No one wants to call themselves a tourist.
No one goes through the long and winding line, stands nervously facing the border guard holding the stamp of permission to enter their country and answers the question “Purpose for your visit?” with “to be a tourist.” It’s not even an option on the customs form.
We who have returned from adventures invent other terms for what we were whilst we were away. Explorers, we call ourselves, wanderers, maybe. Pilgrims, if we really want to sound spiritual. Or, if any of us watched any of Anthony Bourdain’s global expeditions, we might choose another word and wear it proudly: Traveler.
“Be a traveler, not a tourist!” said the sign above Bourdain in the famous image above. He with his cigarette and angst and simple wardrobe and stunningly deep conversations that made him so magnetic and impossible to not watch, he of beautiful words and delicate insight to the places he went to. He who left us too soon. He believed it, and lived it, but since his passing I’ve seen so many people use his ethos not as a moral, ethical, or even spiritual foundation of their own travel, but as a way to judge the style, the means, or the itineraries of others.
I was at the Samhain (Halloween) Fire Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland a few years back with Sarah and our dear friend Beavs when it happened to me. When I did this, when I momentarily and accidentally repeated Bourdain’s mantra out loud and with an annoying air of superiority. I was watching a young girl pose for about twenty straight minutes in front of her mobile phone selfie camera that was on a tripod with a giant ring light. She hauled that thing all the way to the Fire Festival, and with an entire chaotic, beautiful, deeply historic and symbolic fire ritual happening not thirty feet from her, she spent the entire time taking selfies. You can see one of the poses below.
I remember asking those I was traveling with what the point was of coming, of making your way across whatever oceans or continents or even city blocks you had to make your way across to be there, in that place, watching those flames and those dancers dance, if all you were going to do was ignore the festival, and just take selfies for Instagram. I remember we probably laughed and thought “tourists,” under our breath like it was an insult, like we knew better, like we were something different, something better. Like we were Travelers.
I looked down shortly after taking the photograph, just after I took another image, this time of Sarah with her face painted, I looked over at Beavs with his own camera out capturing the insane revelry on stage of people in Pagan and Celtic attire, some topless, some with torches or flaming swords, and laughed. To her, I was doing the exact same thing she was, just aiming at something different.
The girl with the ring light never looked up from her myriad of poses and felt a guilt or pang of I’m missing it, and strangely, whilst photographing her, then Sarah, then Beavs, neither did I. We were both there, we both traveled some indeterminate but probably astronomical number of miles to be there, and we were both just capturing what we wished to capture, enjoying the event as we each wished to enjoy it.
I’ve felt the judgement too, I’ve been on the receiving end of the weaponization of the “Traveler not a Tourist” motto. I’ve mentioned things we’ve seen or done on trips, shown people itineraries of what we hoped to experience on trips we had upcoming, and I’ve felt the raised eyebrow and scoff that they wouldn’t do what we were planning on doing. They’d not dare stoop so low as to do touristy things. They were travelers, after all.
I’ve heard all the aloof advice to never go where the crowds go, to never bother with the famous restaurants or bars, to avoid the marquee things because after all, they are traps…Tourist traps.
I remember the judgement when I told people about kissing the Blarney Stone in Ireland. I remember people laughing and trying to tell me that’s not “Real” Ireland, that’s just a gimmick set up to siphon money from eager tourists and their deep, burning pockets.
I also remember kissing the Blarney Stone. I also remember the hilarious stories we were able to tell after we did so, from running past the “Fast Pass” passengers that showed up on white busses as long as whales because we were younger and faster, to applying massive thick layers of chapstick to our lips before we smooched it so we could wipe off the nastiness once the kiss was planted. I remember having an amazing day, exploring the castle and its grounds, realizing that sometimes the most clichè things are clichè because they are actually pretty fantastic, and earned it.
I’ve been wide-eyed and spellbound and struck with awed fascination in some new place more times than I can count. I’ve been gawking, I’ve been camera-to-nose and probably beyond awkward all over the planet. I’ve stood in jeans and a flannel shirt at 9pm in the middle of a sweltering Belizean jungle while Howler monkeys screamed like Jurassic Park dinosaurs and thought I’d die from sweating so much. I’ve stood in line to see castles and I’ve been to Temple Bar in Dublin, I’ve taken long arm selfies at famous places, I’ve been a tourist in every possible sense of the word.
I’ve also found hidden beaches that are only accessible after long and challenging hikes. I’ve stood atop “secret” mountaintops that I was told only the locals know about. I’ve sat with bar regulars in tiny pubs and screamed for Liverpool Football Club to find a way to win in the 90th minute. I’ve learned the customs and tried to speak the languages and did my best to show how much I might be from the United States but I wasn’t the “Ugly American” that so many loathe. I’ve been a traveler, too. In every other sense of the word.
“What’s the purpose of your visit?” I’ll surely be asked again the next time I step off a plane and into that wild snake of a line before first steps on foreign soils. Maybe I’ll say adventure, or travel, or fun. Maybe I’ll say I’m after life-altering and transformational, silly or ridiculous. Maybe I’ll stand there, bag packed after standing in a crowded airport alongside everyone else, and say I’m there to learn something new. To step out of my bubble.
Maybe I’ll say I’m a tourist, and I’m just there to do touristy things.
Maybe, just maybe, next time, I’ll pack a ring light too.
I love you all.
Be good.
