Personally, I’ve always been a firm believer that travel shouldn’t ever be a mere trend, but a way of building a meaningful connection with a place and the people who call it home, which is why I’m the biggest advocate for embracing slow travel. Unlike the frantic style of travelling to which we’ve all grown accustomed, slow travel offers an entirely different approach to exploring the world: avoiding the herds of people heading to over-saturated, overpriced and very often, overrated tourist hot spots like cattle to market and instead taking the time to find places off the beaten track and connect with local people, food, and everything else that makes a place both unique and interesting.
Whilst I’m a strong advocate for converting everybody to slow travel, I’ve most definitely been sold the dream of fast travel before, and quickly learnt my lesson because of it. Interrail, for example, which offers a whistle stop tour around Europe’s most famous capitals, has become hugely popular in recent decades as people relish the prospect of travelling with maximum efficiency. Yet when sucked into the city-hopping vortex, I quickly became bogged down by such a rapid way of traveling. Now, years later, I’m ashamed to admit that a lot of Central Europe’s most beautiful capital cities, now blur into one, all because of my own saturated style of travel, to the point that it feels like I’ve barely been to those places at all.
After my sudden, saddening epiphany, I decided to return to Vienna a few months ago, this time for a full week, where I stayed with students and chatted with locals over long breakfasts in cafes. The experience was worlds away from the single night I had spent in a hostel so many years before in the best way imaginable (back when I ticked Vienna off my list without every really seeing anything other than the picture-perfect central district designed for tourists, that not a single local actually sets foot into) and has completely transformed my mindset towards travelling as a result.
Yet sadly in the world we live in, slow travel doesn’t always feel possible. Perhaps we’ve only got a certain amount of leave from work, so waking up without plans and merely wandering around like a local is out of the question, or maybe we have a small budget to work with, so spending weeks leisurely exploring a place without carefully considering costs might feel completely out of reach. I won’t beat around the bush: slow travel might not always be the cheapest, simplest, or most efficient and it certainly requires a degree of patience and spontaneity that most of us struggle to muster these days. Yet when I think back to my most treasured travelling memories, its often the simplest moments that come to mind, like basking in the spring sun in Madrid’s Retiro Park whilst soaking up the sounds of locals in conversation or striking up a disjointed but heart-warming conversation with sweet Moroccan grandmas on a bumpy 5-hour train ride to Marrakesh.
The truth is we as humans very often prioritise efficiency over everything, an often rather unhealthy mindset that has seeped into our approach to travelling. Yet it’s always possible to reinvent the way we travel and, in my eyes, just a slight shift in perspective, including an acceptance of slow travel is all it takes for us to give the trips that we make the meaning and satisfaction we all realistically crave. Because one thing’s for sure: we’re never going to truly experience a place nor enjoy many a memorable moments there with our head stuck in a travel guide or our eyes glued to the Instagram likes!
