A lesson learned from backpackers: embrace chaos, and call it liminality instead!

Sunset over the confluence of the River Sava and the Danube, with the metropolis of Belgrade in the background. One of the most striking sunsets I have ever seen. The famous brutalist ‘Western gate’ is seen to the left.

It is a cliché to say that brief adventures are meaningful precisely because they’re so fleeting. The idea of “cherishing the moment” has cemented itself into the popular consciousness of many travellers, especially backpackers, who, we are told, must truly cherish every moment of their brief sojourns in the places they visit. Yet, while travelling the Balkans in the summer of 2023, I learned a slightly different lesson from my fellow backpackers. 

I was lucky enough to study backpacker tourists in the Balkans for my undergraduate thesis (insert joke about questionably serious humanities dissertations). Many of my participants were always in a rush to move on to the next destination—no sooner did they arrive that they were already plotting the next journey. One person, whom I will call Ruby, had been travelling for two years non-stop, and almost never spent more than one night in a place. She told me that she wanted to ‘tick places off the map’—a literal map that she had in her notepad. Others told me about their desire to gather stamps on passports, to cross borders, or ‘see everything.’ Another traveller whom I met in Belgrade, Gabriel, told me he had to leave the city within a few days to prevent himself from getting ‘too comfortable.’ For him, backpacking was an escapism from his home life but also from himself; he told me that he would start thinking about his own life and identity if he stopped even for a moment. Being on the move thus also meant running away from himself.

Initially, I was rather taken aback by this—maybe even a little repulsed. It felt like these travellers were incredibly out of touch and they never “lived in the moment,” to conjure up another cliché. But I soon learned (and tried to convince the anthropology department) that this ‘race through the Balkans’ meant something profound to them. They found meaning in what I referred to as “liminality,” or a state of in-betweenness. Liminality, following the anthropologist Turner (1967), means the state of heightened emotion and energy while “betwixt and between” social statuses, life-stages, or places. Many people I studied in the Balkans sought out these kinds of experiences. If seven-hour Flixbus journeys or one night hostel stays sound like your worst nightmare, think again. To these Balkan backpackers, such experiences were perfect because they took the idea of ‘escape’ to new heights. There was never any stability and that was a good thing. They ‘found themselves’ (cliché number three) on those long journeys and uncertain trajectories by embracing this momentary detachment and disconnection from cultural and social life. Of course, most of them ended up seeking out profound experiences when they arrived—but the journey was meaningful too.

View of the Bosnian countryside—from a coach. Some of the most beautiful scenery I have ever seen has been during these long journeys through obscure stretches of countryside.

It seems to me that our search for richness and authenticity in our travels creates a certain perfectionism, something I also experience as I constantly move between my hometown and university. In both cases, I tell myself that ‘I must find depth and meaning here.’ I’m never satisfied that I’ve made the most of an eight-week term and I worry that my home life is too devoid of social energy. While travelling, I have many of the same thoughts: ‘I spent a lot of money to be here, have I made the most of it?’ My participants deliberately eschewed that kind of thinking, letting go of considerations of permanence and attachment. Many of them also experienced chaotic home lives, and decided to embrace the liminality of their youth by finding meaning in the experience of in-betweenness. They packed their bags and decided to live ‘on the road.’ So it’s not just that fleeting experiences are delightful because they force us to cherish the ‘moment.’ Instead, maybe the point is that the utopian ‘moment’ of rich cultural experience doesn’t matter as much as we think it does.

A typical sight on both a tourist’s and local’s café table.

In 1978, Brian Eno released his famous album Music for Airports, which laid the foundation for a new aesthetic in our globalised world, the ‘generic’ of “Ambient Music.” This music, which I’m sure readers have heard at airports or other liminal travel zones, attends to the human experience of transit as an experience in and of itself, rather than merely a means to an end. It’s an ambiguous experience, but nonetheless something meaningful in its ambivalence. Transit has an aesthetic of its own and I think backpacking is all about that. In the Balkans I learned the perhaps obvious lesson that in backpacking, the most important artefact is probably the backpack itself, a symbol of freedom from the constraints of everyday reality. To embrace mobility was a crucial, albeit rather scary, step for many of my participants.

Of course, this isn’t to say that experiencing meaning, connection, and foreign cultures is undesirable. But we all already know that. Most of the people I met in the Balkans did want to understand cultural otherness and make deep connections (except for some extreme cases!). But what I think we don’t always know—indeed, what I didn’t know before the summer of 2023—is that there’s more to travel than just ‘experiencing culture.’ Being in-between is a really precious experience that we might not have access to forever, and that applies both to travel and to university life. So never mind that the Ryanair flight is three hours late, or that you budgeted so hard that you end up having twenty three hours to see all of Paris—enjoy losing yourself in the rush!

