[the table at the kafana, everyone's glasses, nobody posing]
How We Travel
A group of friends kept taking trips to places that weren't hyped. It kept working. Locals talked to us because we weren't part of a wave of tourists. We were just some people at the bar. We came home with better stories than the people who went to the hip places on schedule, and we spent a lot less getting them.
Some places just aren't hyped. Nobody's feed is full of Belgrade. That's not a judgment about cool; nobody gets to decide what's cool. It's a fact about where the crowds and the money are pointed. A place without hype has room in it: room for real conversations, real connections, and prices that haven't been bid up by ten thousand people chasing the same picture. Hype and quality are different things. We're after the quality.
Each place has a reason. Serbia was about the wine. Montenegro means reading about the Kanun. The Balkans mean the century everyone stopped discussing. When you go somewhere to learn something instead of to look at it, the place opens up. You read before you go. You come back more worldly, not just more photographed.
The pace is slow. The stakes are low. The quality of the experience is high.
[street, gray sky, nobody around]
Belgrade // November
[the bar, locals, low light]
Some people at the bar
[books and maps on a table, pre-trip]
Reading before going
[wine nobody exports, kafana table]
The wine // Serbia
Quality > hype
Hype and quality are different things. A place without hype has room in it. We're after the quality.
You're a guest
Locals talk to you when you're just some people at the bar. Travel is being in someone's country, not performing in it.
Learn something
Each place has a reason. The wine, the Kanun, the century everyone stopped discussing. You read before you go.
Slow pace, low stakes
No schedule to keep, no list to finish. The quality of the experience is high because nothing is riding on it.
Come back with something real
Better stories, not more photographs. And a few times a year, a small batch of clothes dyed to match the place.
