Today a small group of us went to Trinity College to see the Book of Kells and the Long Room.  I was particularly struck by the latter, especially when considering place.  When preparing for the trip, I often saw pictures of the Long Room.  It is so iconic, in fact, that it is on the cover of my Dublin guidebook.  In the photos, the hall is empty.  It looks like what it is (or what I thought it was) – a library.  One can imagine oneself studying dutifully amid the stacks of antique books.  As an avid reader and amateur book collector, libraries to me are a sacred place.  I usually enter a library, especially like the one at Trinity, with the same reverence that I would a cathedral.

But contrary to, or possibly because of, the popular photos of the Long Room, what we entered today was little more than a tourist attraction.  The room was filled with people.  And although most spoke in the semi-whisper heard in libraries everywhere, it definitely did not have the sense of awe or gravitas that I was expecting.  What’s additionally interesting is that the behavior and energies of other people affected how I interacted with the place.  I fell right in with everyone else: snapping pictures, pointing at funny things or making jokes, and in general bringing brevity to the situation.

I could be mad about the way people, including myself, were behaving.  And I think that it comes down to how we define a place and how that definition should affect our behavior.  If the Long Room is above all a library, then it should be treated as such.  Or, if it is a “top sight of Dublin,” then it carries a very different kind of reputation.  What was strange was that it kind of had both.  People, myself included, treated it more as a tourist site, but we still whispered while walking through.  So I am left considering how much the title of a place affects the reputation of it, which is then perpetuated by the behavior of the individuals in that place.

I am lucky enough to have had a lot of opportunities to travel, and it has caused me to often think about the nature of “the traveler.”  Our discussions on place have brought this idea back to me once again.  I don’t have any good answers, so if that is what you are looking for, you have come to the wrong place (place!).  I thought, though, that I would take this opportunity to voice and perhaps unpack a little some of the pervading questions I have about travel.

I want to start by saying that I love traveling.  I deeply appreciate the opportunity it affords individuals to learn about other people-groups and cultures and to see oneself as part of a much larger whole.  However, I also often feel guilty about travel.  I think it is impossible to visit a new place without engaging in colonization in some small way. Obviously, I don’t feel guilty enough about this to stop exploring, but I do try to be mindful of it as much as possible.  I know that I have a tendency to want to project my own knowledge and understanding onto the culture that I am seeing around me, and I have a feeling that others do the same.

One thing I often catch myself doing is accentuating or exaggerating the similarities.  I take my own, American worldview and project it onto a new place.  “Everywhere has a McDonald’s, which means we are all the same!”  I think what I am really trying to do is find a common ground or a point of similarity, but what I end up doing often is ignoring the unique aspects of a place or culture by trying to force it to fit into what I already understand.  I end up “colonizing” a place by denying its complex history and the relationship it has to its inhabitants.

Or I swing too far in the other direction and idealize a place for being so different.  Yesterday as we walked, I saw into a row of back yards and saw laundry hanging from a line.  At the moment it felt very idyllic; a picture of a simpler life.  But I realized that I am romanticizing someone else’s real life.  Their laundry isn’t on display so that I can think, “Oh how quaint! How picturesque!”  Their laundry is on the line because after a long day of work, they had to come home and do laundry (I recognize that this too is a projection, that I am still attempting to write the laundry owner’s narrative).  So while addressing the fact that everything is not exactly as I already know it, I try to perform the balancing act of not “otherizing” everything by making it either idyllic or mysterious.

Finally, I colonize through my attitude towards other tourists.  I want an authentic experience.  Which, I think, is actually impossible for me to have because I am inherently inauthentic as a visitor.  But I desire to see “real life,” which means that there can’t be any other tourists around.  “Go away, Americans! This is my ‘real Irish pub’ and you are ruining it!”  In my attempts at a unique or authentic experience, I end up laying claim to a place that I have absolutely no claim to.  I am the American tourist.  I am the person I glare at when she or he enters my “secret” spot (usually that I found in a guide book).  So while I often think that tourists are grossly tourist-y and that I want to get off the beaten path, I try to remember that I am an outsider, a visitor, too.  While I may want to go off the beaten path, the people who actually live and work on that path may not want be stomping through it.

So, yeah.  Make of that what you will.  I don’t think there’s a right answer.  Travel is important. And getting off the beaten path sometimes is important too.  But it’s also crucial that I remember that real people with real lives inhabit the places that I visit.  The picture above shows just one small bit of a complex and beautiful landscape, and I try to remember that, even when it’s not foggy, as a visitor this is all I will ever see or understand of a place that I am visiting only temporarily.