So, just as a background (and not anything else), I have travelled abroad exactly 4 times and all the 4 times have been to the continent of Europe if you would be gracious enough to include Turkey to be a part of Europe. This particular write up is not really a travel guide but a pot pourri of what I like doing when I travel, some incidents and observations and a lot of reflections about things that stoke my curiousity.
Supermarkets:
Do you guys want to know what is amongst my favourite places to go to when I travel abroad? Funnily enough - its a supermarket.
Why is it a supermarket of all places?
While I have turned into a avid supermarket visiter off late thanks to being an ex employee of Udaan’s food/FMCG team and also due to being at that stage of life when buying things from a super market is far more therapeutic than ordering them from Swiggy Instamart, a supermarket is a great place to get a glimpse of the culture of the nation you are visiting. Oh additionally, and once you realise how expensive food and drinks are in a regular restaurant in London or Paris or Munich, then a bottle of beer or a croissant or a sandwich in a supermarket shelf becomes a life saver and a wallet saver.
So how can you get glimpses of the culture of a country in the supermarket?
A supermarket in Rome is a lot more colourful and has a lot more varieties of veggies, cheeses and wines - the Italians love their food fresh and tasty
A supermarket in Berlin has a lot more varieties of bread, meats and beers - the Germans probably are okay with their food being boring and bland
A supermarket in London has way too many chocolate bars, IPAs and ciders, a lot of readymade foods, a lot of ingrediants to make global cuisines like Chinese, Indian and so on - this is a a nice way to reflect the multi-ethnic dimension of the United Kingdom (pics below)
While I have not been to the US, I assume the supermarkets there have way too many packaged and processed foods, too many sugary drinks and so on which reflects their own diet and also how consumerist the country is (and some even have guns I think!)
Accents, ethnicities, immigration and racism
I have a few insecurities that I have to mention here. The first time I had visited Europe back in 2017 (and I still do get the feeling), I found it a little unnatural to see a white Caucasian man doing things like sweeping the road, driving trucks, begging on the street and so on. We have been so primed to see a thin and short dark skinned man/woman doing all these in India that we probably subconsciously expected lighter skinned people to be better off always - how could a white man be poor?
No matter how much global TV and content you watch, it takes time to grasp various accents be it the pronounced British accent, the gibberish Scottish accent, the masculine German accent or the slippery French accent. Sometimes, people confused the bewildered looks on my face for rudeness :(
I visited the UK for a long 15 day trip just before Diwali this year (and hence a lot of this blog will be based on this trip) and I felt that I landed in Delhi Airport rather than London Heathrow Airport - sure there were the whites here and there but the airport staff (and passengers) were flooded with desis man. This was a bigger culture shock to me than to see folks scooping up dog poo from their pets doings and putting it in a plastic pack when I first landed in Paris back in 2017.
Sidenote: What are some other cultural shocks that I came across across my trips?
How the young women take their fashion and make up very seriously (a little too much make up)
How empty the streets get (except for the primary tourist places) after 6 PM
How people from all income groups and ethnicities use trams, buses and metros - and back here in Bangalore, folks would rather wait for 1 hour for an Uber than take an AC bus and walk.
How people take courtesy seriously (thank you, bonjour, merci, danke, ola etc) and how pedestrians get an upper hand in everything on the roads (compare that to Mumbai where I recently got nearly run over by autos at least 4 times in 2 days)
Maybe its just the weather in those countries but I did not quite sense the youthful buzzing optimism that we do on a day to day basis in India
I dug a little deeper into the data and saw that nearly 13% of London’s population has South Asian ethnicity with half of this being Indian. So just like your college where people from the same state clustered and hung out together, London also has a lot of areas with clusters of South Asian population live like Southall (Sikhs), Harrow and Wembley (Indians) and East Ham (Pakistanis). Given the number of Sikhs in London (one old Sikh man at the Heathrow Airport was so excited to go to Southall as if it were a pilgrimage to the Golden Temple itself), after I was back in India, I also dug a little deeper into how the Sikhs feel the way they do, why there have been these random Khalistan rallies and so on - all with an open mind. I suggest reading this gem of a book for starters.
