Former national soccer player Andreas Möller is said to have once answered, when asked where he wanted to play football in the future, “Milan or Madrid, the main thing is Italy.” For this he has been much ridiculed by people who value his knowledge of geography. What no one wanted to realize: This sentence can also be understood differently. In the sense not of being sausagey, but rather of looseness and spontaneity.
Because you can live as well in Milan as in Madrid, you can feel completely Italian in Munich and wonderfully German in Mallorca. Many places have their charms, and whether you have a good time there depends largely on you. This applies not only to where you live, but also to travel destinations.
However, especially as a tourist, people are completely herd animals. He has to go to Barcelona and Amsterdam because everyone else is there too. Salamanca and Utrecht don’t come to mind. Tourists don’t care whether Rome or Rijeka, the main thing is Italy – which is just a code for: sun, good food, lifestyle. No, it always has to be one of the most famous and most visited cities.
In this context, a report that recently planes were unable to land in Ireland and Great Britain due to a storm and had to be diverted is alarming. Passengers who wanted to go to Edinburgh found themselves in Cologne, others who were heading towards Dublin had to get off in Paris.
Could this be the future of travel? Chance decides where you get to. You would get to know places that you didn’t even know about and what you had missed so far. The distribution of travelers could also be controlled so that there would no longer be overcrowding anywhere. And it would be good for many people’s worldview if they didn’t just go to the Baltic Sea, but also to Lake Ohrid.
The author has never been asked which professional club he would like to move to.
(Photo: Bernd Schifferdecker (illustration))