Jenny Herbert was walking through the streets of Rome when she first saw the familiar become unfamiliar.
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Having visited the Italian capital multiple times, Herbert thought she knew Rome quite well. However, after a mix-up when setting her morning alarm, the traveller found herself wandering around the city as it was just waking up.
The few people - all locals - who joined her on the quiet streets, greeted her "buon giorno" as they passed, and Herbert realised there were still sides to Rome that she was yet to discover.
"They all thought I couldn't possibly be a tourist at that time of the day. It was an extraordinary experience," she says.
"I then tried it in Melbourne to see if the same uncanny feeling would come about and it did. It was, again, a city that I thought I was familiar with, but I was seeing it at an unfamiliar time. It just showed me that I didn't have to go elsewhere for the familiar to become unfamiliar."
This discovery would help sometime later when Herbert started to realise the impact she, and other tourists, were having when travelling. Herbert says while tourism is well-meaning, the sheer number of travellers - in pre-COVID days - overwhelms both host societies and the environment in general.
"Up until COVID, there were just so many people travelling around the world," Herbert says.
"Any airport that you go to, it's just overwhelming crowds of people and then you go into what might have been quite a small village and just the sheer numbers have undermined traditions. Traditions have been commodified, to meet tourists' needs, all of those sorts of things."
Then there is the effect on climate change. In her new book, The Art of Being a Tourist at Home, Herbert discusses how travel contributed to 8 per cent of global emissions, before COVID. When the pandemic hit and the world went into lockdown, the effect humans were having on the environment became clear. Venice, for example, made international headlines as people discovered there were, in fact, fish living in their trademark canals because, for the first time in years, the water was running clear.
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"It all sounds very negative and what I've tried to do with the book is make it positive and say that we're not replacing travel with something inferior. We're just replacing it with something different," Herbert says.
"If we travel for exceptional experiences, then they are certainly available on our doorstep. They're available inside art galleries, inside concert halls, inside theatres, inside museums. If we go into any of those places, we are satisfying a lot of the purposes for which we thought we had to travel."
Herbert says it's all about changing how we view familiarity, and in particular, ensuring it is not confused with mundanity.
Just as she discovered a new side to Rome, and then her home city of Melbourne, she says people can also do that in their home cities.
Some may have already discovered this as they went for daily walks during COVID lockdowns. For many, those walks because a little piece of sanity and an escape from the confines of their homes, leading them to discover different parts of their surrounding streets, simply by having the time to explore on foot.
But this newfound curiosity and appreciation of one's neighbourhood can extend to other parts of the city, if people make time to be a tourist in their hometown.
"People tend to have this view that it's local, and therefore, it can't be fantastic," Herbert says.
"People will go to The Prado Museum (in Madrid, Spain), and they won't go to the National Gallery of Australia. It's just bizarre. So there is that sense that we have to step past the constraints of thinking that things are familiar."
The following is an edited extract from The Art of Being A Tourist At Home.
A Cooks Tour
"Not what we have but what we enjoy, constitutes our abundance." - Epicurus
Food Adventures
How adventurous the ancient days of food trade must have been. How romantic those long, perilous expeditions now seem, with their discoveries of novel aromas and tastes to ignite the imagination and excite the senses. Grains and oranges, sugar and salt, olive oil and wine, coffee and tea, saffron and ginger.
Procuring food can still be an exciting, inspiring adventure knowing the reward will be a flavour-filled feast. The greatest risk these days is not finding a vacant parking spot near the market on a Saturday morning, but the discovery that figs are finally in season bestows a moment of sheer bliss.
The Tsukiji Fish Market in Tokyo, Pike Place Market in Seattle, La Merced in Mexico City and others attract hordes of tourists but their primary role remains unchanged. They still meet the culinary and nutritional needs of the local population. Big or small, city or rural, specialised or general, it is the grounded-ness of food markets that keeps them authentically distinctive and reflective of place.
There's nothing static about fresh-food markets. As places become more multicultural, as food trends change, so do markets. We're as likely to find peaked mountains of autumn-hue spices in Canada as in Morocco. The red chillies piled up in baskets at a Stockholm market will be taken home to unleash their heat in a Thai curry.
At home, we can make time to go food exploring and register that the variety of food on offer is as wide-ranging as anywhere.
Share a recipe
There are so many ways to enjoy and share the pleasure of good food. Swapping recipes is one way, not unlike lending and borrowing books.
We try a new dish and know instinctively who amongst our friends will appreciate this particular blend of ingredients. Or we beg for our next-door neighbour's orange cake recipe.
How old, I wonder, is this custom? Did those traversing the spice route swap recipes? How else would anyone have come to know how to use those mysterious new ingredients? A piece of tree bark? Cinn-a-mon you call it? What do you do with it?
