in-group, out-group

I've been trying to explain to people, as I try to figure it out myself, what I like about traveling, what I get out of it, and what I don't like. In the process, I've been delineating the difference between being a traveler and being a tourist. I was in the middle of elucidating someone once, when he turned it around and said it better than I could:

When you're a tourist, you go to a place to see the sights; when you're a traveler, you go to discover a place.

It has something to do with preconceptions; a tourist will invariably take a photo of the sights--the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben--despite the 100s of millions of photos just like it. Perhaps this is a perfectly natural impulse but outdated; now that we have google image search and flickr, do we need any more digital copies of Eiffel towers?

That being said, I took some photos of the Eiffel Tower, but it was merely a backdrop to an event that I stumbled upon: a public viewing of a world cup match. With the combination of event and setting, I saw the photo as telling a good story. I prefer to chase after good stories than the usual sights.

Maybe that's another nuance of the above quotation: when a traveler visits a place, they seek to experience it--or, at least, to have experiences with it. When a tourist comes to a place, they go to observe it as if watching a movie.

And, though I have my preferences, I can hardly say that I fully evade being a tourist. Sometimes, or in some cities, it's just the path of least resistence. I went on a bike tour of Berlin, for instance, and though I felt like a total observer, it was a good experience and helped me situate Berlin in both time and space. Fortunately, that experience was balanced by staying in an artist loft, going to an anarchist squat, and having coffee at an East Berlin soup kitchen. And the fact that I had a bike to ride around on my own to go exploring.

What I've decided, is that some cities are really just good for visiting (Paris, Amsterdam), some are good for living (Dresden, Lyon, Antwerp), some aren't good for either (Luxembourg), and some that are so hard to crack, it takes years to infiltrate the community enough to get a sense of it (Munich, Brussels).

All this has something to do with how much I feel accepted by the city. Munich felt like a good old boys club of hard core Bavarians who tolerated tourists but kept them at arm's length. I felt fortunate to be couchsurfing and so had local friends to explore with. Amsterdam, Prague, and Paris, seem to have so many tourists, and so many people staying temporarily that they are loathe to be overly friendly. But at least they are good places to visit. With Paris, a city I know better than the others, I feel like the French clique opens up to me only rarely, and when it does, it slams shut as soon as the moment is over. It's a sisyphean struggle. I feel the same when I'm hitchhiking. I go from outside to insider (quite literally) and then violently back to outsider and have to start all over again.

Berlin felt so unbelievably cosmopolitan--most people were recent transplants and there only temporarily--that I felt almost like a local, especially when I had a bike. It felt the most like Chicago or New York where people are seeing people come and go all the time; better meet them while you have the chance and then be facebook friends for life.

Lyon managed to feel like this somewhat despite the fact that the population is probably more like Munich's: longterm locals. I think it's just a cultural that makes the people in Lyon more open to outsiders. Maybe it's no coincidence that Nazism had its base in Munich. It's funny to me that that's where I met Sietske (a traveling friend for a couplein days), found free bikes to use (on the street...unlocked...felt sorta like stealing), and went to a dinner at a squat--but not a normal squat: the people were living in their trucks and were squatting a parking lot.

That's a pretty broad overview; stay tuned for more specific stories and adventures maybe tomorrow or soon.