The Magic of Places

My eldest daughter challenges her parents daily with a poster on her door that carries 101 pictures of world-famous places. The title is: "101 Places you need to see before you die". The poster is supposed to encourage our family to go and visit all these places as soon as possible. These exceptional places have become even more attractive now that we can catch our significant moments in a selfie and post them on a social web site. Some of these social web sites even show a map of where you have been.

Places are much more than latitude - longitude combinations. In combination with time, they can obtain a special meaning in life. For the ancient Greeks, Delphi was a special place. If you had any decision authority as an ancient Greek, you would want to go there to ask advice to the oracle and your life would have become more meaningful after your visit. In the Middle Ages, you would go to Jerusalem or to Santiago de Compostela to walk in the steps of Jesus or Saint James. As a Muslim, you were expected to go to Mekka once in your life. All these destinations are now visited more than ever in history.

In the romantic era, artists like Lord Byron would go to Greece and Italy and describe the most beautiful places in the nicest words and colours. In the 19th century English aristocracy started to travel for health or for pleasure. All the marvels around the Mediterranean Sea became popular destinations and gradually, the myth of the open-minded traveller was born. Travelling was a way to acquire culture - people who stayed at home knew nothing about the real world and remained narrow-sighted peasants.

In the late 20th century, travelling became an industry and nowadays, you can go almost anywhere you like, unless you are forced to travel in the wrong direction like the refugees. Today, every European wants to see these magic places at least once in his life: the Acropolis, the Pyramids of Egypt, the Statue of Liberty, the Taj Mahal, the Chinese Wall, etc…A question we have to ask is: are the big globetrotters of today really more open-minded? And what to think of Immanuel Kant, who stayed his entire life in his home town Königsberg? The man knew everything there was to know about the world: he travelled with his spirit by reading books.

And is it really realistic that we should see all these destinations? Suppose now, all 500 Million Europeans would like to visit them once in their life. Add to that 300 Million Americans, more than a Billion Chinese, and more than a Billion Indians. What if the Africans start travelling for leisure? It is clear that none of these magic places will be able to receive so many tourists in a sustainable way. In many places, the acceptance limit is already exceeded. I don’t have to tell you if you visited Park Guell in Barcelona recently.

Perhaps it is time to take things in perspective a little. Not every place should be equally important to everyone. Maybe your magic place is totally unknown to tourists. Would it not be more fun if not everybody had visited the Taj Mahal? And shouldn’t we keep some places unvisited, so that some longing remains and that we can hear about them from others? Not only our past life, also our future life should contain some exciting moments and some meaningful moments. This is only possible if we remain modest in our ambition to visit magic places. It is the only way to keep them magic.

I also refer to my earlier blog: “Travelling is a privilege”.

Inspiration from "De magie van plekken" written by Gert-Jan Hospers in magazine Karakter, University of Leuven,