Educated Tourism

As a tourist, it's important to have some knowledge of the place you are to visit. To do otherwise is to embrace ignorance and to tarnish the good name of tourism. Don't feel like you need to be an expert, but a little information and understanding begets much more of the same.

Above all, don't ever fall for anything resembling this hippie bullshit: "Going somewhere with a clean slate really gives you a pure experience man." This serves only as an excuse for laziness and ignorance.

Example:

I was recently in Belgium with my brother and my mother. Before our mother arrived, on our first night in Brussels, Andy and I watched JCVD as cultural research.

The hippies might've said, "Don't stay in your hotel room, man. Go out and experience something!" At the risk of repeating myself, this is terrible advice because I'm neither lazy nor ignorant. Plus it was a Sunday and there was absolutely nothing happening in the city. It was almost frightening.

So we got a taste for how Belgians feel about the Muscles from Brussels. It was a real local perspective on an international star. And we planned to visit the neighborhood where most of the action takes place to really solidify our appreciation for our new cultural understanding, but there just wasn't enough time unfortunately.

However, we did get to live a bit of culture in Bruges. In Bruges, brother, mother, and I watched In Bruges. I'd seen it before, but really benefited from the refresher.

After watching the film, we were armed with the knowledge that we were in the midst of a fairytale fucking town, full of canals, bridges, cobbled streets, churches and other fairy tale shit. And swans; the swans are still there.

We made a little In Bruges walking tour in Bruges. Naturally, there is the belfry, the Basilica of the Holy Blood (not actually featured in the film, that scene with Jesus' fucking blood is in the Jerusalem church), the Grote Markt and so forth. The dwarves, fat Americans, and annoying Canadians were nowhere to be seen.

We tried to find 17 Raamstraat. There actually is a Raamstraat, but it wasn't where the scene was shot. That was somewhere east of Jan van Eyckplein.

So take my word for it: don't be an uninformed tourist! Arm yourself with knowledge and understanding, and you will be richly rewarded.