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The Subtle Signs of Culture

How to Navigate Your Way around the World

By Sean Patrick DurhamPublished 4 years ago 9 min read
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Two People Meeting and Talking on a Bench - image; Pixabay

People like to compare the size of a city to another city so that they can get a feeling for how big it is. As if the size of a city would tell you anything about how good it is to actually live there.

Big doesn't mean beautiful when we talk about cities. New York, London, Tokio, Madrid, Berlin, all of these are heavily populated cities that suffer from problems of overcrowding. This leads to the problem of housing people, its dwellers and the tourists, and the business people who visit a city each day, need accommodation that is suitable for their purposes.

“I can't think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything.”

― Bill Bryson

Dense Ideas of City Life

Berlin has a population of just under 4 million residents. This figure is constantly fluctuating with people coming to live in the city and people packing up and leaving. It's the same for all popular cities around the World.

Most major cities have an estimated 1.5 million non-residential visitors each day. That's people who have business in the city for some reason, they fly in, and fly out. All of this doesn't tell us much about why a city could be a cool place to put down roots, and live and experience the place for a while, or longer.

If a city is big or medium sized, it doesn't matter. People gravitate towards a city center and live there, or close, and the tourists and business people seek temporary accommodation in the center. A city is a convenience, if it isn't, if it's been badly planned, then it's off the list.

How to Find a City to Live in

The only real way to know a city is to take a risk and go to live there. Find out what the locals are like, get a feel for the main vibe of the place and look for an opening that offers you the lifestyle and friends that you've been hoping for.

I've lived in Berlin since 1983. I love the place, even though Berlin has been through a few dramatic changes and upheavals. I've survived them.

The fall of the Berlin Wall caused so much sweat to form on the brows of the average Berliner, people began making plans to leave and go live someplace else.

In the 1990s, Berlin was trembling under the cost of construction. Potsdamer Platz needed to be totally rebuilt, East Berlin was in dire need of a major face lift, so the city was spending taxpayers money like water - get the job done was the main plan.

Of course such heartfelt plans always end up going wrong, so the city ran out of money, and the builders stopped building. People started to moan, then worry.

City Planners and City Dwellers

When the city planners get it wrong it's not only the people who moan and worry, the investors worry, then the money skidaddles out of town.

If the investors disappear, then everything gets worse. The city of Berlin had no money and the newly formed "Treuhandgesellschaft", the organisation which oversaw the sales of East German properties to private buyers, was all too slow to keep a healthy cash flow coming into the state koffers.

Berlin won't go away. It's a robust city that demands a lot from its residents, but the residents are a tough bunch, and they seem to pride themselves on their ability to roll with the punches and adapt themselves to the changing landscapes.

Everything is connected, like the funny-bone is connected to the arm-bone, and the state koffers are connected to the tourism industry and the tourists want to have a good time for their money. But when the state has overshot their budget, then it shows up in the streets. Why would anybody come to the party when the party's over?

Cultural Differences that We Encounter

I lived in Seville, Spain for a while, I thought it would be great to go down to Spain, choose a city that is well known for its cultural bent and live there. I wanted to find art, and some old fashioned horse culture. Both were on offer. I didn't know anymore about the Spanish people, other than what I'd heard.

Andalusia is known for horses, bullfights, and art. Siestas and an easy-going lifestyle are also in the bag. But the truth is that most Sevillanos are sick and tired of tourists coming down to their small city and infecting it with a mentality of, "I'm here now, so I'm allowed to have fun, get drunk, complain about the menu not being what I thought it would be...", poor Seville, it is what it is, and they don't want it to change. That's the thing about Seville. They have a way of life that has been around for centuries, and it's their way of life.

Cultural Tourism and Bad Habits

Most tourists, Americans and Northern European who try to live in Seville, discover that the Seville Spanish don't welcome them with open arms. Hence, we find, a bit of argy-bargy going on when a drunk Brit mouths-off about how different the Sevillianos are - and how arrogant they seem to be about their city.

Their arrogance is a common observation. Most other Spanish people also have a problem with it. Sevillanos seem to know it, too.

