Eight Endangered Travel Traditions

How old are you Lucy? I’ve not done any of the things on here! (outside of the hostel bit but i’ve never met anyone with their heads stuck in their phones in the hostel lobby) Telling the millennial generation to bust out journals and to ditch the iphone for a guidebook is like speaking French in China - it’s not going to get you very far!
As time progresses and generations emerge to forge new ways of traveling we will develop our own traditions and those are the ones that mean something to us as individuals.

I would say yes, the mix tape and photo albums might be over, but I’m holding strong on the journal and the guidebooks, all is not lost.

I’d add the foreign language dictionary too… just use your on-line translation tool or whatever other gismo… that is assuming no one speaks English… and these days it seems like most of the world does

I have to say some of these I personally will not miss. Getting lost is in another land is not always a good thing. But I do like postcards :)

Proud to say I’ve done all!
And that all are still possible!

Great ideas Lucy :)

Jake - you’ve never sent a postcard? Or used a guidebook? I find that tough to believe!

All hail the postcard! And viva the journal!!

I’m not much for postcards (or birthday cards for that matter)!

Lucy - I LOVED this. Thank you. I am 53 and bring travel journals for all trips taken. I send postcards (even if it does feel anachronistic but I love getting country stamps for them - so beautiful), I do travel with an iPod now but remember, fondly, the mixed mini cassettes I used to travel with. And I take digital photos and print the ones I want for travel albums. Being the one to spark up conversations can get you some really great information that you might not find anywhere else. Travel guides and travel lit and maps are still a must for me. Even tho I still get lost from time to time :0)

Great slide show. But maybe there is hope for the guidebook—did you see Conde Nast’s traveler challenge? I read about it in my local newspaper yesterday:

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/fea/travel/thisweek/stories/DN-techuseful_0614tra.ART.State.Edition1.515134c.html

The guidebook won, big time.

yup, finally and end to the ^%& ‘guide books’ empire… the ‘lonely planet’ people are too rich as they are selling out-dated nonsense that leads you to dead-ends and long-gone shops.

Wonderful post! Long live the TRAVEL GUIDE:

Scribbled notes. Curry-stained smears. Napkin bookmarks. Sand-grained spines…pebbles of proof that your adventure was lived, and loved. For travelers, the souvenir isn’t something bought, but something USED: in other words, The Guidebook.

Lonely Planet is notorious for being out-of-date. Lots of guidebooks depend on just a handful of writers. However, V!VA Travel Guides puts travelers in the writer’s seat, inviting them to not only read the guide, but help WRITE the guide. Anyone can sign up for free and write, rant, rave and review. Content is updated at simply the click of a mouse.

First comes the website, with its continual updates—then comes the guidebook. The Travel 2.0 ship has already sailed, and it’s about time other guidebooks hop on board. Luckily, V!VA Travel Guides is steering in the right direction.

Three quick comments…

It’s true… travelers are sending fewer postcards, but I’d be surprised if they completely went away. As long as there is snail mail, there will likely be postcards to be sent. Maybe we could make our own postcards from the digital pictures we’ve taken, put a foreign stamp on them and send ‘em along. Now that would be cool, and totally personalized. Postcards are here as long as you want them.

I love reading the local paper while I travel, but the downside has always been understanding the language. I might still pick up Swedish papers in Stockholm, but there isn’t much I can read. On the web, there are English-language sites to give me the latest.

Finally, I’d skip the mix tapes and the iPod altogether while traveling. The local radio is much more interesting for music, and it’s often a good source of local news if it’s a language you understand. The radio is a terrific way to capture some of the flavor of your locale.

Just wanted to thank you for your comments (I’m the author of the piece). Roaming Writer - I totally agree with you re guidebooks - they make fab souvenirs, curry stains, ripped out maps and all. Have never used Viva’s guides though…

Keeping travelling (and sending postcards to you Gran!)

Lucy

Oh my God, I miss mix tapes!  An Ipod is truly not the same thing.  Great list.  Basically, tactile things are still so important.

I still do mix tapes ... but only for my own car. The mp3 player (not an ipod!) has pride of place in my traveling pack simply because of the space saving - more than 3 or 4 cassettes get heavy and bulky quickly, and that mere 6 hours of music can start to grate after too many plays. That said, when I went away last year, the walkman came with as well, because the only guidebook-phrasebook I could find in the local library (doing it on the cheap!) came with tapes and I didn’t have the time to record them into mp3.

