life

Feb 6 2012

Local Markets, Neighborhood Water Holes, Out Of Doors Gathering Spots, Community Events And Local Accommodations Are Among Paths To Escape The Brand-Blitzed Landscapes That Globalization Has Made.

Last week we, well I anyhow, bewailed the rampant globalization that has spread chain stores and brand names and devastated most of what is special in the world. This week, as promised, we are here to assure you : All that is special has not been lost. You can still find it, those unique sides of a place that imbue it with its own special personality.

Over the years, as globalization has squeezed out the mom-and-pop stores, the rough-hewn and the aspects of a culture which lead to that uncomfortable shock, travelers have evolved. They have identified what are now fairly good methods of finding the genuine folk, the commonplace life, and the center of a place and its people. Actually there is a full movement, “slow travel,” targeted on doing just that.
Websites on slow travel

Slow travel is “in” these days, so look carefully at the source of the information (“About Us”) and the main points of what they are calling “slow” (A 14 day motorbike tour through 3 states? Nah.) Here are a couple of the well-established sites that may motivate you to get up and go slow :

Slowtrav.com : Focus is on finding vacation rentals ; the Firm has spun off countless themed sites for notice boards and pictures, a well-liked forum (slowtalk.com) and some destination-specific sites, for example: slowtrav.com/Switzerland.
Slowtraveltours.com: A group of independent, tiny travel firms offering group tours they lead themselves. Most tours are based in one place.
Slowmovement.com: Australia-based site and slant, but has pleasing features on slow travel, slow towns, slow food for example.
Theworldinstituteofslowness.com: Established in 1999, the institute is now a self-described “think tank for the slow revolution.”
Slow books: The Globe Pequot Press distributes some of the new guidebooks on slow travel, including “Eat Slow Britain”, “Go Slow France”, and “Slow Cornwall & the Isles of Scilly.” Info is on their internet site: globepequot.com.

Local markets, neighborhood water holes, out of doors gathering spots, community events and local accommodations are among methods to escape the brand-blitzed landscapes that globalization has created. Incorporating such experiences and encounters on your trip likely will present new challenges and get you out of your zone of comfort at least initially. But they might also result in your most enduring travel memories. Not to mention a bigger appreciation of how continually interesting life is on this planet.

Here are ways to go about finding special experiences, wherever you are:

Go Off-season

When the visiting hordes have subsided, there’s nobody home but the locals. Some places close up, but what remains open for business will be quite enough. I’m a huge fan of the Jersey Shore in winter ; some towns are rather more year-long than others, for example : Cape May, Spring Lake, Red Bank. The sand won’t be bath temp, nonetheless it may twinkle with frost in the morning ; you will still find great restaurants, pretty inns, better rates and time to talk to the locals and visit unexplored parks, studios, shops. Another off-season favourite is Yellowstone Countrywide Park. The 30-below readings may frighten off the masses, but that just means you’ll get the full attention and awareness of the park rangers and winter lodge staff as well as a graphic, even abdominal, notion of the opposition for survival in the wild ; nature everywhere is at its savage, pretty best.

Take Public Transportation

Yes, it can be puzzling even in your hometown, you may not have the swing of it. But abroad, trains, buses, shuttles are all part of life. I have rubbed elbows well, elbow-to-feathers with a colorful array of passengers (including cattle) on an Ecuadorean train in the Andes and shared a curry meal with a local family on a long train trip through India.

Stay Local

Apartment rentals are crazy-popular, partly because they are less expensive and gave you more space / amenities than a hotel room. But lodgers quickly realized they provided another entry to the local way of life. Leave your key in the lock accidentally, you may meet and start to know your neighbour (say you have lost your pussy-cat, you may make fast buddies with an entire neighborhood, la “Amelie”). You’ll be amid neighbors rather than other travelers (though given the popularity of rentals, you may find your neighbour is a local would-be as well).

