More than 40 years ago, I left a small house on a former farm in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. At the end of the potholed track I reached a highway and hitchhiked north to Johannesburg.
Hitching was a natural way to travel then, unnatural as it seems today. 40 years have seen a lot change. Few venture the adventure of hoping someone will arrive and carry them 500 miles up the road.
I made the journey in less than a day. From Jo’burg I took a charter flight to Luxembourg. Tickets like that were the only way to travel, long before Freddie Laker, Richard Branson, and Michael O’Leary cut the cost of flying. Does anyone offer charter fares today?
My ticket included coach travel, to Frankfurt, Amsterdam or Brussels. I took Amsterdam because it was the only destination for a disreputable 22 year old.
Ice glittered on bridges above frozen canals. My jeans and faux sheepskin jacket didn’t suit the weather. No one I asked could tell me the way to a youth hostel where young people like me stayed.
I walked with no idea how to use a tram, too little money and no way of knowing where I was. I was cold. It was dark. It was snowing. I ended in a hotel that cost more than I could afford.
Image and slogan
Back in Amsterdam, more than 40 years later, trams rumble across the square in front of the central station, bells ringing. Canal-side houses look pretty and smug, wrapped in silence.
More than 40 years later, young people no longer hang out on Dam Square. Children on bicycles no longer call me a hippie while I wait in the queue to see van Gogh’s paintings.
More than 40 years later, this time, I have a timed ticket for entrance, and I’ve seen The Night Watch too.
Staying in a smart hotel, I can reflect on many more changes. My hair is short. I’m 40 years and more older than I was.
I have more cash. I have credit cards I didn’t have and that didn’t exist more than 40 years ago. Then it was travellers’ cheques or nothing.
The city seems cleaner, sharper and brighter, through wealth, investment, and brighter clothes, and brighter lights in windows that used to be gloomy, and advertising, images and slogans.
In the palm of a hand
More than 40 years has changed the grit of travel. Tourism is smoother. Places to stay are easy to find. Ask Google. Want a tram? Ask Google. The way to a hostel? Ask Google.
Hostelworld.com lists 33 hostels and Airbnb has 6,900 establishments. There are more than 500 hotels for Amsterdam’s 6.5 million visitors.
Travel is in the palm of my hand. Book a hotel, somewhere to eat, a ticket to the Rijksmuseum. I order coffee and apple cake using an app without any wait in a cafe. All in the palm of my hand, on my phone.
Travel is not public anymore. It’s a private matter. I have no need to make a fool of myself asking the way to the central station. I’ve no need to rely on an old man with whiskers and bad breath to show me the way down the street as I once did.
Travel is private. Travel is in the palm of my hand. I don’t need to engage with a stranger anywhere. When I want a service, food or a drink, for that I pay. After more than 40 years that’s the way it’s gone.
A little more
I get in the way of cyclists and step from the pavement at the wrong moment. Amsterdam must be hell for residents getting their children to school because of visitors like me.
Maybe it would be easier if we engaged with each other. If we had to talk as hitchhikers had to, more than 40 years ago. Hitch hikers provided companionship and conversation to drivers bored by the miles they had to travel.
If we had to ask directions instead of ignoring each other, maybe people wouldn’t complain about “over tourism”, if we engaged in a little more personal contact, a little more friendliness.
But it isn’t and we don’t. We pass like ghosts through streets we visit leaving those who live there to complain and criticise tourism and tourists.
Not tourism or tourists
But after more than 40 years it’s not tourists that have changed. We haven’t changed. They haven’t changed. Travel has not changed.
It’s technology that has changed and the way we do business. The way we find our directions is the way the world has changed. Impersonal. Private.
We can protest. I can long for travel that was raw, and full of grit. I can claim the old days were more adventurous, more exciting. But it wouldn’t be true. More than 40 years ago, the old days were cold and frightening and more difficult to navigate.
I can say, after more than 40 years, it’s not travel that has changed. In more than 40 years it’s the world that has changed. It’s mobile phones, and sat nav. It’s ticketless trams and trains. It’s international brands, credit cards and advertising, and images, and slogans that have changed.
Fun as ever
Let’s not pick on tourism. Tourism has not changed, not really. It’s as much fun as it ever was and a lot more easy than it was more than 40 years ago.
Tourism has not changed. It’s just as much fun as it always was. But I eased my conscience anyway, and went to Amsterdam by a scheduled train, the Eurostar, that didn’t run more than 40 years ago.
Image - a notebook sketch, passing the time in Amsterdam.