I also thought - why do people migrate in such numbers to a country so different, the weather so cold and wet, away from their families in streets so dead at 6 PM and also put up with racism?
Rich people yearn for a better quality of life which no matter how much you earn in India - will always be below par . Delhi has its insane pollution and poor safety, Mumbai is insanely crowded and has shit infra, Bangalore has insane traffic and shit infra and so on. They use this money as means to literally buy private space away from people. There is obviously a lot more glamor and indulgence in the big cities abroad for the rich from shopping in Covent Gardens to clubbing in Soho to watching theatre at Piccadilly. I quote this brilliant line in a column by Manu Joseph in Mint “Democracy is the way by which the poor get their revenge against the rich” and the rich escape this by just going abroad.
All of India has very poor civic sense and decency towards another human being- I think this arises from how the average Indian needs to hustle all the time by bending the rules and how we all have a “scarcity” mindset. I think the average person who moves abroad just yearn for a better quality of life. For all the UK bashing I am doing in this blog, the people there were generally very courteous and kind to each other and to us in general (hints of racism aside)
Obviously, opportunities, especially in academia and high tech, are a reason, but I found the livelihoods that desi people (especially Pakistani and Bangladeshi, Indians were marginally better off) folks to be mainly based on corner shop ownership, in the low skill services sector and so on. I guess they are fine with low skill jobs like these because it still comes with some dignity, a respectful pay and a some peace of mind away from the rat race back home
I too felt some brushes of racism in my times in the UK be it group of young men in their early 20s dismissing browns folks and Asians as “tourists crowding the trains” or the old white man in Cotswold (a super beautiful but super boring place in rural England where old grumpy Brexit loving white couples go retire) shouting expletives at me for pressing the horn of the car I was driving or a waiter from Eastern Europe in a restaurant at the fancy Sky Gardens giving a smirk when I ordered a plate to be shared with the wife. The most infuriating incidents of racism is actually by Pakistani/Bangladeshi restaurant owners who own “Indian restaurants” and patronize you vis-a-vis white Caucasian groups who spend 3x per person than you do with all the $7 Kingfisher beer they gulp and $5 Samosa they eat with their forks and knives. Most Indians were thankfully much less discriminatory.
Another aspect which also irked me is how all their castles and fancy British Museums were largely made from ill gotten wealth from the British empire and how none of them acknowledged how brutal the empire was and how it devastated the countries that they had gained their wealth from.
You can forget about the Kohinoor ever coming back to India.
Also, Rishi Sunak probably doesnt really give a shit about India mate. He’s British.
Chinese tourists:
This is a bit of a rant and a slightly unfair generalization.
If you have been to Europe, you know the worst kind of tourist (often in groups) that you can come across - the Chinese. You will see them in loud groups and most of them will be found in the most touristy of areas (you will rarely find any in a local pub). I hate to say this bluntly, but all they seem to care about is taking photos at various places and uploading it their own version of Instagram. I remember this once incident in Berchtesgaden, a small transit town near Munich where we were at a bus stop to get a bus to the stunning Lake Konigsee. The buses came at a frequency of one per hour and as soon as the bus arrived, the Chinese just grouped up and barged into the bus as if their life depended on it leading to some poor localities (and me and friend included) to be left behind.
I have debated and discussion this topic multiple times with my friends who live abroad. While one of them said that Indians are no better, I disagreed with that verdict - I find Indians (probably due to their better cultural awareness) to be at least a little accomodative of the local ways of doing things and being respectful to others.
I think the Chinese may have gotten wealthy fast but not many are exposed to the cultural aspects of countries abroad. To them, a visit abroad is a status symbol to add prestige to their place in society. They also come from a not so altruistic society and have a little overconfidence in their new found exceptionalism. Maybe that is why they behave the way they do. Even the Chinese government has asked their citizens to behave better.