Other kinds of local stays include renting a room in a home airbnb.com, a comparatively new company, offers both whole-place rentals and a room in somebody’s home, with the host (hopefully) becoming a sort of insider guide-cum-mentor for a local experience. Home stays are also a choice. My first trip to St. Petersburg, Russia, in the early ’90s included a stay with a Russian family and without them, I’d possibly have done something unbelievably goofy and wound up in some KGB-esque netherworld.

Agriturismo is another growing lodging option. Farmers and others whose lives are hooked up to agriculture have started opening their houses and offering accommodations to travelers in part because they require the bucks, but most won’t treat you like an ATM. You can simply stay over and eat what will no doubt be a killer excellent meal or 2, but you can also learn about or even pitch in with their work. In agricultural Umbria, we visited a family that had been tending a large sweep of olive trees for 4 generations. I ate the most memorable growth of tapenades of my life, acquired a new appreciation for the whole olive oil making process, and also gained a couple of pounds in the act. Eventually I lost the weight, but I carry the memory of the sunset warming the peach walls of the villa to this day.

One travel writer has spent his entire career traveling and meeting people this way. I’m not that gregarious, but I have managed to yammer my way to invites without intentionally doing that. Solo travelers have a better shot at this option, I suppose, though safety is also more of an issue if you’re alone (a camera with a very massive telephoto lens is always my first line of defense). After a Bedouin cab driver in Egypt started talking about his traditional bread-baking range, I posed questions until he took me to his home a little place with a dirt floor, chickens running through the rooms, a cheery, friendly infant and a sweet other half offering me some of their bread. Later on my Egypt trip, when I was besieged by youngsters pleading for money, a man came out and shooed the youngsters away, invited me in, and he and his wife sat down with me in their living room and talked about the impact of tourism on culture. “You give them money, they think about you as dollar bill with legs,” recounted the man, a schoolteacher. I will always remember the couple, standing with their baby in the wife’s arms, as I left their home, resolved not to contribute to the ruination of any more cultures.

People-to-people Programs

My first was in the Bahamas, in a cruise. It could have been a vague three-hour stop in the port of Nassau. Instead , I hitched up with an area woman who’d volunteered for the town’s P-to-P program, which was new at the time (15 to twenty years back). I joined her as she stopped at an elementary school to pick up her daughter, to a neighbor’s for coffee, to her mom’s local dress shop chatting and studying about her life all on the way. Such programs have caught on everywhere. Check with the destination’s tourism office to see if there is one.

Attend a Local Performance

Sure, you wish to see the Kirov Ballet if they are performing at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg. But think outside of the high-ticket-price shows. I was staying with a local family in that stunning Russian city and they advised a performance by a local orchestra from one of the city’s number of fine music and humanities schools. It was in a theater with wooden chairs and great acoustics, and the performance was fantastic particularly as the young musicians were so balanced, eager, brilliantly talented. Afterwards, kids coming out to welcome their pals and family, smack kisses and proud words OK, I could not translate, but I knew were as unusual as the music. And a heads up that while we’ve got our differences, some human behaviour is universal.

Volunteer

There are loads of volunteer occasions to work with area folk teaching English to adults or children, working the land with local farmers, building houses, or reconstructing them after a tragedy as I did in the wake of Katrina in New Orleans. Often, I volunteer for programs that focus on helping animals. But they usually bring me new understanding of the local people, as well . In Namibia, the fourteen day PAWS enormous cat restoration project was completely connected to the community ; without learning their philosophy and traditions, anything we probably did would be opposed, ineffectual or fully futile. So when we went to rescue a leopard that had been encircled on a farmer’s property, we were able to talk to him a man who during the past might have just shot the animal because it had been a threat to his cows and sheep. Our connection, on his land, chatting for a few hours, provided an epiphany for me, and I came away with an understanding that would not have been possible were I to stay in my ivory tower of environmental idealism.

