Good day everybody. <BR> <BR>Thank you for posting so many wonderful responses to my question of why you like to travel. <BR> <BR>I guess I asked that question so that you would remember the reasons why you DID travel and you would retain that passion in your hearts. <BR> <BR>So, to keep this feeling going, here is my second question to you: <BR> <BR>What is more important in a travel destination--the land or the people? <BR> <BR>Daniel

Daniel, I think that can vary from trip to trip and certainly from person to person--probably a function of your personal degree of introversion/extroversion. Sometimes I think about just going away so that I won't have to talk to anyone. At other times I long to interact with another culture, hence the people.

Good question. Let us start with the basic premise that health and finances permit me to travel middle class style. So having the factors in place to think of taking a trip, I need to separate my travel into 2 categories: First visit and repeat visit. I am going to select first visit destinations based my interest in seeing the area. <BR>What draws me to Paris is the city itself plus the great gardens, museums and other cultural features: a destination that is product of people. What drew me initially to Switzerland is the beautiful scenery: a destination that is the product of the land, but the people made it great. I am not going to select a place for an initial visit unless something there attracts me that gets a high initial reading. <BR>For the sake of argument, art museums, symphony orchestras, monuments, towers, and places to eat are "people" factors. Mountains, valleys, lakes, sea shores, and forests are "land" factors. <BR>But what about a good boat ride on a beautiful lake? Which is that -- both? <BR> <BR>Using a Lickert scale where 1 is definitely negative; 2 is negative, 3 is neutral; 4 is good, and 5 is great, we might have a scale like so: <BR> <BR>People: 1 2 3 4 5 <BR>Land: 1 2 3 4 5 <BR>Assuming equal weighting, what would it take for me to leave with a feeling that "I must go back soon?" <BR> <BR>A score of 9 or better, is a definite YES, I want to go back. A score of 8 is probably YES, with a score of land 5 and people 3 being nearly equal to a 9. <BR>A score of 7 comprised of 4 and 3 would be a moderate YES. <BR>A score of 2 or less on any factor would demote the destination to the NO response. I can find a better offer, or I can stay home. <BR>A 6 made up of 3 and 3, would be a neutral. I would go back if cheap, convenient, and no better alternative was available. <BR>This has been a good exercise in self introspection. Now that I am properly introspected, this one should make interesting reading. Ever notice that the European forum gets into the these philosophical discussions more so than the others?? I wonder why. Perhaps a psychometrician can step in and really define this scale so we can all get more bang for our travel buck.

For me, the land. The anticipation of standing before a unique piece of art, visiting and learning about a historical site, and/or witnessing breathaking scenery is exhilarating to me. Living in the U.S., specially been from New York, I am already exposed to people from other cultures and have learned the valuable lesson of how people are the same wherever you go. I enjoy just as much getting to know the guy on the next bench in my neighborhod' park, as I would enjoyed it, say, in Munich. <BR> <BR>I do realize locals add to the experience and I almost invariably I come home with some great memories about some local character, but, to be totally honest, it is the land that I look forward to enjoy.

Excellent question, Daniel (you a psych major?). Anyway, I travel for the people/culture. I have been to the Grand Canyon and the Sahara Desert. The Grand Canyon is just a big boring hole in the ground, because it's just geology. The Sahara, on the other hand, has a whole history of peoples stratched across its terrain. I'd rather look at the Eiffel Tower or the Coliseum, because of the controversy, the reasons, the people, than giant sequoia. I would like to visit Wounded Knee and Gettysburg, but Hawaii makes me yawn. With all that said, I want to make it clear that this is the way *I* travel. Thank heavens we all have different likes/dislikes, or the Grand Canyon would have been trampled to dust long ago because EVERYONE would have visited it and the Eiffel Tower would have been worn down to a nub.

Daniel Lee: You certainly come up with the good ones! <BR> <BR>The responses so far have been quite thought provoking (they usually are on this forum!). Mine is much simpler, I'm afraid. <BR> <BR>I obviously go to see the land, but equally to see the people. It was, after all, people that built Versailles, that created the artwork in the Louvre', that plant and harvest those grapes on nearly sheer cliffs high above the Rhine. They took those naturally beautiful landscapes and created splendor amid that beauty. <BR> <BR>I have seen many great places, but met many wonderful people in those places. <BR> <BR>We go to the places made better by the people who live there. For me, it is both. <BR>

In my early trips it was the land. Now its the people. <BR> <BR>All trips now seem to be about the same with only people experiences making the difference. <BR> <BR>Sadly, people experiences are becoming more and more rare as friendliness becomes a commodity.

aah, Jim-dandy, I don't think it's friendliness in short commodity, but patience. Which I wouldn't leave home without. <BR> <BR>I think I like to visit visually stimulating places (meaning land and man-made "sights"). Finding good people usually is a result. As long as I've remembered to pack the patience.

<BR>To me, they're intertwined, but I guess I'd say, the land is the cake, and the people are the frosting.

Call me tourist, but it is the land, the destination, that is foremost. If I meet nice people, well and good, but I don't plan my travel around that possibility.

