London-based expat Julia Craig asks: Does travel turn us into the worst versions of ourselves, while convincing us that we are at our best?

While mindlessly scrolling Instagram last month, I came across footage of locals in Barcelona spraying tourists with water guns. They were protesting tourism’s choking effect on their city, while I watched on, poolside at a cheap resort on holiday in the south of Spain. 

Later that day, while driving down to Málaga, a coastal Spanish city that is the exact antipodes of Tāmaki Makaurau, I became nervous of a similar fate about to befall me. Was I about to be sprayed in the face with water by a beleaguered local while drinking my glass of tinto de verano at one of their now overcrowded and overpriced bars? Or, perhaps a tomato was about to be squished unceremoniously into my hair, in protest of my choice of accommodation that was inevitably pricing them out of owning their own home in the place where they have lived their whole lives? 

A recent move to London has allowed me to visit more European destinations than ever before. For a mere £30 ticket on a Ryanair jet, in just under three hours I was in Venice for a long weekend. Once there, I swiftly bought myself a cheap Aperol Spritz and lounged in the famous Giardini, home of the Venice Biennale.

This year’s Venice Biennale was aptly called Foreigners Everywhere, a title encapsulating the exhibition’s focus on global majority and indigenous artists, and a usurping of its traditionally Eurocentric bent. It was also a nod to the reality of being in Venice now: tourists everywhere while locals rapidly diminish. 

They weren’t going out without a fight, however: Venetian locals have for decades been protesting the crushing assault on their city from the tourist industry. The local authority has responded with various proposals, including recently, a tourist access fee, in an attempt to dissuade tourists and decongest the fragile lagoon city. While making my way on foot through the crowded streets towards the Venice Biennale, I saw a sign advertising this forthcoming policy. It had been defaced by graffiti – someone had scrawled, “access fees will turn Venice into Disneyland” across the sign. 

The effects of tourism seems too difficult a problem to overcome, with local authorities scrambling to respond and locals feeling utterly, and bitterly, hopeless. And there I am, feeling bad for making it worse, but going anyway.

Back in my new home of London, I can make a convincing local, with my company’s lanyard around my neck and a huffy demeanour as I fast-walk to the tube. Once you are playing the role of a local, it is surprising how soon the impact of tourism can get to you. I quickly become grumpy with tourists who clog up the footpath and fail to keep right on the tube’s escalators.

Philosopher Agnes Callard makes a compelling case against travel. She points out that we may idealise travel when it’s something we are doing or planning to do, but how quickly it turns to being characterised as tourism when it is something others are doing (just think of how you might avoid ‘touristy’ spots). Callard goes further to argue that perhaps travel is something we do to make ourselves more interesting, referring to the ideas of Portuguese philosopher Fernando Pessoa, who deemed that “only extreme poverty of the imagination justifies having to move around to feel”. (Pessoa was from Portugal’s capital, Lisbon, another city straining from the weight of tourism).

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While visiting these European cities, I inevitably encounter ill-tempered waitstaff who grumble at my poor imitation of their language as I ask for a table, or my lack of awareness when producing a debit card for payment rather than cash. I sheepishly offer my apologies, in which I try to insert the fact I am from New Zealand, like a ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card that separates me from the other English-speaking tourists with worse reputations.

The reflex to reassure locals that I am a New Zealander is an odd one. Perhaps because it sometimes yields positive results: “Ah! Nuova Zelanda!” an italian local might exclaim, their frown now washed away with something a little more bemused. Or, perhaps we like to forgive ourselves as New Zealanders for any footprint we might make in the world, assuming we have a light touch on the world – we are so small, after all.

I’ve heard the following parlance from fellow New Zealanders too many times to count: travel makes you appreciate our own country so much more. So often, then, New Zealanders are travelling to experience some sort of change. Perhaps a way of seeing our own lives anew, to appreciate our beautiful surroundings, to keep that appreciation and gratitude alive and well. Maybe, even, to distract ourselves from dire domestic political, social, and economic situations (think: “at least we aren’t living in America;” “you should be grateful you are not living in x country!”).

Like many young New Zealanders, I have moved to London to gain more life experience and to encounter difference. However, everyday I seem to find myself at the New Zealand-owned cafe around the corner from my East London flat, ordering a macchiato from a New Zealand barista, while New Zealand chefs cook up eggs benedict in the style of the cafe’s Auckland counterpart.

I’m no tourist, here in London. I work for their local government and I pay council tax. But I am on a two year Youth Mobility Visa – a far cry from a local. Like many of those on this visa, am I ultimately here to extract something from this city, while contributing little? A bit like this New Zealand cafe, plonked in a recently-gentrified borough of East London, here to extract revenue from the local community, while not even bothering to hire the locals who have weathered the effects of this gentrification.

Agnes Callard suggests that travel turns us into the worst versions of ourselves while convincing us that we are at our best. Is this because we expect change in ourselves, in our outlook on life or home country, while inadvertently changing the destination countries in profound and irreversible ways? Callard thinks so: “we go to experience change, but end up inflicting change on others.”

But I am a New Zealander, from a small, loveable country, so my tourism is forgivable. We are not like other tourists – we are intrepid adventurers on our OE. Or, we are hard workers on a temporary work visa offering our sought-after skills to the appreciative host country. And there’s barely any of us to make a mark. So goes the inner monologue one New Zealander abroad might recite when watching the footage of angry and desperate Barcelonians protesting the detrimental effect tourism has on their quality of life.

Our tourism as New Zealanders travelling abroad is not exempt from the harmful effects on the local communities of our destinations. If negatively changing our host country as a tourist is unavoidable (especially the change to the climate from the air travel to get there), can we at least do more to affect positive change on ourselves in the process?

“I love Auckland, but Auckland doesn’t love me back,” so declared another fellow expat and friend of mine. I feel these words deeply. This is another reason I moved to London: Auckland, my hometown, kicked me out, or maybe I sulkily abandoned her, after one too many betrayals (the mayoral election, the lack of bike lanes, the price of produce – take your pick). Without staying in and fighting for my love, I cowardly ran away, to the embrace of London, in all her well-connected, bike-friendly and culturally-infrastructured glory.

I am not travelling abroad because I want to make myself better, as Callard suggests, I am travelling because I want to live better. I want free visits to my GP, I want bike lanes all the way to my office, I don’t want to have to rely on owning a car to get around, and I want a metropolitan government that invests in its local arts and culture. How do we travel to London, use the tube, and not want to emulate even a vague facsimile of a well-connected public transport system at home? How could one ever protest light rail in Auckland after that?

I want us as New Zealanders to banish this thought from our existence: travelling makes you appreciate what we have at home more. Instead: travelling helps me see a better way for us.