I'm Done With Traveling

And it's not just about my carbon footprint

“Walking is a virtue, tourism is a deadly sin.”

Bruce Chatwin

Yesterday I read an article in the paper about an unprecedented surge of visitors to the Dolomites this summer.

There are a few photos and videos circulating online that show the worst recent excesses of mass tourism: People standing in line for hours just to take a selfie at a famous viewpoint or get an overpriced breakfast donut at a mountain hut. All the parking lots are packed to the brim. Cars are lined up all the way down into the valley.

At the same time, reports of litter, vandalism and noise pollution are on the rise. A local is quoted as saying, “These people aren’t interested in the mountains. They come in flip-flops just to take pictures for social media.”

Another video shows massive tourist crowds at the famous Three Peaks – hundreds of people lined up at a shuttle bus stop. They all want to arrive at this popular attraction in the most convenient way possible. Many are dressed as if they’re on their way to a beach party.

I remember my last thru-hike in the Elbe Sandstone Mountains at the Czech-German border, shortly before the pandemic. Even back then, I saw crowds of people at particularly instagrammable hotspots, while the rest of the trail was largely deserted. I can only imagine how the situation has escalated since then.

This exact kind of mass tourism is one reason I haven’t been to the mountains in years. I do miss them sometimes, but when I read articles like these, I think that maybe I’ll never go back again.

This news article isn’t the only one of its kind that I’ve come across this summer. I’ve seen similar photos and videos of last week’s solar eclipse. I read an investigative article about how the current U.S. administration is turning national parks into profit centers that look like Disney theme parks. On the other side of the world, self-proclaimed adventurers are crowding the summits of the world’s highest mountains in large groups, creating chaotic and dangerous conditions.

For the longest time, I believed in the widespread notion that intensive traveling makes you a more cultured and open-minded person. But I’ve actually begun to think that the whole myth of travel might have been a big lie from the very beginning, at least in this day and age.

Me, thru-hiking in the Southern Alps (2019)

A few months ago, I read a thought-provoking essay by Sema Karaman called “My Case Against Travel.” Many readers felt offended by it. I think it’s a brilliant piece, because it manages to put some uncomfortable truths into succinct, simple words.

Sema is a Rome-based journalist who has previously worked for Big Tech companies and used to “travel like crazy” for many years. In the piece, she talks about a friend who went to Mexico City, LA and Hawaii, all within two weeks, but got sick and spent most of the trip in bed. “It got me thinking,” Sema writes. “Why did she have to travel to all these widely far-apart places in two weeks? Wouldn’t it be enough to visit just one of them? When asked, she said, ‘Well, you know, we were in the region.’”

Reading that, two thoughts came to my mind: First, this could have been me, or many of my friends or co-workers, a decade ago. Second, that mindset reveals an incredibly shallow and cynical understanding of the world.

Working in the music industry, I was a frequent flyer throughout my twenties and thirties. As a young and ambitious journalist, I would hop on a plane across the pond every other week to conduct an interview in New York, LA or Miami. When I started consulting for big brands and labels, I would regularly fly into London or Munich just to attend a presentation or meeting, and fly back the same day, with nothing on me but my laptop.

The tech company I worked for later held offsite meetings at fancy destinations in remote locations for hundreds of employees from all around the world. All I remembered afterward were conference rooms and expensive restaurants. During my many work trips, I rarely saw more than the airport, my hotel and the local office, which was furnished with the same designer chairs as in all the other cities.

My boss at this company once told me, with a hint of pride in her voice, that she had spent 250 days traveling in a single work year. I guess I learned to view that lifestyle as glamorous myself. People just feel a sense of accomplishment in being part of the machine. If you’ve ever walked from the subway at 8.30 a.m. to one of the office towers at King’s Cross or to the World Trade Center, you know what I mean.

This mindset carried over into my personal life without me realizing it at first. I would mindlessly fly to Lisbon over my birthday, or to Paris just for dinner at a trendy restaurant and a concert. I thought I really needed to get away to Mallorca for a few days to clear the headspace after the dreadful Berlin winter.

Look, I’m not even writing this to brag. Today I feel ashamed, but I was so convinced that this behavior somehow “broadened my horizon” and made me a true “citizen of the world”. Sure, my carbon footprint was exploding, but I didn’t really have a choice, did I? After all, I was still voting green and didn’t eat any meat, right?

I often thought of Bruce Chatwin, a travel writer who inspired me massively when I started my career as a journalist. A lone wanderer and globetrotter, he was always on the go, traveling mostly on foot while deeply immersing himself in foreign cultures. But the romantic style of travel he described in his books has become almost extinct, perhaps even impossible.

My business trips surely didn’t bear any resemblance to it. Often I felt like I was getting dropped into the same air-conditioned hotel breakfast room in another country or continent, eating the same avocado sourdough toast that I’d get at the café around the corner back home. The last time I visited New York, I hardly even recognized this city. It had once been this mythical place I truly longed for, but now it felt as if I’d never left Berlin.

I’m not entirely sure if all those years of intensive travel have actually done me much good. Sure, I’ve taken a handful of life-changing trips and made some experiences I wouldn’t want to miss. Looking back at it, I could have done without most business travel though, and being completely honest, even a large portion of my vacation trips weren’t all that memorable.

Like Sema Karaman, I’m just so sick of traveling. Nothing excites me about it. Everything seems so strangely homogenized – sometimes I get the feeling that even in the most remote places on Earth, I’d find nothing but a selfie viewpoint and a generic latte café blasting some bland AI feelgood music.

Since I’ve left my last music industry job, most business travel fell away with it. For the few remaining journeys, I’ve decided to choose ground transportation whenever possible. My actual goal is to make 2026 the first year in three decades that I won’t set foot on an airplane. It’s not just about my environmental footprint. I’ve also realized that slow traveling causes less stress to the body and mind.

I know I will eventually have to get back on a plane – after all, I’m not retired yet –, but in general, I really enjoy staying home right now. Instead of rushing through another city trip, I’d rather get to know the area where I live much better. I’ve been learning the names of local birds and trees, and exploring every single trail in the vicinity. I’m building an actual connection to the place I just thought I already knew. I’ve come to realize that my knowledge of it, too, was merely superficial, just like many of my visits to foreign places.

Now I’m roaming the same woods every day with my dog, and I’m learning so much about the land that I live on. On these daily walks, unlike on many of my trips, I’m fully present and attentive. It’s not a source of stress, but of comfort. I don’t need to spend hours in transit and I don’t need to push my body through overcrowded airports and train stations. I don’t need days to recover, like I did after most trips.

I find true happiness in certain brief moments of peace and stillness on these hikes. When the afternoon sunlight breaks through the branches and leaves of a tree. Or when a pair of cranes passes through the sky above me.

I don’t miss those years of corporate business travel at all. I will admit that every now and then, I do miss my thru-hiking days – but reading those news articles, I am thinking that those might just be gone forever.