What is Slow Travel?
Slow travel is travel focused on engagement and personal growth.
…It’s about living like a local, and truly getting to know the places you travel through. Slow travel is motivated by the desire to grow as a person and allow a place to change you; instead of ticking off destinations, and continuously experiencing places as an outsider.
When I studied abroad in Copenhagen, I remember many of my classmates jetting off to new destinations every weekend, and spending travel breaks hopping from one location to another. At the time I envied their boldness, but it also just felt more right to me to try to really understand what it meant to live in Denmark and be a Dane. I stayed in town and helped a Danish friend paint her room, and hung out with an ex-pat couple who’d been in the city for a few years. I invited friends from the local Danish church to my host family’s home….And I spent my days going to new cafes, biking around, and going to lesser known museums and sights.
I can’t wait to go back and explore the rest of Europe in the same way after quarantine - living like a local and building meaningful relationships - and I truly feel like I became a different person because I allowed my adventures to refresh some of the more mundane moments of my daily life.
Here are some key hallmarks of slow travel, and how you can incorporate this philosophy into your next trip:
know that you can always come back. While it’s thrilling to see all the sights, know that you won’t be a better person because you checked everything off your list. I find that even keeping this thought in mind helps stop the mindset of mindless consumption
understand a place’s history. I’m NOT a history buff, but short books like Xenophobe’s Guide to the Danes can give a sense of how Danish culture was fundamentally different than your own. Doing this type of research helped create more mindfulness in my interactions, and positioned me as a student of their culture rather than a superficial consumer.
do some of what you do at home. I was a coffee lover and a cyclist before I studied abroad, and it expanded my horizons so much to do the same things I did at home, in Denmark. I’d never dare ride on the streets at home, but I did it every day in Copenhagen! It just opened my eyes to how differently life could be lived (and loved!).
engage in some community activity. Whether it’s Couchsurfing, attending a local festival, or taking a free walking tour, there are plenty of high and low touch ways to give back and get involved. There’s nothing like these examples to make you feel like you’re a local.
When you choose to travel with personal growth and exploration as your goal, everything changes. You’re not running on a treadmill of more, more, more, and you can start to cultivate a habit of inviting adventure into your everyday life, even while at home.
I hope you can start incorporating some of these tips to make travel more enjoyable!
Bon Voyage!
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