The main public bus station of Belgrade, Zeleni Venac on a summer evening.

All images belong to the author, unless otherwise stated.

To a restaurant in Tirana

Oda Traditional Restaurant, Pazari I Ri 

There’s a restaurant in Albania’s capital. Tucked away off a side street close to Pazari-ri market, it is completely inconspicuous from the outside. A tall white wall stops passers-by from being able to peek into its terrace - when you are inside, you get the impression of being at a local restaurant in a secluded Greek island where all the walls are painted in that kind of white. Men dressed in tall hats carrying their instruments journey through the restaurant, singing to various onlookers as they wait for their food. The food is served on huge plates - a mountain of bread, white cheese cut into cubes, rice wrapped in huge cabbage leaf packages, all placed on the table to share.

I have been to Tirana three times in the past nine months, a sequence of events I certainly did not expect to occur. Each time I have visited the city has been very different - alone, then in love, and then alone again. First in winter, then in spring and finally in summer. And each time, Oda Traditional Restaurant has served as a familiar monument, a tiny container of my experience in this city. Each time I went to this restaurant with strangers, and yet, somehow we always fell into the same rhythm. We would find each other in the garden of our hostel, or by chatting from across our dorm beds. We would ask each other where we had heard it was good to eat in this city, and we always seemed to land on Oda. A few jugs of wine for the table? Why not? On that first trip back in February, our group that began as three quickly became nine. We went around the table introducing ourselves, not knowing that by the end of the meal we would feel like old friends. I wonder what the waiters thought of us - nine strangers laughing loudly within this now empty restaurant and eating so late because we could not pause our conversation long enough to look at the menu and order. 

At that moment I don't think I could have believed how terrified I had been as I took that train to the airport. I had felt lonely in Lent and Skyscanner led me to an £18 flight to Tirana that was just a week away. My housemates warned me about organ trafficking and I boarded a plane not knowing that I would be back there again less than a month later with a girl I had just met, or again in summer, where I would spend two weeks amongst backpackers. 

In the Blloku Neighbourhood 

People have asked me why I am so attracted to Tirana and I can’t always give an answer. It isn't glamorous or particularly busy. There isn't that much to see and do and the nightlife is disastrous, as others have constantly reminded me. There are so many potholes, I can't even count the amount of times I've fallen over. It isn't the cheapest or most friendly city in the Balkans. The cars won't stop when you cross the road, stray dogs might follow you home for food and you never know if they might bite you. The best alcohol to drink is homemade raki served in reused water bottles and tastes like bleach. Buses never run on time, or they won't leave until every single seat is full. This is the city where I threw up for the first time in ten years, my biggest fear, one that I never thought I could survive. A city where I have felt lonely, where I have cried, where I have  been scammed…

The Park on the Artificial Lake

But Tirana is also the reason that I truly fell in love. I got to share a pomegranate by the lake and a jug of wine at a beautiful restaurant and make friends who made me realise that life won't just end when I'm 25. Tirana made me realise that Cambridge might actually be okay too, that I can leave and there will be more than this and I can be part of it. I got to see colourful buildings, street chess tables surrounded by tens of old men on a Thursday morning, book sellers lining their books up on the side of the road. I got to climb the stairs on the pyramid of Tirana and see the whole city at once, closer to those mountains that are always on the horizon. I got to wrap up in my coat in winter, wear a light shirt in the spring, and boil in the heat of the summer. Tirana was always sunny though. This city always has its way of pulling me in. The cheap flight was the catalyst, but what kept me coming back was those mountains, the smell of the olives at the markets, the lake at sunset, and the assortment of people that I encountered each time and spilled my heart out to at that restaurant. I think Tirana just might be the most beautiful city in the world.

All images belong to the author, unless otherwise stated.

Postcard from Belgrade

Mid-afternoon in Belgrade, everyone drinks their coffee outside. Even in this week of September, when summer is slipping away and the emergence of autumn is in the wind, streets are lined with outdoor seating. As the afternoon deepens, these spots will transition from cafes to bars. Wooden tables and chairs balance on a crooked pavement. Crumbling walls painted pink display messy Cyrillic at a cafe on the corner of Studentski Park. Here my friend and I drink our coffee whilst old men shout into the phone and other young friends exchange words in between breaths of smoke. This is the hour where brutalism is bathed by a golden haze.

