Close to home
Not new anymore, yet not familiar
It’s the first time I’ve been staying in the same city for longer than a week since I left. I checked in at more than thirty different hotels and guesthouses so far, and wanted to slow down a bit, and stay still for just a moment. I might be experiencing a little travel fatigue, but nothing that can’t be fixed.
I’ve written in a previous post that I felt at ease in larger cities, and this has not changed. From all the places I’ve visited, it felt like Bangkok was obviously the one where I could be in for more than a short visit. I could just as easily have settled on any beachside town in or around Phuket, but something pulled me back into a large city. I guess that’s just my type. I honestly don’t have a strong rationale behind it, and I’m just saying “Yeah, sure” to “How about staying here for some time?”
Moving from hotel to hotel every three or four days inevitably makes you think of what it means to have a permanent place to call home. I’ve left mine behind, and I admit that I sometimes miss it a little.
By physically leaving, I left some habits and routines behind me as well. I haven’t gone grocery shopping on monday evening, which I’ve been doing for years. I haven’t cooked a single meal since I started travelling. I haven’t been to my usual park, späti or favorite ice cream spot. I haven’t checked my mailbox, swept the floor or taken the trash out. These are only some of the things that make a place feel like a home, and I’m sure there are many others I’m forgetting, exactly because I stopped doing them.
This creates time and space for starting new habits, without letting you fully form them. You become familiar with the layout of the local convinience stores, and you have a good idea of what you can find there, but you sometimes get surprised about things you can’t find there. You walk around without checking the map on your phone, but will definitely take a wrong turn at some point. You understand how to cross the road, but you intuitively turn your head to check the wrong side, because driving here happens on the opposite side. You have a good sense of how much things should cost in the local currency, but still convert prices in your head just to be sure. You don’t speak the language, but there are a few words you can use, without knowing how to write them.
None of these things taken individually make a compelling story, but if you add them all up, they start telling a story that’s more interesting than “I’ve been here and I’ve seen this and that”.
I’m wondering if the in-between parts of travel could secretly be more important than everybody thinks. I’m thinking about the things that happen between touring an incredible monument and a day spent island hopping. The things that you didn’t write on your checklist, but that you should remember. The things that happen on the day when nothing was planned.
You don’t get to really know a place by speedrunning every single one of its famous streets, monuments, museums and points of interests. I think that sometimes, you just gotta wait, and see it happening to you.
You might call this place home, one day.
Maybe these moments that you are talking about - the in-between parts of travel - they are similar to negative spaces in design or the clearspace around a logo. It's empty but essential to get the full picture of an experience.