I'll bet you can't tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel. You've never actually stood there and looked up at that beautiful ceiling; seen that.
Travel Is Not Education
31–40 of 70 posts
Re: Travel Is Not Education
#32Having travelled the world I can say without a doubt that this person misses the point of travel. It isn’t about winning a trivia night. It’s about connecting deeply on a level that a Wikipedia article just cannot offer.
Yeah. I mean, I think "connecting deeply" gets oversold too, but my experience of a place (whether it's "authentic" or the country's biggest tourist trap or even the next town over) really isn't best summarised by how many facts I can recollect about it.
I'm also amused by the suggestion that Japanese Bach fans understand German culture more deeply than Germans (does this mean Westerners with moderately large anime collections understand the many nuances of Japanese culture better than the Japanese?!). I mean, I don't actually think most travel does connect deeply with foreign culture, but few travellers are left with such a shallow first impression of other countries they legitimately believe they've obtained deeper insights into a country than the average person who lives there by attending a performance of some cultural artefact from that country's history.
Also, for many people, travel is fun. If you find travel not fun, or reading about a place more fun, then more power to you. Some people find sex and relationships messy and inconvenient too, and if they prefer collecting stories and pictures that's fine - just maybe inadvisable to blog about how much more they've learned from the internet...
Re: Travel Is Not Education
#33> To test this theory, try the following experiment. Ask someone who just spent 10 minutes on the Wikipedia article for Turkey for an interesting fact about the country, then ask someone who just came back from a 10 day vacation to Istanbul. Probably both will tell you something equally interesting, with the former being more generally relevant and the latter being more charming or topical. Of course this is wildly unfair—we should give the web surfer 10 days of reading time and ₺100,000 liras to spend as well, but they simply don't need it to win.
Was this written by some AI or LLM because what kind of logic is that? Someone who travels vs. who reads? Is that an even worthy experiment? No..
Re: Travel Is Not Education
#34Most people who travel just go to unfamiliar restaurants and unfamiliar shops. I imagine that a LOT of HN people do not fall into this trend, but for most people travel seems to be more about a feeling of novelty and adventure than it is really about specifically learning about the locale you're visiting.
Re: Travel Is Not Education
#35I'm born and raised in the midwest of the USA. I've watched UK shows since the 80s when PBS would run Doctor Who, Keeping Up Appearances, and other UK shows. I've never read a history devoted to London or the UK but I know the basics.
This summer I visited London for the first time and there were so many things I either had no idea about or knew in the abstract but experiencing it first hand was very different.
Re: Travel Is Not Education
#36I grew up in a tourism economy. I have traveled to half a dozen countries.
I side with the author. Viewing consumer travel for entertainment only makes you more learned if you care to observe and think critically, which most do not do as that detracts from the indulgent entertainment aspect of it and even then it's very limited.
The nit picks of the offended peanut gallery here are technically perfectly valid, you won't learn everything from wikipedia and street view either, but they don't invalidate the broader point that galavanting about as a tourist doesn't really teach you squat. It's a luxury. The .03% "education" component doesn't really change that.
Re: Travel Is Not Education
#37I can't but feel that there's a second, complementary point here.
Will you learn something about the place you visit? Probably. But, sure, not always. It's possible that reading the web might be as effective.
However, there's also the other side. To travel is to become educated about you. This experience cannot be replicated by reading the web. There's nothing quite as instructive as being blown away by the foreignness of another place, the language, the customs - the sheer strangeness of it to you. How you react to it, or manage it, or negotiate it are lessons worth learning. That's the education.
Re: Travel Is Not Education
#38At risk of offend that genuinely reads like a post by someone who has never left their home country. Wikipedia and streetview is in no shape or form comparable to experiencing something first hand. Nor is the assumption that people do one or the other correct. Ideally you first do the online research to plan travel and then go.
I agree.
To be honest, this kind of justification (TFA) is often written by people who don't enjoy travelling. I have a family member like this, they claim they don't need to go abroad (or anywhere outside their city, really) because "everything is there in Google and Wikipedia".
I find it very sad.
Re: Travel Is Not Education
#39The person reading Wikipedia and the person who visited the place are both beaten by the person who read Wikipedia and then visited the place. Reading about a place can point you to unique experiences that you would otherwise have missed. A deeper point, I think, is about being the kind of person who would read about a place. I know a few people who get excited about going on holiday, and excitedly tell you about it…
In a world full of people who read Wikipedia first and, generalizing some, actively look for other people's opinions via online reviews and reading up about the history of a place before visiting, I feel that the more unique experience overall be to show up and actively experience the place on your own outside the opinions of others.
I've traveled a fair amount now, and I think there's value to showing up someplace and letting it show you what you should know and experience, rather than letting the internet intercede between you and the world around you. I would add a fourth category, the person who shows up and finds something cool enough by walking around that they feel compelled to then read Wikipedia about it. For me, it would beat out the other three you posit, but that's a matter of taste I think.
Re: Travel Is Not Education
#40The author completely misses what travel is for. Compare it to a museum. You can see almost all of the artworks on the museum's website, in high-definition, accompanied by backstories and references. It's much more suitable to learn about art. But it's not _impressive_. You need to experience the artwork to understand and internalize what you studied about it. Same with travel.
Many people do not invest that much into researching a location (or museum and it's art), before they visit them. Even afterwards they probably still won't invest much more. They just go there with a bare minimum of knowledge, often even less, and then call themself educated enough. Experience is not education, it has little value on itself for understanding something.