Unexpectedly I have become a traveler myself. In my 30s. To find myself. I prefer traveling and writing than reading although from time to time an article crosses my path. Chris Anande for example, makes a point walking through places to get ample time to understand what is happening around him. Tiziano Terzani has been suggested to me by an italian friend. What is good about such writing is seeing another mind tackling the now familiar problem of making sense of the unknown. A random acquaintance telling you about their 1 week stay in Vietnam will likely be different. It's superficial and full of cliches. They go some place to see themselves and tell you about all the things they noticed that somehow don't rhyme, like the concert goer who is eager to spot whenever the pianist hits a wrong key. "There, see! What a shame!" Good travel writers are actually open-minded and will want to discover what is actually happening in another place independently from them. They might compare, mis-understand and mis-judge but they are still trying. Terzani in particular tried to adopt the specifically east-asian brand of astrology and explore what would happen if you believed in this other system, who the people behind it are. The same friend who suggested me the book told me back in Shanghai that she has tried to live like a muslim and a christian while being raised an atheist to find herself. Religion did not turn out to hold her answer to life but she felt the necessity and tried. That's what the famous "elsewhere" in traveling is about, finding yourself. A recent article[^1] by a professor in cultural studies noticed a decline in the appeal of this elsewhere. Young Americans where not so keen anymore to go find themselves in a Yoga retreat or teaching English in a monastery in Laos. They trace the history of this kind of travel all the way back to Rousseau's noble savage and the European noble man's grand tour. The idea remained unchanged: go to a strikingly different place, find the true essence of it and in the process, recognize who you were yourself. It was just as much a feeling of superiority as it was about learning. My world is too complicated so I go to a simpler one to have fun. That kind of traveling had been interrupted in the past, after the first world war most notably but only because the world grew more hostile. This time, they say, it's different as people don't want to leave for distant places anymore. They either can see everything they want on their phones, or don't believe in otherness altogether anymore. I know for a fact that this is not entirely true, if anything, the people doing the traveling are changing. The young Californian surfer I met in Kamakura for a beer and a breathtaking sea-storm with a sunset over Mt. Fuji, definitely did engage in a 3-month journey over south east Asia and had thoughts about anything from the specific geometry of waves, to garbage in the ocean and renewable energy. He was pitching a business idea to me: make solar panels easy to install, handle paper work for people. In the shared guest house he would do yoga half naked and play the guitar. Definitely some self-echo-location going on their but his dad was working in tech and he would follow in his footsteps. Half of China is dreaming about Europe. Medieval buildings, moral freedom, pristine nature, luxury. Marriage? Let's go to Europe to take a picture on that bridge. Never mind it's called Ponte Vecchio and lies in Florence, just book a tour that'll take us there while serving us chinese food along the way because Europeans have weird taste. Just the economic tides are shifting. There is the problem of over-tourism. If you go to any place in high season, you'll encounter so many people that the building, painting, place you want to see will be completely covered by them. The moment you step out of the path with signage in 7 languages however, you're alone again. If you know the language, the grumpy waiter who tried to rip you off a second earlier will tell you stories of their childhood and invite you for a drink. People are looking for authenticity as it's described on Instagram and an easy path to revelation. You have to go somewhere, you have to see this and that, you have to show a greek temple to your children. The backpackers need to get drunk with a crew of weirdos in their hostel, get drunk in Barcelona and Brussels, party in Shibuya and Shanghai's Nanjing Road. The truth is you don't have to do anything. I like capitals just like the next chap, but follow any road perpendicular to the main attraction for 30 minutes and sit down. Live there for a week, speak a bit, observe, it will be unlike anything you have ever seen. It seems a bit silly at first. You pay a lot of money to do what you could be doing at home, sleep in, miss all the famous attractions and eat food from the supermarket. I have always claimed to head-shakers that this is the way to go. This is the elsewhere I am interested in. How other people are figuring out the same time and it's challenges as me. Make it a decade long project to build friendships, revisit places, learn the language. Be at home anywhere you go. After a certain minimal threshold of knowledge that makes you a more pleasant human being, what post-card pictures you take or book-knowledge you gain doesn't matter. Only what you do, does. Be the only guest in a stormy winter knight in a hidden restaurant in Kamakura, fall in love in Suzhou, meet Alfredo, the car of your friend in Foggia. "Che cazzo fai a Foggia?" - that's the point. You are the poet, directory and producer. You decide. Paris grew on me after I had hated it for 2 years living there and returned to meet my friends on a honey-moon. They were wide eyed in love with each other and the city. The gazette des beaux arts is still in circulation and I don't know why people put flowers and letters in all languages on Simone's grave in Montparnasse, she's still sitting in Cafe Flore, go take a look! Sex that makes the wooden beams squeak in a cramped hotel next to Odeon and you thank the gods of entertainment for Emily in Paris watching the beauties flowing by while you enjoy your croissant on the sidewalk terrace. In other words: purpose. You chose to be somewhere, anywhere and make the place your own. Take some witnesses with you, the more the merrier! Avoid routine like the plague, but know that you'll be the same anywhere you go. Elsewhere is a method to change your point of view. It is not more or less true than where you come from. Not better or worse. It's a controlled change you ride to open up new perspectives on yourselves. I do not need an elsewhere to be anything in particular. It might be my own home, when I introduce a new idea about myself, have new passions and friends. It might be night-time Tokyo in the rain, outside of the overly polite boutiques, eating italian food made by a middle-aged japanese globetrotter. I like remembering this stuff but I like living it even more, because in those instants, there is no overthinking, no complicated relationship to what I planned to be, just life happening, one pleasant conversation at a time. ## Footnotes [^1]: <https://fugitivemargins.substack.com/p/the-end-of-elsewhere?utm_source=substackpost&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=posts-open-in-app&triedRedirect=true>