The average Sevillano boasts daily about something that they have manufactured or discovered. The Santa María Cathedral is magnificent to look at. If you are not religious, then it's just a pretty building.

In Fyodor Dostoevsky's, "The Brothers Karamazov", novel, Jesus returns to the World by walking out of the Seville Cathedral. Where else of course, but in Seville? Enough to make any Catholic proud.

Semana Santa and Spooky Feelings

Seville is probably one of the most religious communities in Spain. They celebrate each saint's day, and in April you can witness the mind-boggling euphoria of "Semana Santa", where the streets become blocked and strained by the countless daily processions.

Seeing these processions can be daunting for some people, especially the Thursday procession, of that week, which is consider the pinnacle event. The devotees, wearing long white and blue robes, and head gear that is no different to the Ku-Klux-Klan garb, carrying their ornately designed alters along the streets, in eerie silence.

The crowds know that silence is important, if a member of the public begins to speak, there will be hissing sounds through the crowds.

The Spanish "hiss" sound is heard when you visit a concert, Flamenco, or similar is listened to in silence - no background conversations, not even a whisper, otherwise, you'll hear a hissing and see faces looking at you.

For an outsider, this hissing sound is weird, like a child making odd noises in the street.

Seville produces its own beer, Cruz Campo. The Sevillanos, say that it's the best beer in the World. When I attempted to argue this point by asking a local Sevillano if he'd ever drunk German beer, he told me that he had no need to test German beer against his home town's "golden nectar...", Cruz Campo beer, "...is known to be perfect". Well, my experience of the brew is that it goes down well, but it's a lottery ticket to the size of your hangover in the morning- and you will have one.

How Tourists are Guided through the Streets

Every tourist is guided. They must be, otherwise they will miss out on something important. Guidebooks, and websites will ensure that a tourist visits the right buildings, gawping and awing at the structure, then move on to the next monument to admire its expression of cultural significance.

Yet, most tourists have no idea of the real culture behind a town, or a city.

So how can they know that they have found the city they wanted to visit?

Industries that Profit from the Desire for Travel

We live in times when people can travel as much as it pleases them. The term, "Digital Nomad", describes a lifestyle of travelling about the World and, trying at least, to make an income from your laptop.

Travellers have created an enormous industry that uses a shameful amount of resources. This is wholeheartedly encouraged by the competitive tourist industry.

The tremendous waste of energy and wasted hours of life that are involved in leaving your home to see something that you know nothing about. Then returning, after visiting many cities, with nothing more than a buzz-feeling about having actually travelled so far. But did you really encounter another culture?

The Beaten Track

It's hard, these days, to go off the beaten track. The beaten track is really whatever is in the guidebooks, and if the travel agenda is booked and planned for you, there's little chance that you'll get to know the locals, seek out and find strange places that nobody else has discovered. That's how the travel industry wants to keep it. Follow the signs, stay on track, and go back home.

Broaden Your Knowledge skillfully

Learning about other cultures through travel can be a rich and educational experience - I think it's important. People can broaden their knowledge of the World, and create great memories that are worth pondering again, even years later. But there is a clue as to how to make the experience real when we look at the clash of tourism against the perceived arrogance of other cultures.

The Sevillano who claims his beer is the best, and the American who claims to live in the most developed country in the World, the German who has the best technology, and the Brit who can list at least ten types of tasty pastries to be savoured while you visit her country, are trying to put you right about what you are missing.

The clues are in the silent processions, the hissing Spaniard who is telling you to be quiet, in their own cultural way.

The American who is proud of her country and loves to love America, is trying to share an idea with you.

The Spanish person trying to tell you that their olives are the best in the World, is trying, in a very human way, to tell you something about their country.

Maybe their arrogance is as obvious as ours is to them. When we moan that they have no fish and chips, or that their little family shops are nothing compared to the giant shopping malls of the USA, then maybe we have departed from the beaten track and met a local from whom we could learn a thing or two about their culture.

culture
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About the Creator

Sean Patrick Durham

Sean P. Durham is a writer and teacher/Coach working and living in Berlin

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