#travelgram: Travelling in the age of Instagram and Airbnb

Why it is important to question travel critically and to reclaim it as a lived experience for our own consciousness

Travel broadens the horizon. Travel means expanding one's boundaries and trying new things. Speaking in clichés: eating pasta in Italy, croissants with jam at the Eiffel Tower in Paris, and a British breakfast with beans on toast in England. Looking at the Colosseum, the Arc de Triomphe and Big Ben and posing in front of them for Instagram. Or you can simply get on one of the red double-decker buses, which have existed outside London for a long time anyway. Sightseeing tourism is not only a phenomenon in metropolises; after all, you can even take a little crimson-red tourist train through Würzburg and up to the fortress without having set foot on Würzburg soil yourself.

Originally, the word 'travel' comes from the Old High German word reisa, which meant something like "departure" or "setting out". In antiquity and the Middle Ages, travellers were predominantly pilgrims, for whom arduous pilgrimage demanded a great deal both physically and spiritually. It was only after the Industrial Revolution that people began to travel for its own sake, which eventually led to our understanding of 'tourism'.

Through budget flights and hotel comparison portals, travel has become more accessible. Whilst you then stroll through the pedestrian zones in Barcelona, London or Budapest on short city trips, you are bombarded everywhere with colourful, image-rich menu boards or even directly accosted by a new generation of market criers: "Pasta, good pizza and red wine." Typical for Barcelona . . . or not?

Actually, it is quite natural that these hotspots respond to the masses of tourists and offer them what they expect to be typical of the country's culture. In Spain, for example, being served paella or watching flamenco dancers. However, Barcelona, for instance, is located in Catalonia and has as much to do with Andalusian culture as Würzburg has to do with Oktoberfest and the dirndl. Nevertheless, it is not unlikely that paella will be offered to you in Barcelona, because understandably locals just want to earn money. Ultimately, this can lead to the creation of a monoculture, whereby local traditions are then staged more as a show for tourists.

"If someone really just wants to relax and lie on the beach, they can go to the Baltic Sea and don't have to fly to Thailand." To a certain extent that is probably true, and if someone is looking for pure relaxation through doing nothing, couldn't a trip to northern Germany or the nearest gravel pit really not quite fulfil their purpose? After all, you would probably save several hundred euros, some travel stress, and you could take the shampoo in the 1-litre version without any problems. In that respect, travel is demanding, exhausting, and ultimately more expensive than staying at home and not really sustainable for the environment or the local population. Of course, there are ways to reduce the negative ecological side effects of two weeks of beach holiday as much as possible, but ultimately you should pause and ask yourself whether it is worth it.

I absolutely do not want to condemn this type of travel and advise you to stay on the sofa instead and watch YouTube videos about the Bahamas. It just seems as though travel is another area of life that, contrary to self-promotion on Instagram and all-encompassing commercialisation, must be lived consciously so that we can truly enjoy the benefits of experience. There is the possibility of getting to know other cultures authentically and going beyond one's boundaries, perhaps even experiencing small adventures by deliberately staying away from sightseeing routes and places. However, this requires deliberate distancing from what we think we know in advance, in order to reclaim this experience exclusively for ourselves. Otherwise, it happens that we travel to a new place of which we have already seen clear, very colourful and perfectly retouched images. How is reality supposed to keep up with that? Actually, only bitter disappointment can follow. Should you still take out your mobile phone and take "nice pictures"? Does it become more authentic if you add #paris #travelgram underneath?

A negative side effect of travel becoming easier and cheaper is also the enormous pressure that these endless possibilities can exert. Nowadays, it seems almost normal in a CV to be able to present a semester abroad or even to list a high school year in the USA under the heading of school education.

I think it is important to uphold the original meaning of "travel" and to challenge oneself for it. In that respect, it is enough for a city child to go to the countryside to get to know a different lifestyle. Becoming familiar with a previously unknown landscape, people and culture contributes in a small way to understanding and thus also to (inter-)national relations. This may not replace political cooperation, but as a remedy against prejudice or ignorance, personal contact is unquestionable. If travel takes place primarily in the mind – begins and ends there – perhaps positive changes can emerge from holiday impressions.
For my 74-year-old grandmother, that means booking a coach trip through England on her own. "Because I've never been there," she said. And I find this motivation somehow admirable.

Anna-Sophie Humer-Hager