The pleasure of new taste sensations never fades. Even today a Yotam Ottolenghi recipe can introduce us to new ingredients like rose harissa and pomegranate molasses. We search out the ingredients, try the dish, share it with friends, and exclaim over the new flavours.
At home, we can make time to go food exploring and register that the variety of food on offer is as wide-ranging as anywhere. On our travels, we might gaze at the glorious displays of food as a tourist attraction. At home, we shop with purpose. The transactions are a bona fide part of our daily lives.
Go Fresh
Fresh-food markets feed all the senses. The textures of cheese, multicoloured vegetables and pyramids of glistening olives, the sea-tang smell of fish, the aroma of freshly baked bread. There are morsels of salami to sample. Buckets overflowing with flowers, each competing in fragrance and colour. Traders loudly yodelling their specials, shoppers propped up at counters sipping café lattes. Belle figura displays everywhere - that glorious Italian tradition dictating that carefully and beautifully curated presentation is as important as the items being displayed. There's an intensity to the place, a feeling that this is life at both its most elemental and - yes - sophisticated.
People from all walks of life, all backgrounds and ages come together with a common sense of purpose. The easy mixing is an essential part of the vibe. The shared activity, choosing and buying good food, creates an atmosphere that is both enlivening and harmonious. Relationships between traders and shoppers spring up and, over time, evolve into friendships, unforced and genuine. Third-generation customers buy from third-generation traders, appreciating their expertise, trusting their advice. These connections, initiated through food, are largely under-appreciated and yet so congenial when forged.
Bringing the farm to town
Who would have thought a few decades ago it would be possible to buy fresh seasonal produce amidst the congestion of New York City? To actually talk to the people who collected the eggs or harvested the corn, caught the fish or raised the sheep?
Union Square Farmers' Market - one of 50 farmers' markets in New York - does just that. It began in 1976 with just a few traders. These days, it hosts around 140 regional producers serving around 60,000 shoppers. It is possible to brush shoulders with the latest celebrity chef, Michelin-starred restauranteur or the women who run a soup kitchen downtown.
On the other side of the earth, in the village where I live (population 1000), our farmers' market takes place every second Saturday of the month. Metung is about as different from New York City as it's possible to imagine, with its small cluster of shops around the Village Green.
Like farmers' markets everywhere, ours is a local institution. We are warmed by the knowledge that we are amongst our own community. This is where we belong and who we belong with. It's a rare and precious feeling. An outsider might see something different, quaint might come to mind, as they watch we locals greet each other (traders, shoppers, even dogs) or as we munch on sausages in a blanket of bread cooked by a local charity. To us, it is simply the real thing, made purposeful because what we are buying is the very sustenance of life. We will take our purchases home and make soup for the family. Fill our house with the fragrance of flowers. Break fresh bread with friends.
At farmers' markets we relearn the value of provenance. The baker can tell us about where she sources her organic flour. The orchardist can tell us that the apples are free of chemical sprays and picked that morning. The farmer can explain that his cattle were pasture-raised. The cheesemaker can name her goats. Freshness, ripeness and taste - not appearance - are all-important. What's in season. No food miles. No nitrogen. No broccoli under plastic wrap for two weeks.
Farmers' markets embrace land health and animal welfare, community and education. We feel connected to the natural order of things, how food and its procurement should be.
A Growing Interest
Growing food is another pleasure. We can stand in the vegetable garden or hover over a row of pot plants and decide what's ready to harvest and what we'll cook for dinner. Letting our garden dictate what we will eat is the natural world putting us in our place. Is there anything more rewarding than sharing our garden's abundance with family, friends and neighbours?
Allotments and community gardens take root in places where backyards are rare but the desire to have hands in the soil is strong. These precious urban spaces, dedicated to growing food rather than buildings, are neighbourhood victories over developers. Outside the gates there might be a snarling urban jungle of concrete and congestion, but within there are lush plantings and whimsical artworks, chicken coups and compost bins. On a sunny Saturday morning, the gardeners gather to tend their plants, share seedlings and stories, pick the weekend's fare. Families picnic, someone might play a flute. In the way that good things overlap, community gardens, encompassing health, inclusion and learning, are up there with the best ways to spend our time.
Hunt and Gather
Staycations give us time to experiment with food - shopping, cooking, sharing. Our search for ideas and ingredients can lead us to food shops we haven't visited before. At each place, we can ask for suggestions and advice, discuss the merits of one ingredient over another, and discover how others approach cooking and dining. We can experiment with something we haven't tried before - perhaps a bitter melon, dried mung beans or a cheaper cut of meat.
- The Art of Being A Tourist At Home by Jenny Herbert. Hardie Grant Travel. $26.99.