The Anti-Sightseeing Edition

On cities, tourism, and getting to know a foreign place

We first met Emanuel Derman (ED) when wrote the excellent Japan edition for WITI. He grew up in Cape Town, South Africa, and came to Columbia University in New York to study for a PhD in physics. He wrote the book My Life as a Quant, and is syndicating a memoir on Substack which is worth a read.

Emanuel here. I have a long-time college friend who is good company and a fount of knowledge. When he reads The Economist he checks off the articles he has finished with a ballpoint pen. He loves to travel and in recent years has been to Patagonia, taken a cruise to the Antarctic, flown to India and Nepal, traveled on a cross-Canada rail trip, done an Alaska cruise and a river cruise from Moscow to St Petersburg. I know he has more on his bucket list, though he wouldn’t refer to it by that vulgar term. As with all of us, the pandemic has really put a crimp in his social life, but it’s demolished his travel life completely. 

Why Is This Interesting? 

I don’t really like to go out of my way for things. (I don’t even like to go far for restaurants.) I cannot truthfully say I’ve always longed to see Notre Dame, the Taj Mahal, Mount Kilimanjaro, the Great Wall of China, the Pyramids at Giza, the fjords, Macchu Pichu, Chichen Itza … though I have seen several of them. 

I want to go to foreign climes, but not to see sights. What I want in a foreign place is to feel like it’s my home, or at least the home of me as an expat. I want to wake up not too early, go down to the town square or the local cafe, get coffee and breakfast and a newspaper and sit around with (what I hope are) the locals. If it’s Paris, freshly baked croissants with soft unrefrigerated butter and jam and coffee and a small glass of freshly squeezed orange juice with a glass of water to extend it. Or le petit déjeuner américain. If it’s Mexico, a baby pig roasted in a cart in the street and sliced off into tacos. I want a leisurely start to the day, at my own pace. After that, I want to take an ambling walk and then maybe have a run and shower. Then I can start looking. 

I like to walk the streets, going everywhere by foot, stopping off at things that catch my eye. I go into small stores, stop for coffee or lunch. (I’m still nostalgic for the Île Flottante I had for dessert.) I go to museums, but at most for two hours at a time. I want a slow day. I’d rather end it hungry than feeling force-fed. I don’t want to be trapped on a cruise ship or riverboat and carry out someone else’s idea of a schedule. I want to live, not see. 

I look at people more than at sights. I want to feel as though that little town or part of that big city is mine, the way people who live there do, or the way I will some 

day when I will move there for a few months or a year. I want to join in a conversation I overhear with people I don’t know. I want to understand other people’s sensibilities. I imagine stumbling into romance with exotically different people whose language I barely know but whom I can intuit are kindred sensibilities. 

I much prefer beaches and the South to mountains and the North. I like desert areas—the Karoo or New Mexico. Less is more. Northern climes are ok, but only in the summer when it’s light until eleven and you can walk along trails past meadows and cows and pasture and say Guten Tag to people you pass. 

I know there aren’t clear demarcations, but I want people more than places. I want insides more than outsides. I like finding out about the insides of people from outside places. (ED)

Quick Links:

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Thanks for reading,

Noah (NRB) & Colin (CJN) & Emanuel (ED)

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