Belgrade is a city of many lives. On one bank of the Danube stand soviet blocks plastered with peeling billboards. On the other, a half-city that resembles Vienna or Budapest - church roofs dispersed amongst old European buildings and tram lines. There's a familiarity to covering my shoulders to enter St Michael’s Cathedral or riding a crowded red tram through the city. I am accustomed to the kiosks selling magazines and cigarettes. There’s unfamiliarity in Cyrllic signs, smoking indoors, bus station fees and murals that declare ‘kosovo is serbia’. I am conscious of my ignorance as an outsider.

These epochs of history are visible in fragments. One piece lies in a socialist themed restaurant, where a constellation of red stars lie amongst strings of garlic and stacks of espresso cups. This past also remains in the maps, aeroplane tickets, badges, military hats and election posters that have made this time capsule, and again in the elderly woman who sells Lenin pins and old passports. Her shop is not far from the Bajrakli Mosque, a gesture to another past of Belgrade’s Ottoman rule. The weight of the past consumes me most overwhelmingly in Tito’s Mausoleum, a white building with marble walls adorned with eulogies, photographs of renowned visitors and letters of sadness from Yugoslavian schoolchildren. I find a strange peace in the untouched - this room feels like a portal taking me back forty years, the unchanging tomb boasts stillness amidst the endless flux of visitors.

And Belgrade is certainly moving. As the sun sets, us guests are seated on the stone steps of the old hostel building. We are connected only by chance. Dusk approaches and we get ready to cross the river towards the flickering neon lights of the party boats that emerge with the night. Amongst the music and fuzzy from the rakija served at dinner, we dance with Belgrade and I think of the wall of photo booth strips I saw displayed in the contemporary gallery earlier on my trip: friends smiling in fur hats and thick winter coats, a couple holding up their newborn baby to the camera, faces concealed behind costume glasses all stamped December 1988. I think of the children, now adults, who once wrote those letters to Tito, and the old woman selling memorabilia in her antique shop. They power Belgrade as it flows between histories, and I, an outsider to memory, try to find my own place within this city. 

The serenity of Sevilla; a city founded on the warmth of its people

Looking through the Plaza de España.

The chaos of life can be gorgeous and enticing. We are all guilty of rushing between the vibrancy of never-ending social plans, and intensity of our rewarding workloads, ending in a drastic burn-out of exhaustion. Not to mention the restraint of emotion that comes with this way of living; everything is so rushed that we are scarcely given the time of day to think about how we feel. It is becoming increasingly evident that a lifestyle like this is far from sustainable, and as we collectively seek refuge from such a frantic culture, who better is there to look to than the worldwide professionals- the residents of Seville? I was lucky enough to master the escapism of the Andalusians this summer with these very people.

Upon arrival, I was met by the sweltering heat of the Andalusian capital, along with its undeniable beauty. The gorgeous exterior of the city is most obvious in its notable sights- the Royal Alcázar, the Plaza de España and the Giralda, to name a few, - which are characterized by their Moorish and Gothic roots.

Stepping into sites like the Royal Alcazar was like entering into a conversation with Spain’s history. Finally seeing the location in which so much of the worlds, let alone Spain’s, past was shaped, was hugely emblematic. Not to mention, the striking site of the Plaza de España, and the picturesque, winding streets of the Barrio Santa Cruz (the Jewish quarter). But this wasn’t what I remember best from my trip to Seville.

No matter whether I was getting on the tram to the city centre or getting a taxi from the airport to my accommodation, the way in which Seville’s residents interact with life was unmissable.

My first stand-out experience of this was within the first few hours of arriving in Seville - sat at a small bar eating lunch, as we waited for our hotel check-in. At a first glance, the bar didn’t seem like it was anything particularly special, but once seated, its charismatic community was flagrant.

Located in the tranquil neighbourhood of San Bernardo, this bar was decorated with intricate tiles, teaching any customer that it was founded in 1958, and that it was known as ‘Peña Betica San Bernardo’. Although our wonderful waiter, who revelled in a conversation of broken Spanish and English with my parents, added to the atmosphere, it was through observing the other customers that I learnt the most.

A couple at the Bar Peña Betica San Bernardo

In front of me were a couple, exchanging words which seemed to relax one another as they leant into the serenity of breaking for lunch; not an indulgence but rather a necessity. Elsewhere, a solitary older man sat on his moped reading a novel, pausing momentarily to look up at his surroundings and the bar facing him, then once again engrossing himself in whatever material he was reading that day.

Once I had noticed them, I couldn’t stop observing the people around me, and noticing these similar characteristics of peace and contentedness.

