There is a question that I hate and that returns every summer with the same punctuality as the heat waves. He is the star wild card of the small talk seasonal. It is asked by friends, co-workers, family members and even that neighbor with whom you barely exchange a couple of words when there is no other choice: “Are you going somewhere on vacation?”
Most summers my answer has been exactly the same: I'm not going anywhere. Which automatically diminishes my aura when faced with an interlocutor who expects to hear the name of some Greek island. Lately, I get the feeling that the word “vacation” has become practically synonymous with “travel” and that it is almost an obligation to always have a destination booked.
However, I have never felt that need. Not because I'm not interested in knowing the world. On the contrary. I am fascinated by the stories that places hide, the traditions that survive the passage of time or the way in which a city can explain centuries of history just by walking through its streets. In fact, I have taken trips during my summer vacations. The last one, to Berlin in 2022.
What I have never understood is that the idea of traveling is so popular because it is necessary, because you have free time or because it is uncomfortable to always have to say that you have not yet been to that place that everyone talks about. On that list there are many very popular destinations on Instagram that don't generate any type of fomo in me and I don't care if I die without having ever been. If I go, I want to do it when I feel that that place has something to tell me and I also have something to take to it.
Eva Darron
For example, I have never been to Paris and, honestly, it doesn't keep me awake either. If one day I go, great. And if it never happens, my life will remain exactly the same happy or unhappy. No matter how beautiful or touristy it is, I currently have no personal reason to take a trip that would allow me to cross it off the list.
Not traveling is not having nothing to do
It may be an unpopular opinion, but I think we have systematically begun to confuse traveling with consuming destinations. Vacations have become another form of performance and summer is evaluated by the number of kilometers traveled or the photographs we can show when we return. Resting has fallen short; You have to optimize your free time.
Travel gives you the opportunity to do something new and gain a kind of life milestone. However, behind those trips, there is often more of a to-do list than genuine curiosity. It is no coincidence that in both places thousands of people end up taking exactly the same route, the same photograph and even the same breakfast made viral by the algorithm.
So I don't think that traveling automatically makes anyone a more cultured or open-minded person either. I have met people who have barely left their province because life, health or the economy have never allowed it and who, even so, had an infinitely more interesting conversation than others who have already been to the five continents.
hlomo Shalev
Being interested in other cultures, knowing the history of the world and being able to talk for hours about literature, cinema or philosophy has nothing to do with having traveled or not. You can be a tireless traveler who has traveled half the planet without really stopping to understand any of the places they passed through beyond the cliché and the souvenir. And vice versa.
I'm not going to collect destination magnets on the refrigerator
So I don't care if I can say that I have been there or here, to travel I need a reason that goes beyond the act itself. A concert that I have been waiting for for years, a gastronomy that fascinates me, a language that I want to learn, a story that awakens my curiosity about culture or even a passage in world history that leaves me with the feeling that I need to see that corner with my own eyes. I want to feel that that place has something to tell me and I also have something to take to it.
Only then does the desire to travel appear for me. Not because the calendar shows a vacation or because I found a cheap flight, but because that place has already begun to be part of my story before I even set foot in it. That is the only type of trip for which I am willing to sacrifice hours of sleep without alarms or the ability to indulge my hobbies and passions without schedules.
Jametlene Reskp
The important trips of my life have always found me first, I have not gone out to force them. Nor do I need to know all the possible countries before reaching a certain age, I prefer to think that places have their own moment and that some appear in our lives when we are ready to listen to them. It may take you years to visit places that others know in their twenties. You may never set foot in some of the destinations that appear again and again on every must-see list. And I don't feel like that makes me miss anything.
Cover photo | Maria Yuste
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