What is "culture" if not museums?
 

More and more I am seeing posts from people planning a trip who say they want to immerse in the cultures of the countries they are visiting - but then say they don't want to visit museums or major tourist sights.

Granted there are many other things that make up culture - family structure, education and healthcare systems, workplace habits and regulations, mores and habits, food and dining customs - and the arts: theater, music, ballet, galleries etc. But many of these are discoverable only by spending significant time in any place.

I'm at a loss as to how these people are defining culture. Do they mean trying to live like a local (difficult when you're in a new city/country every other day)? Are they talking just about cafes and pubs? Or?????

I don't think it's just museums at all:
http://m.livescience.com/21478-what-...f-culture.html

That said, I getting pretty cynical about some of the requests for trip help for Europe. The "experience the culture" & aggressive itinerary are sounding awfully similar.

To me, culture is the art, music, cathedrals/temples/churches, food, markets, shops, sidewalk cafe's etc. i remember a line (paraphrased from Monument's Men) "You can wipe out an entire generation, you can burn their homes to the ground and somehow they'll still find their way back. But if you destroy their history, their art, their music, you destroy their achievements and it's as if they never existed" We try to wander neighborhoods when travelling as well as seeing the major and some minor attractions. Isera, Italy; Anzio, Italy; Zahara, Spain, etc are some examples. that's one reason I could never do a packaged tour!

Gosh, I hope culture isn't museums. I've been traveling since 1963, and I feel like I've visited too many museums. I do like museums that show me how people lived or that relate to the history of a people, but I don't care if I ever look at another painting in my life.

I like lahawk's definition of culture. I like architecture, sidewalk cafes, streets, shop windows, on-the-street fashions and the like. The museums that stand out for me are places like the Wohnhaus Lindwurm in Stein-am-Rhein, Switzerland, which shows how people lived in the 19th century or Den Gammle By in Arhus, Denmark.

I loved the Roman theater in Mérida, Spain, and the geology around Cuenca and Ronda. We even enjoyed seeing the various colors of the fields and hills in Andalucia and pondering what grows in different fields.

I certainly don't want to live like a local. If I wanted to do that, I'd stay home.

An important part of "culture" is eating where the locals eat.

Maybe we need to distinguish museums from art galleries? I am very interested in history museums and arts and crafts museums (e.g. the V&A in London), but I have given up on modern art and quite a lot of older art, too.

Culture is a beer garden in Munich on a Sunday in the summertime :)

I am always leery of people who want to immerse themselves in another's culture and allot two weeks or less.

We are inveterate museum goers, but most museums have works from other regions and countries and, of course, near and distant times. So how much does each contribute and needless to say their contributions are not equal.

There is the daily culture, people's vocations and avocations, the haute culture, the culture that is based in history, economics, sociology, religion, among other things and broken into low and middle brow cultures. And if depicted by Venn Diagram would vary substantially from area and era.

There is much more to culture than fine art, there is the writing, dance, music, theater and cuisine those often have many variations on a theme. What is the tradition? Is it alive? Is it dying?

Anyone who wants to "immerse" themselves in a culture, should start by reading about that country's history, literature, and contributions to the world community. And then hope in two weeks to learn a little more.

I think the word 'culture' should be substituted for 'everyday life'. They want to eat where the locals eat, go grocery shopping if they've rented an apartment, travel on the metro, sit in a plaza, piazza or square - that sort of thing. In other words - not be in a generic hotel in the outer burbs, hopping on and off a Trafalgar Tours bus and seeing Europe out of a window.

Which "every day life" do they chose? The wealthy person or the bum? The full time worker with three kids or the retiree? Just think of the different stages of your life and they differ from other generations.

People often say that want to speak to locals. Well what will they offer in return? How honest do you think someone will be with a stranger? Who are you speaking with and do they have an agenda? And even then, how much is limited anecdotal information worth?

We have made friends with people in many countries and have stayed in their homes and them in ours and we are still loathe to make generalizations unless we know or see a pattern and custom.

