Are you a tourist or a traveler?

Before you get all defensive about being a tourist or a traveler, there’s no ‘wrong’ answer. 

Real or imagined?

I was inspired by a question on reddit the other day discussing locals complaining about foreigners coming into ‘their’ spaces. My response was, I thought, masterful, witty and erudite –

“So, first off – one lesson from my 60 years is that people complain. That is simply a thing that happens and if there is nothing super obvious to complain about someone is going to find some trivial thing to complain about.

Is it a legit complaint? Maybe? I don’t think having an occasional foreigner wander into the local bar is going to change the experience. If it gets swarmed with tourons who want an ‘authentic experience’ except, ya know, in English and with menu items they can easily understand, that’s a problem.

It would kind of hack me off to be excluded from a bar or restaurant simply because I’m not from the neighborhood but, let’s be honest, I’ve felt unwelcome in places here in the US where I wasn’t a local.

Oregonians complain about all the Californians who’ve moved up and changed our political culture. Heck, here in central Oregon the big complaint is about people moving over from west of the mountains and ‘trying to liberalize us’. Rednecks complain about non-Caucasians moving into their neighborhoods. Panamanians complain about all the gringos who’ve caused prices to increase in certain areas.

If you are visiting a place and trying to make it change to suit you better; you are the problem. If you’re not trying to change it, what can they complain about?”

If we are away from home does that make us tourists or travelers?

We are venturing out this fall as long term travelers; my wife will technically be a Digital Nomad as she will continue to work remotely. I’m over it and plan to spend a lot of time writing and drinking coffee. I’ve put a fair amount of thought into the ‘tourist vs traveler’ conversation and while I don’t necessarily want to live like a local, I for sure don’t want to live like an American in a foreign country.

When we were in England back in the 80’s we were a novelty in our village; we rented a place 15 miles from the airbase and did most of our shopping off base except certain things that were just WAY cheaper on base – like cigarettes. I could buy a carton (10 packs of 20) in the commissary for just slightly more than what a single pack of 10 cost me at the local grocery. Our rent was higher than our neighbors because we were Americans and the perception was that we could afford to pay more. Which was partly true, we were better off than some of our neighbors but not compared to some others. 

To a certain extent we ‘lived like locals’. We had our milk delivered by the same guy as our neighbors. We gathered at the end of the close (british word for cul-de-sac)with them to get food from the chip van on a Friday evening. 

We weren’t necessarily treated like locals; I got a ticket for driving on an expired MOT certificate and when I went to court the (English) person in front of me had been cited for the exact same thing. He was fined 10 GBP and given an option to pay it off at 1 pound per week. I was fined 100 GBP and required to provide payment before leaving the court.

A rose by any other name….

This morning someone inquired in a Facebook group about what are the requirements to be considered a nomad. I think it’s a question of what you want to call yourself; if you say you’re a nomad and someone else says you aren’t, who cares? My experience is that there is a statistically significant percentage of the population who just wants to be ‘right’ no matter the situation and that requires them to prove other people wrong.

But, one of the comments got me to deep thinking –

I have no home to return to nor an address and call myself a wanderer, a slow traveler and sometimes a nomad. I am not homeless, wherever I sleep on any particular night is home. I consider the whole world my home, it doesn’t matter which country I am in. I don’t consider moving around in my birth country “travelling”. My definition is that I must go to a foreign country and culture to say that I am travelling. That’s just me though.

I think that’s a really interesting perspective – I don’t consider moving around in my birth country “travelling”.

Is it about time or space?

I’ve always viewed it more from a time perspective. ‘Traveling’ has always been about being temporarily away from home; sometimes that’s a few hours drive to another part of the state for a few days, sometimes it’s days or weeks in another state or country.

Putting more serious thinking behind it, though; I didn’t consider the 2 years we lived in Florida to be ‘traveling’ nor the 4 years in England. But when we visited York or Dublin for 3 days, that was ‘traveling’. The 4 years we were living outside of D.C. wasn’t ‘traveling’ but when we went from there to Virginia Beach for 5 days, that WAS traveling. Huh. 

Does size matter?

As an American, I also have to wonder if the size of your birth country would impact that opinion. In order to drive to another country from where we live it’s like 8 hours north to Canada. Or twice that to Mexico. However, getting to an entirely different climate/environment is about 3 hours drive time to the west. So if I drive 3 hours to Portland – which is a large metropolitan area with a different climate than the mid-sized desert city I call home – is that ‘traveling’? What if I keep going for another couple of hours and go to Lincoln City which is a coastal community? If I drive 5 hours east to Idaho I’m still in my birth country but in a different state. Is that ‘traveling’? 

What is the dividing line?

Getting back to the original question – tourist or traveler – certainly that is a question of time on site, right? Or… maybe not….

I would submit that the dividing line between tourist and traveler is actually behavioral. We spent two weeks in France and we we were most definitely tourists. We stayed in hotels, ate in restaurants and spent our days going to museums and exhibits. Same for the two weeks we spent in New Zealand – definitely tourists. On the other hand, I spent 10 days in Germany, Switzerland and Austria where I engaged in very little typical tourist behavior – I was taking care of business so aside from a day spent on my own wandering around Berlin I would classify myself as a traveler for that trip.

Our plan for our upcoming adventure is to stay for several weeks at each location so while we will be doing some things tourists typically do, we’ll also be hanging out like locals a significant portion of the time.

I have no idea if we’ll be tourists or travelers

I also don’t think it matters

I think the important thing is to travel. And I would say that being a tourist is fine, as long as you are a CONSIDERATE tourist. As a tourist, a visitor, you have no right to ask anyone to change their behavior. It’s not up to anyone else to make you feel comfortable or cater to your needs.