After waiting for while in
the Mall, it was time to meet my host. Ana was a system administrator from
Kupres, small village few hours from Mostar. This girl that gave me the best
experience that I could have in Bosnia arrived directly from work and even not
using Couchsurfing that often during her trips, most of the time going to
Croatia, place that she has family, she was really active accepting travelers
quite of often in her place.
That’s how I could understand that even not leaving from my own
city, I could still travel. When I'm receiving a guest in my place, it means
that I can have an exchange of cultures: his/her culture, my own culture and
the local one in the place that I'll be living. I can get know a lot about an
individual person, but at the same time about his/her culture and in the ending
explore my city with this person and then having the chance to travel and
discover my own territory.
About learning the culture of others, I had some hosting
experiences that I shared some time with people from countries that I've never
been and I could mentally travel to their places and understand more about a
culture difference between their countries, my one and the one that I have been
living, like somewhere in Europe (Luxembourg, Spain and Germany).
My best experience in this sense was with guests from Israel,
South Korea, Morocco, Turkey and Mexico. Places that I've never been before,
but I had the chance to learn with them more about their cultures and then
having some pictures in my mind how their places look like. That's what meeting
travelers can give to you, a deep trip inside their cultures. I hope to have
the chance to visit their countries one day, once I already have a feeling how
it more less looks like from their eyes.
Another situation that I talked about is when you're in your own
city, but sometimes foreigners know cooler spots than you. I'm not talking
about tourists, I'm taking about backpackers or foreigners that are open to
interact with locals and try different things until finding the best spots.
That's what happened with me in my hometown, when I was meeting up
travelers around, I had the chance to explore my hometown and be in some cool
spots that even spending 23 years of my life there I had never been before.
With these travelers I got energized to explore what was around, really opened
to walk to any direction, exactly what I do when I'm traveling.
The same thing happened when I was living in Granada hosting
travelers, I every time could explore a different part of the city and
surprisingly sometimes being in a spot that I've never been before. From the
first guest to the last one that I had, when I used to hang out with them, I
could have a unique experience most of the times being in an unknown spot. Once
I was hosting a guy from South Korea and walking around a lookout point,
in the way back home we just arrived in a street called as Little Senegal, a
place that a community of Senegalese was living in millenary caves.
I've never been in this street before, place were invited to join
them in their caves, smoke, chill and eat. It was the first time in my life
that I've been in habited cave, where there was electricity, gas, water, toilet
and even television. It was a big cave, all painted inside in white, where we
spent few hours of our evening sharing experiences, joints, a special tea with
coffee (delicious) and one of the best dishes that I've tried in lately made
from them and shared in a big plate that everyone was eating together with
their spoons. Seriously this fried rice with spices, the simplest food ever
made was yummy. They were inviting a lot of people inside and even the food
finishing in few minutes, they were replacing it often until nobody could eat
anymore. For me was the beautiful message: how less we have, more we share.
In this moment I was a Brazilian traveling with a South Korean in
a Senegalese community in Spain. This kind of stuff that you put 4 continents
inside a millenary cave.
The funny thing about this experience was that almost nobody from
Granada or Andalusia that I met, had this experience before. It was in their
city, in their state, but they never heard about there. Sometimes we travel
around the world, crossing continents, learning a lot about culture, languages,
religions, society, but at the same time we don't even know about different
cultures, languages, religions of the place that we are living. I would just
say to you that before decide to travel around the world and see what's going
on around, try to travel inside your own universe, your city, the local communities
that are living around and even not sharing the same background, mother
language or social status than you, they are part of the society that you live.
For me as South American this experience with my African brothers
was so different and unique, that afterwards some of them became good brothers
that we were meeting up often in their caves or in some bars and clubs often.
Try to imagine for a South Korean guy traveling around the world by his first
time. My culture share some similarities with the African one, but for him, it
was a completely world that even not understanding what we were saying (We were
speaking Spanish and French mostly), he was amazed with everything that
happened, I could see in his eyes and afterwards in our talks. This big
cultural chock was positive, gladly.
That's how I express the experience that you can have meeting a
traveler. Ana really knew it and for her this time meeting a Brazilian could
give to her the chance to visit Brazil inside Mostar at the same time giving to
her the chance to travel in her own city, in her own country: Mostar - Bosnia.
Caves - Little Senegal - Granada - Spain
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