BTW, most foreigners think Americans know very little about their country. So before you visit a country read about the history, read the serious literature, learn some basic words and phrases, read about the current political and social situations, and learn as much as possible as to what is important to the people in that country. And then do not make statements about other people's country, ask questions.

This goes a long way in having others have a discussion.

<i>An important part of "culture" is eating where the locals eat.</i>

So, McDonalds and that new Thai place that just opened.

Relevant anecdote:

About once every 4-6 weeks me and a handful of coworkers go out after work for dinner. We have been doing this for about four years so now it's not just coworkers that come but "former" coworkers and it's a great way to keep in touch with everyone. Anyhoo, yesterday evening I was sitting in a popular local Biergarten (but located off the normal "tourist trail") with this group enjoying a beer and some Obatzter on a piece of Bauernbrot while we chatted and joked as a guitarist and accordion player played cover songs (Beatles mainly). I don't know why it did but at that moment I became aware that I was truly "experiencing the culture". No way somebody popping by for two days can experience that.

I used to work for a relocation company in London, showing people around flats and houses. Particularly Americans always wanted something with caracter, old, English. Until they realised it came with English plumbing. Charming local culture, without power showers, with a tiny fridge in the kitchen and damp walls, is not so charming apparently.

It's a perfectly reasonable use of English to talk about "culture" and exclude opera, art galleries, serious theatre and archaeology. If your culture at home doesn't involve that, why waste your life getting involved with it on holiday?

Most of us don't bother with this stuff at home, or when we holiday in the US. And no-one berates us if we pass on American provincial symphony orchestras, grisly New York subscription theatres or Native American craft shops.

Obviously it's easy to access real culture in English-speaking Europe. Pubs, football (or cricket) matches, horseraces, tabloid newspapers, Radio 4, TV, quiz nights, stand-up comedy venues, clubbing, village fairs, gardens, the summer cycle of music festivals : what's not culture in all that? And what's wrong with going on holiday and being keener on that than the Raphaels - or yet another soporific travelling Impressionist exhibition you're not going to bother with when it comes to Washington either?

It's understandable that some struggle to find the Italian or German equivalent: helping people looking for it is precisely what God put sites like this on earth for.

What's less understandable is why the question's being asked by some troll in a New Jersey garret who pretends she visits Europe (indeed Britain) frequently.

She either really is a fraud. Or - like David Axelrod and Walmart - simply incapable of appreciating how foreign countries work.

<i>What's less understandable is why the question's being asked by some troll in a New Jersey garret who pretends she visits Europe (indeed Britain) frequently.</i>

Are you referring to the op?

culture for me is talking to the people, chatting on trains, visiting sporting avents, singing in bars, ordering a coffee from a busy bar at 8am, sitting next to a truck driver with a his pet sparrow on his shoulder, talking to another bike rider on a little ferry on the Elbe, getting shouted at by little old ladies for cycling on a zebra crossing, watching the rubbish being collected in Venice etc

Museums are lovely but full of stuff made by dead people, as they say "the past is another country"

"Culture" can have many meanings:

- Socalled "high" culture, which means art, literature, opera, museums etc.

- Socalled "popular" culture with pop music, comedy shows, tv and radio etc.

- Socalled "daily life culture", which means eating habits, fashion, sports, socializing etc.

- Socalled "counter culture", which encompasses all efforts to be different from the mainstream of society like like listening to punk music, extravagant hairdos and outfits, extreme behaviour etc.

- Then we have "folklore", which has mostly been crowded out by the international pop culture but may be conserved for tourists (like Flamenco shows in Barcelona which is especially ironic since Flamenco is not native to Catalonia).

Of course, these categories are overlapping and often, there are debates about what is considered "high" culture or "daily life culture" (since Marchel Duchamp, many artists turn objects of daily life into art objects).

Then there is debate about national, regional and transnational culture.

The nation-state emerged not before the 19th century, and when nation-states were formed in Europe, nationalism arose, including concepts of "national culture".

