A Familiar Setting, Yet Not So
I am writing this piece sitting on a plane bound for southern Europe. My plan is to escape the bitter Swedish winter; its days marked with dry gallic wind. The plane lifts above the cover of clouds that settle above the landscape as a thick blanket barely letting any sun in during the days. As we climb over the layers of white puffs, the sun appears – its friendly warmth serving a reminder of the summer months that now seem like a distant memory.
The flight is bound for Rome, the Eternal City, and one that I have frequented time and again. Why again, one may wonder, especially given the eternal chaos the Italian capital is known for. Well, one reason is the reminiscence of times gone by. Rome was the first city that I travelled to when I landed in Europe. I not only look forward to slightly longer days, but also to the cafes that I will get to frequent. These small cafes punctuate almost every street corner in Rome, and here the neighbours gather to get their ritualistic caffeine fix through morning cappuccinos and afternoon espressos.
Coffee is not the sole reason though, for I can find many a good cafe in the city that I live in.
Why head to a crowded city for the vacation, the question lingers, for my friends wonder when I tell them of my plans to take vacation in not only Rome, but other European metropolises? Why not travel from the busyness of current life into a calm escape of a nature reserve? Why then to another concrete jungle?
My answer to these questions is always the same. Being amid disorder, and everyday rush, rarely allows for the disassociation that is necessary to be an observer. Life happens to me when living in my city, and rarely am I able to distance myself from the surroundings to observe how it is to live in the city. To put simply, I merge into the familiar scenery while living my everyday life, caught in the hustle of day-to-day scruffles. To observe life unfolding in a city, I need to disassociate myself from the established routines. The only way I have learnt to do so is to physically distance myself, i.e., fly away and implant myself in another city.
In these travels – be it to Rome or to Barcelona, or even to the next door, Copenhagen – I escape from the routines of waking up early, rushing to the office, and coming back home exhausted, only to execute yet another set of pre-defined actions. Instead, I start the day at the cafes. No, not the fancy ones swarming with tourists. Instead, I search for the small neighbourhood cafes frequented by locals. In these cafes, I plant myself in a corner and watch life unfold. There, while watching the locals lining up for their morning coffee, I see a reflection of myself: dressed for work, already in a call, speaking urgently into the mouthpiece, and impatiently waiting in the queue for my turn to come.
Later, after a relaxed breakfast, I head out on the city streets for a purposeless stroll. Well, not truly, for I am still wearing my witness glasses. I watch the haste on the street; locals rushing by with such urgency that even the jewels that a city like Rome has to offer – Fontana di Trevi, the Spanish Steps, or even the Colosseum – fade in the background. These tourist draws become a speck, a direction reference for the locals who have spent years in the shadow of these attractions. What a pity, I then wonder, only to remind myself that I have treated my own city with same nonchalance. How often have I taken an evening off to visit the local museum that my city has to offer, or that restaurant by the sea that shows up as a top tourist attraction for my city, or taken a boat ride in the canal that circles around the city?
That’s why travelling into a familiar setting, yet away from my own home, serves to me a couple of reminders. Firstly, it teaches me what life in a city looks like. Observing others in another city, makes me more aware of how I act in my habitual surrounding back home. And secondly, distancing myself from the familiar makes me appreciate it even more. I come back to my city and start observing a tad more closely the gems it has to offer – the local library that I rarely visit, that art exhibition that I passed by but didn’t care to go in, and that museum that I never once made way to.
