On Tourism

The ill-defined term of "tourism" has often perplexed many tourists and people living abroad. More ambiguous was the question of when a tourist stops becoming a tourist in the country he inhabits.

Etymologically, for most latin languages, a tourist is one who tours or travels around. Some dictionaries nonchalantly spice the definition with being away from home and most controversially, traveling for pleasure.

In greek, an alternative synonym to tourist (τουρίστας) is περιηγητής which means sightseer, which I find interestingly tautological when I think of a sightseer being one who sees things to be seen. Natural and historical/cultural landmarks are what we agreed upon as worth being seen. Does that make a seeker of beauty that is native to many countries less of a tourist? I wonder since I no longer seek beauty specific to landmarks unique to certain places when traveling.

In arabic سائح literally means wanderer or roamer. Doesn't that contradict the very definition of a tourist who's tour is often planned before he starts touring and guided by illustrated books and internet resources if not by tour guides? I personally prefer to vagabond when traveling, inviting adventure and surprise to my random walk. A while ago, I definitely used to plan my trips and follow the flow. Things change a lot.

In some languages, the variation of excursionist is still common. Etymologically, it derives from the latin ex cursum which means exiting the current/journey. I find this definition as the most accurate for a tourist's vocation especially one seeking a vacation to escape his daily routine. In some aspects, the current routine/journey could mean home, reinforcing the definition of tourists traveling away from home.

Surprisingly for many optimist tourists, not a single language mentions anything hedonistic in reference to touring or traveling. A significant number of these innocent touring optimists end up being robbed, ripped-off and humiliated when traveling, although you might argue that their intention was none of the above. It is not easy to generalize with masochists and masochist-ish adventurers around, but in most cases, one invests his capital on hedonistic escapades.

Cumulatively, we can agree that a tourist is one who escapes his routine to wander around sightseeing, whether he likes it or not.

From my substantially-diverse traveling experience, I have come to resolve the ambiguity between inhabiting and touring a place only after having experienced both for the same place. I have "lived" in Oeiras, Portugal three consecutive summers but I often felt like a tourist when in Lisbon regardless of my proficiency in Portuguese. I lived in a dorm by my research institute and went occasionally to Lisbon. My lifestyle converged very rapidly to a routine with the few social, food and entertainment options neighboring my dorm. Vicinity to work made it almost impossible by human nature to adopt a path besides the shortest one between home and work. I must have suffered from this laziness syndrome unconsciously.

This summer, I visited Portugal for one month with the intention of inhabiting the heart of Lisbon and so it was. It took me a couple of weeks to tour/sample most nearby and en route restaurants, coffee shops, and other services. Finally, I seemed to have found my favorite restaurants, coffee shop and meeting point thus putting an end to my tourism in Lisbon (extensively Portugal) and my excursions would necessitate my departure from Lisbon or to a certain extent, Portugal. Back when I lived in Oeiras, going to Lisbon almost always promised novelty and adventure but now only the virgin peripheral terrains of Portugal might appeal to my neofilia.

In other words, I felt like having finally lived in Portugal in contrast to visiting it, although the former required much less time than the latter. I have come to conclude that living in a place is not a function of time but rather  of options and services one has to experience and select from for his inevitable routine, especially when tailoring a certain schedule imposed by a regular job.

Another factor that disambiguates between touring and inhabiting a place is that of speaking the country's language and knowing its locals and their customs. All this helps one converge easier to a bearable routine that does not require a lot of random walk, mishaps, and learning through trial and error. For instance, I claim to have lived in Italy for less than two months in more than 15 different places, since I speak the language fluently, I "lived" there almost a decade  vicariously through friends and media, and I imagined very effortlessly a routine I could converge towards in most of the 15 places I have visited.

Trans-océanique

Crossing the ocean is suddenly not as fun as it used to be! Its mysterious nature and promise of the greener grass was what defined traveling. But alas, once the mysteries are unveiled and the neighboring grass has been harvested to a point of depletion, the best one can get from a transoceanic flight is some peace of mind for effective intro/retro/pro-spection and soul searching.

While Baudelaire and Pessoa struggle for the elsewhere, Berndard praises the intra-where:

Basically, like nine tenths of humanity, I always want to be somewhere else, in the place I have just fled from....he truth is that I am happy only when I am sitting in the car, between the place I have just left and the place I am driving to.  I am happy only when I am traveling; when I arrive, no matter where, I am suddenly the unhappiest person imaginable. 

Along these lines, one can argue that Schopenhauer and co. are in favor of the nowhere. This is how in our human nature we tend to relate to places, and what are friends and lovers but places we visit or inhabit... I believe that at some point in a man's life, his well-being becomes independent of his geographic location and vice versa. Nonetheless,  man shall never stop blaming it on his location, hoping that the elsewhere that he is ignorant of will unravel joy, perhaps eternally. That is the very bliss defining ignorance that we tend to loose as we grow older or abuse with alcohol and drugs. The modern man will eventually resort to these mind altering means and more severe and irreversible ones when he is finally convinced of "the unimportance of his location" which can translate to "the vanity of his existence" with a less materialistic tone. 

Bon Voyage!