Local Markets

In cities and rural areas globally the tradition of the local marketplace has somehow endured. In rural parts of many European nations, markets have naturally evolved an effectual schedule that may keep family refrigerators and cupboards stocked weekly. A good concierge or guidebook can offer you the days and places to be to partake of the colorful, often loud and absolutely down-home scenes. The outline of Dubrovnik, Croatia, I was treated to from a walk along the old city walls was sublime, but at ground zero, the Sat. market in the square, with its bright, lined-up produce and shuffling old men and hind-leg-walking dogs and outgoing vendors touting samples and calling “Try it!” in Croatian and English was what I remember best.

Speciality markets, particularly those with artisans and artists, are also full of local flavour. They’re especially bounteous around vacations. While you may encounter the odd slick, boring entrepreneurs, for the main part these local craftspeople are earnest and excited about their work, and love to talk with passersby. In the annual Shrimp & Petroleum Festival on Louisiana’s Gulf Coast, a real attraction is the big tented area with folks selling their home-made and usually regionally flavoured creations. I will always remember the beautifully balanced young mom behind the counter with her teen daughter, all their handmade jewelry spread out before them ; a unusual reversal of roles, with the studded-nose girl amazingly businesslike and the ethereal mom simply needing to chat about her daughter, the economy and how I liked this particular bit of Louisiana.

Do not forget the shops. Tourists don’t spend time getting a checkout cart and attempting to find lettuce and dishwashing liquids. But if you’re searching for everyday life, get thee to a grocers! In Paris, just understanding how to extricate the cart from its neighbours is fun (requires an euro coin deposited in a slot that enables you to turn a key unlocking a chain you get the coin back when the store gets the cart back). What’s on the shelving (nobody beats our cereal aisles), the way in which the neighbors buy (small quantities, and yes, the 4-euro bottle of wine flies off French shelves), the talks, the packaging, the packed fast food, are all areas of local discernment. And obviously, having the ability to bring my dog into the Monoprix food store (he sat nicely in the cart) was something you’d do only in Paris!

Pedal or Bipedal Power

Wanna stop and smell the roses and kick off a conversation, read a makeshift poster, pet a dog and speak with its hiker, drop in someplace unplanned but that strikes your curiosity? Ride a bike (more and more cities have public cycle rental systems) or walk!

I have employed all of the techniques above at one point or another. Little did I know that they have been wrapped up and now define a new movement : slow travel.

Slow travel is an off-shoot from the “slow food” movement that began in Italy in the 1980s as a protest against the opening of a McDonald’s in Rome ; the idea was to instead preserve regional cuisine, local farming, communal meals and conventional food preparation techniques. Today, the idea has spread into a movement, a strategy of living that emphasises connection food, first, and in the case of travel, also to local races and cultures.

Instead of making an attempt to squeeze as many sights or towns as practicable into each trip, the slow traveler takes the time to explore each destination thoroughly and to experience the local culture. As founder Pauline Kenny places it on her internet site SlowTrav.com, “Slow Travelers say that they do not have to see everything on one trip, that there’ll be other trips.” The key is slowing down and making the best of each moment of your vacation. You may stay in one place long enough to recognize your neighbors, shop in the local markets and pick a fave coffeehouse.

All of the above tactics are part of the movement, from finding a place to settle in for one week, to using local transit or biking, or your feet to get around and meet the people next door, do the shopping, enjoy the common-or-garden and the night entertainments, cook the local ways and so on. And find points of interest from their perspective.

It’s not always easy : If you’re shy (like me), it’ll take overcoming some fears to get out the door and get talking. There might be language barriers to conquer, as well as currency conversions, weight and size conversions, getting lost, getting knackered, and we are, after all Americans being annoyed by all this slowness, writes tagza.com.

By Kahu_73 • Last Minute Travel • 0 • Tags: family, globe pequot press, home, life, slow revolution, water holes