Welcome to VoiceMap’s newsletter, Senses of Direction, where we share stories from around the world that spark curiosity and stimulate your senses.
This month we return to the blissful days of pre-smartphone travel, and reflect on what we’ve gained and lost. We also hear about landing in the “deep end” of India in VoiceMap’s new interview series, How We Travel – about what travel means to VoiceMap’s community of curious explorers.
Lastly, we pop into Goethe’s favourite watering hole in Leipzig, the establishment where Goya washed dishes, and find out how the word “restaurant” predates several establishments claiming to be “the world’s oldest.”
For your sense of stillness | AFTER A CAREER IN TOURISM, I’M STAYING HOME
Joanna Haugen’s social media feeds are flooded with women travelling in their forties, “self-empowerment in one hand, passport in the other.” They’re finally taking the trip they put off because of other people’s priorities, and twenty years of PTA meetings. But not Haugen.
In her July essay, After a Career in Tourism, I’m Staying Home, Haugen recognises travel’s “siren call” and then lays out exactly why, after nearly two decades in tourism, she wants no part of a “mid-life travel bucket list.”
“Tightly curated experiences and fine-tuned algorithms have pushed aside the weird and unconventional – and the opportunity to stumble into the unexpected. (…) We’ve lost the ability – and desire – to not know, to get lost.”
She remembers the texture of trips from a smartphone-free world, before validation had a hashtag. She’d laughed with strangers in a dust storm at Burning Man, and refused to let a broken-down plane in Costa Rica derail her plans.
“A stranger offered me a ride when I was caught in a rainstorm with my backpack, looking for a hostel in Hanoi, and I didn’t think twice about saying yes. Shortly thereafter, when I got stuck in Costa Rica for 48 hours after my plane broke down, I ate cookies and sang songs with the other passengers to pass the time, because… what else were we going to do?”
It made every cell of my being sting with nostalgia – for hauling backpacks across borders with my partner, when home was everywhere and the default world’s gaze was utterly forgettable. Trekking through rural Shanxi in 2012 – newly-blanketed in snow – with rented sleeping bags and foldable maps, I could never have imagined that digital check lists and apps trying to recreate ‘serendipity’ would come to dominate the travel industry.
These days, when friends ask Haugen about her upcoming trips, she says she’s “practically giddy by the fact there are none.” Personally, I’m not there. But Haugen’s thought-provoking essay made me reflect on what I really love about travel, and why we may need to be creative about rediscovering it.
🔗 Read After a Career in Tourism, I’m Staying Home. Pair it with Haugen’s colleague’s reflections on the tension between travel and time at home, and whether not moving necessarily means not growing: You can have both roots and branches. You might also enjoy some overlapping musings on Hari Kunzru’s essay Another London, which made me ask: in an age when every street corner is digitally mapped, is it still possible to experience the mystery of a place?
For your sense of identity | “TRAVEL MAKES ME A BETTER VERSION OF MYSELF”
Yao Zhao has no plans to stop travelling. His latest adventure is a diving trip to Komodo, but he’s just as happy taking bucket showers in rural India.
Zhao is the first traveller to be featured in VoiceMap’s new blog series How We Travel and, in this short interview, he tells us about a trip that altered the course of his life.
“The solo backpacking trip I did when I was 20 or 21 really changed me. I was supposed to become a Chinese diplomat, and I told my family I was going backpacking across Asia instead. They were horrified.”
We also hear about the quirky items that he won’t leave home without, and how regular travel – whether it’s strictly ‘business’ or ‘pleasure’ – nourishes him.
🔗 Read the first profile in this new blog series, How We Travel: Yao Zhao. If you’ve got an interesting perspective on travel to share, don’t be shy to hit ‘reply’ and let me know.
For your sense of continuity | FIVE OF THE WORLD’S OLDEST RESTAURANTS
Paris’ Le Procope restaurant has been serving since 1686. On her VoiceMap tour of Saint Germain des Prés, publisher Annie Sargent calls it “the oldest café-restaurant in Paris” – with a guest list to back up the claim: Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau…“too many to name really.”
Yet Le Procope predates the word “restaurant” by 70 years or so. It comes from the French restaurer (to restore) and referred to a bouillon sold to weary Parisians – not a place at all. The format we’d recognise today – strangers sitting at separate tables with a printed menu – only became common in Paris around 1789, when the Revolution pushed the aristocracy’s private chefs to go into business for themselves.
There are several VoiceMaps around the world that describe the colourful backstories behind long-standing establishments like these. Here are a few of my favourites – in Madrid, Leipzig, London and Boston.
Madrid’s record-holding Casa Botín has kept its doors open since 1725. Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises mentions its wood-fired oven (still in use today!) and the artist Goya washed dishes here before he was, well, Goya. This tour was created by a publisher whose grandfather used to come here for its long-time speciality – suckling pig – “when he wanted to celebrate something important in his life.” Listen to the story and browse the whole tour, History with a side of Tapas: A local’s Madrid.
London’s oldest restaurant, Rules, is “still a haunt for actors who can afford it,” according to actor Sir Ian, on the Theatreland Tour with Ian McKellen. It first opened as an oyster bar in 1798 about ten years after the concept of a “restaurant” had caught on in Paris. It’s since been the elegant set of more than one film, including Spectre in the Bond series. You can hear more and enjoy the free tour of the West End theatre district – whether that’s on site or ‘on couch.’
Leipzig is home to one of Goethe’s old haunts, the Auerbachs Cellar – a civic institution first, and a place to eat second. He drank there as a student, and wrote its murals into his play Faust. The 1525 cellar has been famous ever since. Listen to the story (from 01:10) and peruse Fiona Rintoul’s tour On the trail of Leipzig’s communist past.
Lastly, across the Atlantic, Daniel Berger-Jones’ guide to all 16 of Boston’s Freedom Trail sites features two records. There’s America’s oldest continuously run tavern, the Bell in Hand (1795), and the oldest continuously run restaurant, the Union Oyster House, which opened three decades later. Founder Jimmy Wilson was Boston’s last town crier, and he named the tavern because illiterate sailors could easily spot a sign shaped like a bell. Hear the story and browse the whole tour.
Until next time, thanks for travelling with us!
Best Wishes,
Claire van den Heever
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