Living Like a Tourist

Earliest this year, I took the longest vacation I’ve ever taken and spent 9 days in Scandinavia.

Our vacation started in Oslo, found us taking taking a train to Flam and a fjord tour to Bergen, brought us to Copenhagen for a couple days, and ended in Stockholm.

At the time of the vacation, I knew that I needed a break, but I didn’t realize how much taking time off would help me refocus my priorities and perspective on living more generally.

In particular, I realized that many of the things I did on vacation, including planning our daily itineraries while also leaving room for aimless exploring, was how I aspired to live my life, even when not on vacation.

Here are some mindsets of being a tourist that I have since been applying to my day-to-day life:

You’re more open-minded

When immersing yourself in a new culture, there will be inevitable faux pas and embarrassing mispronunciations — and that’s ok. Cultures have evolved over hundreds of years, and it would be impossible to become fluent overnight. When you’re on vacation, you give yourself permission to take in as much as you can, even if you’re a novice to a new language, transit system, way of using cutlery, etc. You’re more open-minded and forgiving of your mistakes.

Street art in Oslo

You prioritize

When you’re visiting a new city, you have a limited amount of time, which forces you to prioritize. A question I would ask myself is, “What would I be sad to have not done, in the few days I have?” Instead of being stressed out by the prospect of trying to cram in an infinite number of things to do, you prioritize what you can reasonable get done and recognize that even if you lived in a city for years, you wouldn’t be able to do everything you are interested in. Ultimately, you see this as an opportunity to return in the future to do things you weren’t able to squeeze in the first time.