May not work in all cases, seems like everyone that goes to egypt to see the pyramids comes back hating egyptians.
I’ve seen discussions where the topic was something like “Where did you travel to that you would never go back to again”, and the responses there heavily implied that travel can inspire racism.
I’ve only been to another country once in my life. In 2018 I was invited to present at a scientific conference held in Sicily, and my workplace sponsored my travel and accommodation costs.
After 6 days there, my takeaway was an unfavorable view of the local Sicilian people. This is obviously not representative of every person in Sicily, or Italians in general (Italy is a big place with lots of different regions), but I’m not in a hurry to go back to Palermo.
I think Twain here is referring to travel less as tourism, ie short vacations, but more about spending time living in different countries and getting to know people and their culture, making friends, etc.
Yeah I fully get the idea. A lot of racism is ignorance and fear. Humans are bad to take limited experiences of each other and assume that’s the whole experience. When you don’t have your own experiences with a different people, it’s easy to latch onto stories of how bad they can be and form your whole opinion around that. The best counter to that is to have good experiences instead, preferably through friendship.
But some cultures/etc make for a bad travel experience, and that will create or reinforce negative opinions. Living there longer is probably better, but the fact that racism still exists in mixing pot countries like the US proves that living together isn’t enough to make relationships good.
In my opinion, different kinds of travel inspire different things. Back in the day, travel necessarily meant mixing a lot with the people and culture you were visiting. Nowadays it’s much easier to travel in a “bubble” with much more limited contact to locals and culture, besides those trying to take advantage of the tourists
A lot of rich people like to feel like they’re getting an ‘authentic’ experience on vacation so they visit remote villages and hire locals (who are usually well versed in entertaining rich tourists) to give them ‘authentic’ tours and taste the local booze. I doubt this is what Twain was talking about though.
One of the Egypt stories involved men following a woman back to her hotel room, and she had to lock herself inside. They continued to come to her hotel everyday, and bang on her door telling her to let them in. She ended up spending the whole trip stuck in that room, feeling unsafe to leave until she finally got an escort to make it to her flight home.
Unfortunately in cases like that, it really sounds like it goes beyond something you can be adult about and just ignore. I think her main mistake was not doing better research about where it was safe to travel as an unaccompanied woman, as much as I wish that wasn’t a concern.
My friend got a dozen or more marriage proposals in Egypt, some including pretty sizable dowries—which really did not help as much as the people offering the proposals wanted. I’m guessing the only reason she wasn’t followed like this was due to the presence of her family
You’re right, some countries absolutely suck in this regard and it’s a whole different world depending on which sex you represent and if you’re traveling alone or not.
May not work in all cases, seems like everyone that goes to egypt to see the pyramids comes back hating egyptians.
I’ve seen discussions where the topic was something like “Where did you travel to that you would never go back to again”, and the responses there heavily implied that travel can inspire racism.
I’ve only been to another country once in my life. In 2018 I was invited to present at a scientific conference held in Sicily, and my workplace sponsored my travel and accommodation costs.
After 6 days there, my takeaway was an unfavorable view of the local Sicilian people. This is obviously not representative of every person in Sicily, or Italians in general (Italy is a big place with lots of different regions), but I’m not in a hurry to go back to Palermo.
I think Twain here is referring to travel less as tourism, ie short vacations, but more about spending time living in different countries and getting to know people and their culture, making friends, etc.
Yeah I fully get the idea. A lot of racism is ignorance and fear. Humans are bad to take limited experiences of each other and assume that’s the whole experience. When you don’t have your own experiences with a different people, it’s easy to latch onto stories of how bad they can be and form your whole opinion around that. The best counter to that is to have good experiences instead, preferably through friendship.
But some cultures/etc make for a bad travel experience, and that will create or reinforce negative opinions. Living there longer is probably better, but the fact that racism still exists in mixing pot countries like the US proves that living together isn’t enough to make relationships good.
In my opinion, different kinds of travel inspire different things. Back in the day, travel necessarily meant mixing a lot with the people and culture you were visiting. Nowadays it’s much easier to travel in a “bubble” with much more limited contact to locals and culture, besides those trying to take advantage of the tourists
A lot of rich people like to feel like they’re getting an ‘authentic’ experience on vacation so they visit remote villages and hire locals (who are usually well versed in entertaining rich tourists) to give them ‘authentic’ tours and taste the local booze. I doubt this is what Twain was talking about though.
I can see that. Traveling while white invites a lot of peddling and harassment. The adult thing is to ignore all that though.
One of the Egypt stories involved men following a woman back to her hotel room, and she had to lock herself inside. They continued to come to her hotel everyday, and bang on her door telling her to let them in. She ended up spending the whole trip stuck in that room, feeling unsafe to leave until she finally got an escort to make it to her flight home.
Unfortunately in cases like that, it really sounds like it goes beyond something you can be adult about and just ignore. I think her main mistake was not doing better research about where it was safe to travel as an unaccompanied woman, as much as I wish that wasn’t a concern.
My friend got a dozen or more marriage proposals in Egypt, some including pretty sizable dowries—which really did not help as much as the people offering the proposals wanted. I’m guessing the only reason she wasn’t followed like this was due to the presence of her family
You’re right, some countries absolutely suck in this regard and it’s a whole different world depending on which sex you represent and if you’re traveling alone or not.