The power of nostalgia for travel

Travelers are curious. Why else would they put up with the more uncomfortable bits that make up “travel”? Squatting toilets for instance or anything that has anything to do with an airline.

Many of us are so curious that we want to see it all. The whole world. At the very least, a sample of each region from the world. That “see it all” curiosity is especially true for my husband. His initial thoughts on creating an itinerary are never “I’d like to go back to….” but always “We haven’t yet seen…”.

I, on the other hand, am a very nostalgic person. In some ways, that seems like a trait that wouldn’t encourage travel but would instead put a damper on curiosity for all things novel and strange.

Believe it or not, I think nostalgia can fuel travel too. Of course a person who has traveled as a kid may feel nostalgic about returning to the places they visited or simply about travel in general. But I think there are 3 ways in which nostalgia can inspire anyone to travel, even those who never traveled before.

1.) If you think about it, the discovery of something new is inherently familiar from our childhood. When is this world more full of discovery than when we’re children, constantly exploring “firsts”? Everything from our first bike ride to our first field trip comes with that feeling of discovering something novel. In that way, even a person who never traveled as a kid may feel nostalgic about new experiences and new places.

2.) Some people travel for the nostalgic feeling of a simpler time. One of my first jobs was as a front-desk clerk in a bed & breakfast in Amish Country Ohio and I must say, most of our tourists came to remember what life was like when the world was slower. Every day I heard someone exclaim, “My grandmother used to do it that way!” or “Yes, I remember when we made bread that way too.”

My point isn’t that nostalgia inspires you to travel to Amish Country but rather that nostalgia can inspire travel to developing or remote cultures, not yet saturated with all things digital. Eastern Europe for instance reminds me of the America my grandparents tell stories about. Yes there are cars driving down dirt roads in the countryside, but there are horse-drawn carts too. And pay phones! And little bakeries run by little old women in the same plain aprons my aunts used to wear when they made homemade bread.

3.) Doesn’t the study of genealogy  and family history seem to sprout from nostalgia too? Genealogy seems to inspire even the least wander-lusting types to travel back to the place of their roots. There’s something fascinating, after all, about visiting a town you’ve heard family fables about. My grandmother used to sing a song about buying shoes in “Laderbach.” Never has she seen Laderbach, but seeing the name “Laderbach” on a sign in Switzerland brought back warm memories of my her singing the songs her grandma sang to her. It was fascinating to realize that a little hint of Switzerland had trickled down through the generations in the form of a song.

Nostalgia is a mysterious feeling in this way. It seems it’s not just a love of things familiar from our past, but sometimes a love of things reminiscent of a past we’ve never even seen ourselves.