It’s not just the peace of Sevillan residents which contributes towards their character. It’s also their ability to express and embrace emotion, whether this is in greeting one another, or in art form, such as the flamenco. Almost everywhere you go, you are greeted with an “Hola, guapa” (Hello, pretty), an affectionate Spanish term of endearment, accompanied by wholehearted smiles, and not by ulterior motives. This presents you with an inferred permission to feel comfortable with someone you met so recently, and the flamenco most certainly feels like the personification of a warm embrace with these people whom new connections have been formed with.

Whilst ambling through the calles (streets) of Seville, it is undeniable that you will be met with various flamenco encounters, whether this is dancing, singing, or a combination of both. The first of these occurred just after I had eaten the most succulent Solomillo al whisky (Andalusian pork cooked in whisky) in the Barrio Santa Cruz, which was followed by a first glance at the Plaza de España. I had only been exploring this landmark for a few moments when, suddenly, the landscape before me lit up with the dulcet, yet simultaneously impassioned tones, of the flamenco singer, and the presence of two striking dancers. I was immediately captivated by the intensity of the art and the silence befallen on the audience watching it.

Flamenco performance in the Plaza de España

The flamenco performance which still frequently repeats itself in my mind, however, was in the Museo del Baile Flamenco (Flamenco Dance Museum). Each and every performer’s personality shone through in their flourishing display. Compelling facial expressions of both joy and anguish, along with songs performed by voices heavy with sentiment, were accompanied by the intricacies of the footwork of the dance. It is hard to explain the sensation that watching such a spectacle can bring to you; I couldn’t last five minutes without tears rolling down my face.

So perhaps you will visit Seville to see its UNESCO sites, to try a new tapas, or simply to tick it off of your bucket list of travel. All of this is normal, and perfectly commonplace. However, to even consider returning back home and saying you have experienced Seville without interacting with and observing the culture of its people, would be a disgrace to the beauty and charisma of this fine city. The people are the foundations of Seville.

All images belong to the author, unless otherwise stated.

Postcard from Amsterdam: through a half-opened window

Spiegelgracht, Amsterdam (Image author’s own)

It’s a strange sentiment,  to feel an affinity with a place you left long ago, and not unlike that intangible bond that comes about with a university town. You may no longer stumble home in the dark down familiar streets; the bedroom where you spent so many hours, thinking, drinking and sitting in idle togetherness will have passed through innumerable hands, but everywhere you turn are the amorphous memories of an adopted home.

Though I left the Netherlands when I was 7, some small part of my mind always seems to be resting there, among the eaves of the slanting mosaic of canal houses or in the shade of the stately, tree-lined avenues by the Vondelpark. This splitting of my identity is partly involuntary, a product of spending formative years in a foreign place, despite not sharing language or nationality, and partly deliberate: cajoling memories - some of which aren’t my own - into a half-baked sense of belonging. Though I can trace the web of the canal ring in my mind and pick out that distinctive, accented English across a crowded tube, any Dutch I spoke has gone, as have most of the friends I knew. 

But the old centre of the city ushers you in, hemmed between tall rows of buildings, beautiful in their daring precariousness. Through some peculiarity of Dutch history and culture, a serendipitous mixture of Calvinism and window taxes, large windows without curtains are everywhere to be seen.  You are afforded a smorgasbord of domestic voyeurism, snapshots of still life to rival those on display in the magisterial Rijksmuseum. In contrast to the austere Protestantism which led to this urge to keep one’s home on display, one feels let into a secret, or rather scores of secrets, in those intimate hours either side of dusk. Huge rectangles of warm amber hold out against grayscale stone, coming into shimmering communion with street lamps reflected in the canals. In the younger districts of De Jordaan and De Pijp, these shafts of light conspire with laughter and voices just above head height, enough to make any stranger feel at least fleetingly welcome, and romantic even on bitter winter nights when the lowland city huddles under a blanket of cloud and drizzle. 

Rebecca Nolten

Scenes like these will always draw me back to the city that shouldn't exist, surrounded by a patchwork of dykes and polders, bound up against the sea. Unlike the relationship I have with the languages I study,  an interest and affection raised on an unsteady scaffold of declensions and verb tables, with the Netherlands I have only a small but meaningful inscription of birthplace in my passport. Sitting on its plinth of lofty bureaucratic authority, this designation acts a salve for a Zweig-esque European-in-exile, albeit in far less tragic circumstances.

And combined with Amsterdam’s eternal charm, this feels like enough for now. Enough to wander around deceptively familiar squares, to sound out street names and try to wrap my head around odd pronunciations. To revel in the liminal space between what I came to know from within, behind the glass panes of those human triptychs, and what I’ve learned from without. And ultimately to hope that, one day, that tenacious mental bond might draw me back to the canals to build from those faint foundations.

See also The CLC Guidebook to: Amsterdam