Tourism - #92HT

Podgorica was the city that I heard before as a new capital that there is no a lot of things to see, a place to be skipped from my Montenegrin trip and go directly to the cities in the seaside. It wasn't my plan and I just slept there because I couldn't reach Budva in this night.

If you're the tourist, you're going to consider the same. Go to Budva and skip the not interesting city of Podgorica.

Even being a traveler, I consider that the tourism has more negative points than positive ones. The tourism makes you be in a place that was specially made for you. In fact you're not really traveling, you're not seeing a different real culture. You probably are going to take nice pictures of beautiful monuments, bridges, lakes, rivers and buildings. You're probably going to learn something about history in your tour and you're going to have the chance to try local dishes that commercially was made for you.

You are not going to really see how many life lessons that you could have learned there. You're going to be like a German going to some Island from Spain, where most of the economy is based in tourism. If you think about food, accommodation and shopping, all these items are going to be focused in the tourism. In Mallorca, Canary Island and some cities in South of Spain there are a big community of German and English people. A big number of people that got retired and moved to a warmer place, where the cost of living were really cheaper then their homeland. Also people that want to go to somewhere warm to spend sometime in the beach, but not having the feeling that they left their countries.

In fact the cost of living in Spain is really cheaper than other Western European countries. An apartment in Munich normally cost minimum 3 times more than buying a house in Lanzarote. It's so attractive for who's moving there. Spain is just a comparison, but around the world there are so many examples that privileged people, like us can spend our money in short term in a country where the cost of living is cheaper than ours and the currency is weaker than ours. It's so complicated to scape from this reality, but most of the money that we are spending is going to the hands of big companies that are making profit out of it. The local community also are going to earn out of it, from people that work for these big companies and also some locals businesses, however most of the profit are going to be in the hands just few people that sometimes aren't even from there and don't represent the culture. It's probably just someone that had enough money to invest.  

At the same time as I said before the tourist impacts the community in several aspects. In some cases the local culture is disturbed by creating the perfect place for the tourist. It means that this is not going to be a native culture anymore. The cost of living also increases there. Houses for selling and renting are seeing as a attractive commerce.

Once privileged tourists can afford to pay higher rents the prices of housing increases. It means that locals overtime won't be able to live in this region anymore, once everything got overpriced and if they don't earn any money out of the tourist, they won't be able to afford the living. If they are renting, they won't be able to pay monthly the rose price and if the property is from they, there is the chance for they sell it for an attractive price that they can move to somewhere else cheaper. Maybe you won't even have the chance to see the real culture there anymore.

If you're looking for getting as many knowledge from place while you're traveling, going to tourism agencies that organize tourism packs, giving you transport, accommodation and tourism tour are not going to make you know the real country that you are. You can maybe think that I'm exaggerating, but this is just a fabricated place, that was made for us: Tourists.

I've been in few cities that I felt like that. Until not long time ago I was buying my trip to well-known cities, staying in hostels and posting some Instagram pictures that has my sympathetic face with some nice buildings in my background.

Until now I can still feel it while I'm traveling, but at the same time try as hard as I can to see who really belong from there.

The most important thing: the being human. The guy or girl like us, but was born in a different city, country or continent. Understanding in what we are different and why we are different. That's where starts the emphatic feeling. That's how we start to respect what's different than us, because we could understand why it's different.

If you're German and will buy a tourism pack to go to Mallorca with your family in hotel where everyone speaks German and the restaurants the menu are written in German and your tourism tours is been guiding in German, you won't have any local experience and you'll miss the best souvenir that you could have in your trip: The interaction with someone different than you and understand how similar you guys are.

I believe that tourism can also be good, if it's sustainable. Gladly the tourism made me have my first steps traveling. Without it I couldn't start my journey and understand how amazing a trip can be and even using tourist methods I could go further and experience great moments.

These cities below were ones that I visited before that showed a completely different view what exactly the culture is:

• Paris - France
• Amsterdam - The Netherlands
• Munich - Germany
• Prague - Czech Republic
• Arrecife - Spain
• Brussels - Belgium
• Rome - Italy
• Lisbon - Portugal

I'm not saying that didn't have great time in these cities. I definitely had in each of them, but not from the touristic experiences, but mainly for the interactions that I had there.

I'm talking about experiences that have more value than the pictures that I could have download from Google images. At the same time I could learn really more about the culture of the place, visiting other smaller cities.

France, Germany, Spain and Italy are specially countries that I could learn a lot in the past 2 years from people that I met from there, either in their countries or abroad. Most my interactions were with people from these countries and I could learn a lot about them, knowing our similarities and understanding our differences. This is a deep ocean that you just can feel what I feel when you're there.

Travel, but don't forget that the best that you can have from your trip isn't Instagram pictures.

Podgorica was this non-tourist city that after walking few hours during the day, before going to hitchhike to Budva, I had a pleasant time. My last poor chapter just showed it.