On that same trip, well… I did wish I had a GPS a couple times when out on a hire scooter, as the Sardinian road signing / numbering system makes very little sense and the local maps are rubbish, so I didn’t get to all my planned destinations just because of getting lost—- but I also ended up finding plenty of equally interesting (and free, and less tourist-infested) villages and other sights instead - including an inland reservoir with a beach and sunbathers, and a mysterious motorcross-track like set of dirt roads crisscrossing a forest a stone’s throw from the archaelogical site I was actually looking for - that I would never have gone near if I was on the right road.
(and, if I’d realised just how high and treacharous a particular mountain summit and the road to it were, I might never have attempted to surmount it. Which would have been a crying shame!)

I did make brief - and expensive - use of google maps on my phone just to clear up a couple of particularly sticky directional situations, and a pocket compass… blind luck didn’t always help (an abundance of cloverleaf and “trumpet” junctions on the few high-standard roads tended to mean you were headed counter to the way you expected after passing thru). The technology can be a godsend. On that note, the guidebooks were always good for suggesting plenty of interesting places to go and see, and giving you a vague idea of where they were - but really, they almost all seem to be more useful for making lists of trips to book via a local guide company, rather than going to see the sights yourself. The maps and driving/cycling/walking instructions are generally just too vague to get you that final mile in the right direction without having to stop and ask the way in broken native-tongue, or just bite the bullet and buy a coach tour ticket.

The local newspapers, and all the other foreign ones that were available, were also pretty fascinating, even with only a passing knowledge of italian (thank you, abortive latin lessons in high school…). Vive la strange cultural differences ;-)

However these days I tend to buy the postcards, scribble a simple message on them, and just give them to grandparents etc. They get home quicker that way, and cheaper, and the effect is the same. (my one and only attempt at an electronic postcard is still up on a geocities site somewhere, and looks awful)

Jake, your post is quintessential for your generation, as you obviously see yourself as the spokes"person.” Get a job. And please have respect for all people, especially your elders.

Wow, that was rude.

Yeah, Wow!

I’m in the “ipod” generation and have to say I’ve done some of the above.  Yes, even sent postcards to a teacher that wrote me the recommendation letter for my study abroad trip to England.  If you buy postcards in bulk they are cheaper!  So, Mom & Dad, 2 best friends, my sister’s hubby, & a teacher were well aware of my whereabouts through postcards.

Didn’t take the ipod w/ me since everyone warned of the huge risk factor of it being lost or stolen.  Have to say that it made the walks through London’s parks a lot more enjoyable.

After London I had a pre-planned trip to Madrid, Spain.  On my way to Casa Botin I took a wrong turn and ended up walking in the wrong direction for maybe a mile…I guess being alone and being a girl made an old lady stop and ask if I was lost.  From her reaction I can only guess that I was not in a nice part of the neighborhood, but my Spanish was good enough to get me back on course.

Journal ~ yes.  BUT only because I love to write…I am one of those people that will not hand in an English Final until I have every word that I wanted placed where I want it!  Psychotic…mu ha ha!

Actual printed pictures…have to say yes to this too, but only because I took a semester of photography as well!

In short, maybe all the suggestions from above are not lost to my generation.  Maybe just to some people.

Great list! 

My folks and I have been checking into some family history, and just today they found a postcard sent by my father’s father to his sweetheart and future wife, dated 10 July 1925.  In one small memento, there is family history, Buffalo history, former mailing addresses, old stamps… it’s fantastic!

The tradition is safe with us; my husband and I even write a postcard to ourselves when we’re traveling, filled with all the funny small moments that we might forget otherwise and, as you mentioned, to have those wonderful stamps. 

Also as a way to relive the best moments of a trip, I keep a journal.  It takes some effort to write as we travel, but the reward comes days, months or years later, when I randomly open to a page and am transported back to a time and place where I was completely happy.

Lastly, two things about the use of gps:
for married couples, it’s really good to have a third party to blame about directions;
and even with it, we seem to get lost plenty anyway - so I guess that would be the best of both worlds.