Today, the concept of national cultures becomes increasingly obsolete, since people all over the world listen to the same pop songs (mostly produced in USA and UK), eat the same kind of food (from McDonald's to sushi), watch the same movies (mostly Hollywood-produced), wearing the same fashion (mostly designed in France and Italy).

Some researches call this "trans-culture". This is an old phenomenon: Culture has been transnational already in the ancient world. Styles like gothic and renaissance have been used all over Europe, and classical music was played in Vienna, London, Paris and Sankt Petersburg all the same.

Another challenge to national cultures comes from the regions. The nation-states often suppressed the regional cultures in territories they had conquered. Especially France tried hard to eliminate regional cultures and languages in Brittany and Alsace. In the last decades, however, we observed a rising awareness to save these regional cultures from extinction. We will see how successful these efforts will be (I am afraid that in Alsace, the Alsatian language is already at the verge of extinction when the older generation will be gone).

So, what does the tourist want?

Does he/she really want to immerse into local everyday culture? I read so many trip reports from Americans complaining about what is different from home in Europe: like soft drinks from the fridge but without ice, being served a Martini wine (made by Martini & Rossi) after having ordered a "martini" (cocktail) etc.

Total immersion into local culture would mean doing things like going to a football game. I don't know if most American tourists would stand that. (On the other hand, the most boring travel experience that I ever had in my life was going to a baseball match in California.)

So what tourist industry does is creating events which look like folklore and meet the tourists' expectations. Like Flamenco shows in Barcelona. Or pizza in Venice (to Venice, pizza is as foreign as to Kansas City).

<<Which "every day life" do they chose? The wealthy person or the bum?>>

Oh my goodness - really? Okay I will spell it out. The 'everyday life' tourists I speak of - and meet - are middle-class people who have homes, jobs, cars, maybe some children, affluent enough to travel but not afford a Leading Hotel of the World. They are curious about local *culture* and define it as being interested in how people similar to them eat, live, shop and entertain.

I think Bilboburgler defined it well. For me, an example of immersion in Neapolitan culture is watching calcio (football) at a bar in the historic centre and whooping it up when Napoli score a goal, buying some fish at the Porta Nolana markets and cooking it in my apartment, bearing witness to the liquefying of San Gennaro's blood in the Naples Duomo every September 19. To me that is experiencing 'culture'.

Culture is having some old duffer yell at us on a Scottish golf course because he thought we were standing on the wrong tee. We only found out later why he was yelling because we couldn't understand what he was saying.

Well he was wrong, so he bought us a pint afterwards and told us the history of the golf club. Though we missed most of that too. At least there were old photos to look at.

To us that was experiencing the culture.

Culture is going to Franconian beer festival with a friend from Baden-Württemberg then almost getting into fisticuffs with an inebriated Franconian because my friend wasn't Franconian and I was an Auslander, but then ten minutes later be toasting, chatting, and laughing with him.

It must be exhausting to be flanner.

Sorry Bluey-culture is not confined how the middle class lives. Each class influences the other and even middle class people differ in how the approach the world.

Most people here are defining culture for their own purposes, how they live, what they are interested in and how the travel, rather than a broader meaning of culture.
___________________


As for Flanny:

I do not think I have seen such a random insult as putting David Axelrod and Walmart in the same coupling. In an attempt to show his knowledge of contemporary American occurrences, he simply throws words and things together to fill the minimum words he needs for a screed.

His other random insult, "grisly New York subscription theatres," shows a total ignorance of the theater. There is everything from Classical Stage Company which presents revivals with well-known actors who work for scale to The Roundabout to tiny experimental troupes. I also assume he is not referring to the dance companies, the symphony, or the Met Opera.

Had to look up David Axelrod, another tax evader

opps, I see Walmart is bit of an evader too

Not to turn this into a political discussion but google corporations that do not pay taxes.

Interesting discussion.