The Economy:
While its well known that the German economy is fuelled by manufacturing hi tech goods and is an export powerhouse, I could not for the life of me understand what is the true source of wealth of the average Britisher apart from legacy wealth of the empire. The young folks there did not seem to be as industrious as those in the Netherlands or Germany. For all the buzz around anti-immigration and Brexit (thanks to white folks stuck in the Nostalgia and afraid of their own frailties), the country would collapse if it werent for young migrants - they fill all the roles that young Whites probably look down upon. There is not too much agriculture either beyond the basics.
On digging into the stats a little deeper (See above), the country literally depends on being a financial services hub (this includes shady stuff like traders and plutocrats which is awesomely elaborated in this book), inbound students, tourism and investments including from all the corners of the globe from the Arab states to Russia to China etc who flock the luxury shopping streets and Harrods and gobble up all the ultra expensive real estate in central London. In a certain walking tour, our tour guide mentioned how so many flats were empty in central London thanks to these folks and how the average Londoner struggled to get housing.
Inflation really did seem to be pinching the average Britisher -they are not used to seeing these kinds of numbers unlike us Indians. I found London to be an expensive city and was even more thankful for their supermarkets and the cheap Indian restaurant run by the Iskcon Temple
In fact, after seeing the insane prices for everything in London, my threshold for what “expensive” means in India has definitely gone up! Ab India me sab sasta lagta hai (oh no!)
Trends that will soon be seen in India:
Visiting such global cities is a must for entrepreneurs who can afford to. You see so many trends that may soon catchup in India. To give some examples - microstudio 1 BHKs would be a great opportunity, the scope for automation and self service in everything from security to supermarket checkouts and so on. A visit to the supermarket or the high street gives you so many ideas on foods, fashion and so on that can become big in India sooner or later. I think Indians will demand more niche fashions and the personal care industry will always have more things that can come up.
What are the other things I like to do when I go abroad?
Walk the hell out - I walked 23k steps a day on and average in London and I similar numbers in Rome, Barcelona and Paris
Walk around aimlessly
More walking in some offbeat, quirky and hippie neighbourhoods
Absolutely maximize my ROI and ROT (return on time)- I dont go abroad to put up pretentious pics of me reading a book with coffee at Hyde Park or Versailles Jardine, I try make us of every possible minute till my lower back cant take it anymore. That is a key reason why I’m all too happy staying and cheap hostels and BnBs - I’m there mainly to sleep and freshen up. If you want to take that pretentious pic, please go to some expensive ass resort in Goa instead
Taste the max possible varieties of beer than I can. Collages of beers I’ve had in 3 different trips can be seen below. PS - I hate Whisky and always have, had a grand total of 10 ml even in Whisky heaven Scotland.
Visit beautiful green spaces - my favourite aspect of London was actually its huge green spaces - maybe its a sign of my age as well
Observe and reflect all the time. I do take my share of photos but I am totally against the concept of taking photos at every nook and corner and trying to portray a sense of fun by continuously broadcasting photos on Instagram stories. Just spend your time observing everything seemingly trivial and dont get too caught up on trying to capture that perfect photo
Observe quirks such as what you see in the photos below
I’ll probably write another blog on this topic soon which will be more of a tour guide in all the places I’ve been to (with some incidents) - I’ll also try to cover how you can maximize each day of your trip and how you can minimize various expenses.
Till then, keep wandering aimlessly on the streets of wherever you go - the best memories often come from unexpected sources!
PS - you are free to see pics of all my travelogues on my Instagram handle pratikchandak13 :)
Loved reading your post till the very end :) It's infused with inspiration, deep reflection and knowledge! So amazed on what you could do for more such travels abroad! I'll be curious when the next one is out - Shipra
Nice post! Looking at the beer pics, looks like you could create a great guide to European beers!