s what it was. And the story isn’t really the point in this article. It’s just the motivation that led me to visiting a small town that one time and urbexing a bunch through old school buildings which are falling apart unfortunately. An adventure for sure, and just a glimpse into what amazing and surprising history is hidden all around.
Finally, the pinnacle of my solo-travels and local tourism – my roundtrip around Germany last summer. I don’t know if it could be considered ‘local’ tourism at all, but then again I was visiting friends and some places I knew, and seeing as it’s my home country in a way, it did feel distinctly local. Not to mention that I followed the same rules that fit into my definition of local tourism, so I think it counts. The theme was – bring a backpack and just go, always picking the next stop on the way. I’d never thought I’d be able to do anything like that at all, ever. Alone, without planning. I’d only bought my ticket to the first stop, Vienna, and after that – I didn’t know. I bought all tickets on the go and without much forethought or warning, really, I just called people up and suddenly a lot of things were happening.
And it was the most incredible summer. Meeting new and old friends; doing laundry on the way; visiting new places, learning new ways of living; being able to attend a christening; enjoying peaceful farm life, away from it all; having boatloads of fun; staying in a hostel for the first time; reconnecting with family; and feeling pretty capable of following through with one’s own plans. All in all, a trip worth taking, and made only better, I think, by adhering to the principles of keeping it local, spontaneous and somewhat more sustainable.
I can see now that I’ve been playing around with the idea of local tourism for a pretty long time, and it’s interesting for me to see so many of my experiences summed up this way. I like travelling like that because it’s easy and very adaptable, and it’s a wonderful way to make one’s surroundings more interesting. And, of course, it’s a pretty simple and straightforward way to get your mind off things when you need a quick break but can’t, or don’t want to, splurge on an exotic vacation.
Which isn’t to say that I won’t ever travel big again, it’s just that travelling small is good, too. I can’t wait to get a bit more into the microadventure side of things, to finally sleep in that hammock and let not only feet, but also my soul, dangle, as the Germans would say. But I’m sure sooner or later I’ll get there, and in due time I’ll have plenty more stories and experiences to fondly look back on.
Lastly, one huge advantage of local travelling is that it’s a great way to build confidence. When I started high school I couldn’t imagine ever stepping on a plane on my own or leaving the continent or, in fact, any of what I’ve described here; and now, slowly but surely, and thanks to many friends and close folx, I managed to be at a place where travelling isn’t scary anymore, quite the opposite – it’s great fun.
Introduction:
- MyTravelResearch, Local Tourism Marketing – The Low Hanging Fruit, https://www.mytravelresearch.com/local-love/
- Alistair Humphreys, Microadventures, https://alastairhumphreys.com/microadventures-3/
- Christo Foerster, Mikroabenteuer – einfach gute Outdoor-Erlebnisse vor der Haustür, https://www.christofoerster.com/mikroabenteuer
- Mikrowyprawy, https://www.mikrowyprawy.com.pl/
Being a tourist in your own city:
- Wien, https://www.wien.info/en
- Fabryka Porcelany, http://www.fabryka-porcelany.pl/
- Zabytki Techniki, https://www.zabytkitechniki.pl/poi/1715
- Wrocław, https://www.wroclaw.pl/
- BBC, Tourism. Positive and negative impacts of tourism, https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zqk7hyc/revision/3
- Tourism Teacher, Environmental impacts of tourism, https://tourismteacher.com/environmental-impacts-of-tourism/
- Sunlu U. Environmental impacts of tourism. In : Camarda D. (ed.), Grassini L. (ed.). Local resources and global trades: Environments and agriculture in the Mediterranean region. Bari : CIHEAM, 2003. p. 263-270 (Options Méditerranéennes : Série A. Séminaires Méditerranéens; n. 57) https://om.ciheam.org/om/pdf/a57/04001977.pdf
Applying the same rules when going abroad:
Setting a theme:
- Zeitzgrund, https://www.thueringen.info/zeitzgrund-und-muehltal.html
- 500 Boylston Street, https://500boylston.buildingengines.com/
- Europejski Szlak Zamków i Pałaców, Zamki i Pałace Dolnego Śląska, http://szlakzamkowipalacow.eu/zamki-i-palace/
- Regionalna Dyrekcja Lasów Państwowych we Wrocławiu, https://www.wroclaw.lasy.gov.pl/
- Jolanta Krysowata, Skrzydło anioła, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20798873-skrzyd-o-anio-a-historia-tajnego-o-rodka-dla-korea-skich-dzieci?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=Y95XUNcySf&rank=1
- Personal Instagram (@neyenna), Summer 2020, https://www.instagram.com/p/CEixJV5H67u/
Outside Max 