FlannerUK says "It's a perfectly reasonable use of English to talk about "culture" and exclude opera, art galleries, serious theatre and archaeology. If your culture at home doesn't involve that, why waste your life getting involved with it on holiday?"

It strikes me that we want of the culture we are visiting what we want at home. We go to art museums and galleries at home, and we love doing so in other countries. We aren't opera buffs, but we do love other kinds of classical music and have gone to concerts in other countries as we do at home. We go to theatre at home and we like to do so (especially in London) when we are overseas. I've always been fascinated by archaeology and read about the places we plan to visit, and often visit specific places because of the ancient ruins there.

We don't eat fast food at home, and don't eat it when we are traveling either. Having zero interest in sports, I don't go to sporting events at home and wouldn't go when I was in a foreign country.

So we (fortunately) want different things when we travel, just as we want different things at home.

"I'm at a loss as to how these people are defining culture. Do they mean trying to live like a local (difficult when you're in a new city/country every other day)? Are they talking just about cafes and pubs? Or?????"

I think, as mentioned above, this has to do with getting a glimpse of everyday, local life. I enjoy it when it happens. Once, visiting a church in a small Mexican town, I happened upon the town's First Communion Day. Great to watch the kids and the proud parents, and to sample the home cooking at the feast outside following the ceremony.

I find my usual touring strategy,visiting museums, galleries, archaeological sites, churches, mosques and temples, battlefields, cemeteries, castles, walks in the countryside, eating and drinking locally, to be rewarding, but memories of events like the communion sometimes make the trip.

What FD said. In Puno, Peru we stumbled across a parade celebrating somethingorother. Our memory is of what a good time those people were having. Kind of infectious.

I agree that a country's culture is much more than museums - although many museums (not just art, but history museums, folk museums, natural history museums and the many other types found everywhere) are certainly a good place to start for a general perspective.

But the many of the posters asking about "culture" don;t seem to be talking about architecture, social history, current political situation, or any of the literature/arts - based on the very limited knowledge expressed in the posts.

I know someone mentioned that a having a beer in a beer hall is the culture of Munich - and granted that is very typical of the city - but only a minute part of the city's culture. and if that is what you want to do that is fine. But why come here saying you want to experience the culture of the city (in two days) when what you really want to know is where to eat and drink.

I have no problem with people's decisions and desires for their trips - if people just want to go and sit with a million other foreign tourists on a beach downing umbrella drinks for 2 weeks that's just fine - but why are they asking about experiencing the country's culture?

l Iove the passion of all the responses! Culture is definitely a big topic and one of the pulls for people who like to travel. It is the food we crave when we walk out our front door. I am always humbled when I encounter the expressions of another culture. As I write this out there is a picture of 'The David' on the wall of my study. I am so grateful that it still stands in Florence and draws people to gawk at all it conveys. And I weep when I see photos of sledgehammer wielding ISIS members destroying the ancient statues in Mosul. Culture is the fragile and robust echo of human's complex existence. What a gift to taste and see. It is the moveable feast!

elberko nails it, I think. No way you can visit, let's say, six cities in twelve days and appreciate the "local culture" if that means something other than art museums and architecture.

Unless you have a lot of time to stay in one place, I don't think you can get any of the local culture on your first trip to Europe. Most first timers (including me) aren't going to spend all there time in one place on a first trip.

Having visited Italy a lot, I just started feeling the "local culture" a bit on our last trip to Sicily and Napoli, and felt it a bit in Peru on my second long visit there.

We don't say we want to observe the culture, but we are history buffs so historical sites and museums are important to us. Before we travel we read about the history of thesome too so it's natural for us to do it when we travel.

As for art museums, I don't think I really understood the great wealth that Spain derived from the New World until we visited the Prado. An insight into history from looking at art.

We're going back to France and Germany in the fall so I just finished reading two books about the kaisers and two about Napoleon and his nephew Napoleon III. I will never forget how stunned I once was to see the crown of the Holy Roman Emperor in Vienna. Suddenly European history came to life. And that's why I love Rome--history under every footstep!