<BR>I'd like to use a movie, if I may, for this discussion. It was a little cheesy, but good, made-for-tv movie called 'Mrs. Arris goes to Paris', starring Angela Lansbury. <BR>Anyway, she goes to Paris to buy a Dior dress, but the basis of the movie is that she meets and affects the lives of all these Parisiens (spelled right?). <BR>I think that's what I would hope for on a trip, but, then again, it's a movie. <BR>

Sometimes I've travelled to mainly see animals. Often it's the scenery I go to see, but it's the people who really make or break it.

<BR>My main interest is the country itself first and then the people who reside there. Some of my friends may be surprised I would say that as they know me to be quite a conversationalist with local people where ever we go, but really to me that is just a side highlight. I enjoy very much finding about about local customs, habits and rituals etc but what draws me to traveling over and over is the sight of some new place (or a place I have seen before but in a different season or light).

Yours is a provocative question, Daniel. In a little over a year of scanning queries and responses to this forum, I've seen only two people oriented types of questions - yours and any number that ask if Parisians are as rude and arrogant as everybody (whomever "everybody" may be) says they are. I think the greater proportion of American tourists who travel to Europe in hopes of meeting the people are deluding themselves. Whom do they meet? Bank tellers and cashiers, hotel desk clerks and concierges, cab drivers, waiters and busboys, persons staffing tourist information booths, train, tube or metro ticket agents and other tourists, mostly American. I've yet to know a tourist planning a trip to Picardy to meet a French miner or Langnau to meet a Swiss dairy farmer or Wolfsburg to meet a Volkswagen factory worker or Utrecht to meet a university professor simply to find out what the "natives" are really like, though many American tourists are farmers, factory workers and educators. <BR> <BR>It seems to me that many Americans tour Europe to see the things that people have created. Few of those things or their creators are contemporary. The opulence of Versailles gives no insight into the mind of the contemporary Frenchman other than his historic unhappiness at the amount of taxes he must pay. A tour of the highlights of Switzerland Zermatt, Murren, Interlaken, the Jungfrau, for example, will leave us with memories of magnificent scenery and a perception of the Swiss as proficient hotel keepers. Do our visits to the Bavarian castles of mad King Ludwig give us insights into the 20th century mind of the German citizen? <BR> <BR>Few Americans travel with any high degree of fluency in a European language, a tremendous handicap in opening the doors of communication with Europe's natives. That lack of fluency inhibits most of us from even trying to converse with local residents. <BR>Our natural, national trait of self-assurance disappears at the thought of dealing with masculine and feminine French nouns and that esoteric thing called "the dative case". <BR> <BR>So, then, in answer to your question, I think with relatively few exceptions, most of us travel to see and experience things - the creations of the natural world and man. We entertain the faint hope that maybe we'll get a chance to converse with someone one on one on a subject other than "Vo ist der Bahnhof? or "Ou es la W.C. (or is it "le"?)? <BR>

<BR>Well Wes, how about people like me who travel and stay with Servas families and people in their homes a lot? At least half of my trips I stay in Servas homes with local people......forest workers, photographers, doctors, engineers, receptionists, EMT drivers etc. Almost every night we just sit around and make dinner together and chat. Some of these people have come to the USA and visited and stayed with me too. And many have written to me for years afterwards. That is the way to truly learn about a country and its people...not by staying in tourist motels. A few months ago we were flying out of Munich on a very early plane so we ended up staying in a tourist type hotel the night before for convenience sake. It was awful to see all these American and Canadian tourists there who thought they were seeing the "real Europe" because they were not on a tour....and they spent all their conversational time talking to other North Americans in the hotel. I'm all for people getting to know Europeans....and like you I don't mean brief conversations with hotel clerks and waiters. Now I am fluent in 7 languages, but one does not have to speak other languages to travel via Servas.....you just have to like to talk to people. Many Europeans that are Servas members speak English quite well.

<BR>BTW Wes since you asked it's "Ou est le W.C." (not es or la) and also "Wo ist der Bahnhof" (not Vo).

Two posters have hit the nail on the head. Friendliness/commodity and <BR>people could make or break a holiday, for some. <BR> <BR>In our case, we go to see the land (oh please excuse the odd trip to Asia for shopping - years ago) but the people are a great part of our holiday. We love to sit and watch people, so sitting and watching people in their own country is so interesting. On our recent Tuscan holiday (where we loved the land, the atmosphere the history) we found a lot of the shopkeepers to be other than friendly. <BR>The man in the supermarket behind the deli counter, the man at the door to the restaurant, the lady selling ceramics in San Gimignano - all rude. In Turkey, everyone without exception seemed honestly friendly and made our trip extra special. Wonderful country wonderful people. I am in charge of a retail division of one of our major Australian companies and customer service is a high priority, so I was aware of the difference in Tuscany.. But, happily that did not break our holiday, it added to our experiences. Friendliness in a staff member is an asset, but it musn't be false. I can imagine a tourist coming into our store, being treated well, and going home saying Australia is a great land. People are an asset, which cannot change the land, but can change perception. <BR>