Most of the original works in the Prado were from the Spanish domain, which is why there are works by the Dutch. Over the years it has expanded considerably.

So...where do local politics fit in on the historical timelines of culture? Histo-culture? Well I don't know the answer BUT political culture was at it's best in Prague in March, 1993.

The split between CZ Rep. and adjacent Slovakia was 90-days old and we were in Prague as part of a 6-week trip (mostly auto, but also train and bus)through Central and Eastern Europe on a combined "business"/pleasure jaunt.

On a bitter cold, snowy day, we decided to visit Hradcany Castle overlooking the city. After walking through Golden Lane the Hapsburg goldsmiths once plied their trades, as the unusually low wind chill became more uncomfortable. We considered taking a cab back down the hill, but when we walked past the "west wing" of Hradcany where the President-Poet, heroic Vaclav Havel had his "oval" office.

We noticed several TV trucks with antennae, people with professional camera hardware, and my late wife insisted we go into the wing to warm up a bit...we did. There we were among more of the same...reporters/camermen all over the entry hall, all sporting "Press-Foto" badges.

I walked up to a badged woman who had been speaking Engish and German to another reporter and asked what was happening.

"President Havel's Press Conference is set to begin in 15 minutes," sez she. "He's going to meet with the Slovak PM tomorrow and will be prepping the press today."

I walked back to Roz and quickly announced what was happening. Her remark was not unexpected. "Get ready to walk through the security line, we're going to crash this tea party." As a constant co-conspirator at other similar gate-crashings, I was not surprised at her "chutzpah"...but I did ask myself, "what the hell are we getting into here?"

First off, our new found friend, the reporter from Germany, told us to have some ID ready and name who we represent. That was easy. Roz blurted out "The Los Angeles Times" and we took out our driver's licenses hoping that it wasn't enough to get us a warm weekend in a Prague Correctional Institution for whacko Americans.

When the 6'6" Czech trooper reached into his desk draw and drew out two Press-Foto badges, I knew we had pulled it off, thus far. When Roz blatantly pulled out a yellow-lined writing pad while we sat in the all-too-visible 2nd row in the arena style auditorium, I began to believe that we could beat the rap. And we did.

PostScript:
After the conference ended (we didn't understand one word for almost an hour) I was able to take some closeup photos of the now late Havel, a Czech patriot...then we bundled up to get some lunch at a nearby restaurant I noticed that morning...The "Zlaty Hruska" (The Golden Pear)...and wouldn't you know, Havel and his entourage were already seated for lunch at a curtained-off table.

Now we could almost honestly tell people in a stand-offish tone..."Havel? Yeah, we had lunch with him!"

(So that's what political culture was all about?. How quaint).

Please See photo proof below.

https://picasaweb.google.com/stuartt...59333203479570

Press Conference begings at photo #32...but look at them all if you wish...get an idea of how cold ans snowy it was.

stu

What has the above to do with culture, political or not? Especially since you didn't understand a word?

One way in which people mean they are experiencing culture is the way people in one country do things differently than people in the country a visitor comes from. The way people shop at small markets or street markets on a daily basis rather than the weekly trip to the supermarket; the way people stop at a cafe after work and before dinner to have a drink and socialize; the way people gather at a certain spot on a Sunday morning to sing and dance.

Student culture is different from place to place, and as a young traveler, it is interesting to experience the different ways young people meet and entertain themselves.

Talking to people about local attitudes, listening to people's stories, all this is a way of experiencing culture. I have read posts here that question whether people actually have the sort of cultural encounters I have described here, and I can only assure these posters that at least in my experience, they do happen, especially if one is open to them.

What I find the most puzzling is the attitude that people can not possibly encounter cultural differences in the way they say they want to. I have respect for people's ideas about travel, and if they say that a way of experiencing culture is to see the way people live, I take them at their word.

That's a great story Tower!

And I'm "always leery" of people who have decided that the time it takes people to do something is always the same regardless of who the people are.