We entered Kurland and the idea that I was off my homeland was performing wonders in my heart.
I gazed at every object on our way although they all were rather ordinary.
I felt such delight, that I had not experienced since we parted.
Soon Mitava came in our view. The sight was ugly but for me it was full of attractiveness!
"This is my first foreign town", — I though and my eyes were searching for something splendid, novel.
Karamsin N.M., 1791−1792


Walked and looked around in a herd…
Then this herd of people, laughing and making incredible noises, started to climb up the pyramids,
then all of them settled down.
An inevitable photographer arrived.
People opened their boxed and took out food.
Bottles began shuddering. And people ate, ate, ate…
Verbitskaya А.N., 1909



The thing is that I haven’t seen this place.
I doubt, if I saw what I remember looking at…
I. Brodsky, 1978 [1]

The XX century made travelling a mass social phenomenon and at that transformed it into tourism.

The contrast of this concepts dates back to the XIX century. At that time the very notion "tourist" appeared and was defined in one of the French dictionaries as "traveling due to curiosity" or "to kill time".

One hundred years later, by the beginning of the XX century, attitude towards tourist had changed a bit:

"The words tourist and tourism are of a completely new origin — they are the kids of the last age; the notion itself has not been formulated yet; if we take an older version of Larousse, we will find a short and absolutely erroneous definition: "tourist is a person traveling for pleasure (agrément)". But, firstly, a tourist is not a traveler. This word in its full sense has become a myth and can be applied to long-lasting expeditions; tourist is likely to be a kind of excursionist. The divide between a tourist and a traveler is the same deep as the difference between their means and ways to move around. Unlike a traveler a tourist always has little time and money, hence he moves light; he has to plan a tour in advance, so, he has to use a guidebook or a travel agent. Lastly, a tourist should "have hardiness, adaptability, ability to orientate oneself, he should be able to pick up the most outstanding phenomenon out of a mass of ordinary ones, to memorize and to process them" [2].

Indeed, travelers of the XIXs could sense the changes induced by the coming epoch of quick, comfortable, organized tours. The first travel agencies such as Thomas Cook who offered the first tour "Europe in a Week" in1862 played an important role. The influence of railroads was even more significant: they eliminated carriages, diligences, tarantases, road carts, buried the profession of yamschik, and, a more serious matter still, completely changed the feel of road. Many contemporaries were aware of it though they differed in their evaluations.

"Travel has lost a considerable portion of its poetry due to lack of a great deal of small adventures which were talked about in old books; but everyone seems to prefer safe trip on a train to poetry associated with very dangerous highway robbers' attacks" (from P. Yakubovich' guide-book of Rome and Southern Italy, 1874).



"Travel at a speed of 100 miles an hour by no account makes us happier, wiser, and our hearts stronger. There always are and will be things in the world that should be slowly approached. The faster we blast past these things, the less we see, remember and comprehend.

Speed does not possess genuine value; value is all about contemplation, reflection and remembering. A bullet does not bring happiness no matter how quick it flies. Man longing to become intelligent will enrich his knowledge on condition that he takes his time moving from one place to another".

The quotation author, a British artist John Ruskin (1819−1900), could not imagine what would follow.

Planes that have conquered transportation market since 1958 when a successful 707 Boeing make was produced; mass hotel development in all possible beaches round the world started in the 1950s and "All inclusive" introduced by Gérard Blitz, a Club Med founder; a dramatic increase in tourist departures and arrivals from 25 million in 1950 to 698 million in 2000; territories marketing evolution, tourist sights' branding have transformed tourism itself.

The pioneer book"The Image, or, What happened to the American dream?" by D. J. Boorstin published in 1961 is considered to have started scientific reflections on these transformations. One of the chapters was named "From the traveler to the tourist: the end of the epoch of traveling".

Since then a great number of sociological researches have been conducted analyzing specifics of tourist perception of the world and inner life of a traveling tourist. By large these works were of critical character and their evaluation criteria were anthropological dimension and "personality gains" associated with trips.

Practically, all major tourism researchers of the 1970−90s indicated artificiality of tourist experience and products. D. McConnell assumed that commercial nature of tourism initiates tourist space consisting of tourist sites — "false mirrors" which reflect their external content but are not actual authentic objects in themselves. This space can be called theatrical scenery, tourist staging, or, just environment depending on how intensively a show is tourist-targeted [3].

The same statement can be found in C. Rojek conception of perception indexing. He argues that tourist perception embraces visual, textual, and symbolic notions captured in guide-books, films, TV shows and ads. This led to that the world is hit by the process of "tourist sites production and consumption" [4]. Any tourist sites at that are perceived as Disneyland modifications since they have been created with the primary purpose of tourists entertainment [5].

However, it is not only tourist services producer that is "guilty" of tourist simulacra generation. As J. Culler remarks, a tourist himself "is interested in everything as a sign in itself… all over the world tourist look for typically French, or Italian behavior, orient design, American-like spending spree, traditional English pubs" [6].

As a result, the paradoxical situation arose when cultures differed from each other in guide-books, pictures in "National Geographic" и "GЕО" journals [7]. According to N. E. Pokrovsky, the satisfaction with a tourist trip is mainly associated not with approaching "Another" culture and, ultimately, its attainment but with gaining hyper reality of that culture adequacy generated by tourist advertising, which testifies to the power of such constructs [8]. In V.V. Il’in apt words, a tourist goal is "to mark" his presence at his stereotypes' material bottom [9].

It is appropriate to mention that, as J. Urry states, the central point in tourist outlook evolution and "tourist gaze" formation is photos which have became tourism Mumbo Jumbo since everybody is sure to admit that a tour without photographing can hardly be a tour [10]. Due to this photographic tourism' attribute we can find countless albums featuring well known places of interest a picture- taker does not care for. The aim of this set of visual affirmation, in J. Urry view, consists of symbolic external affiliation of cultural artifacts ("everything in the album is my property"), status consumption ("I am a sum of places I’ve been to") social identification system build up ("I've been to places which others have visited") [11]. N.E. Pokrovsky gives this phenomenon a name of "Kodak syndrome", arguing that the tourist is rather fond of reality possession (its appropriation) in the form of pictures and videos than of reality itself [12]. As a result, to a significant degree tourism has become a search for things that screen well, and a tour — a strategy to accumulate photos. "Not to miss a view" is a tourist imperative. Both photos and souvenirs appropriate hyper reality proving the fact "I've seen it with my own eyes".

What is more, there exists another side of the phenomenon of reality visual acquisition by tourist. Thus, R. Bartes writes that photography that used to concentrate on portraying something unique now makes uniqueness by taking photo of it [13].

The findings of the research on National US parks attendance show tourist perception specifics. Modern visitors tend to perceive wild life (as well as culture landscapes) as indifferent, "unincorporated" observers not as interactive participants. A surprising fact is that attendants spend just 10 minutes off their cars on average. In authors' opinion, visitors' isolation from the parks environment is so full that their wild life exploration experience can be compared to TV watching or strolling around a mall at hand.

The behavior of museum visitors is analogous. The analysis conducted by two leading Institutes for Cultural Studies leaves us disillusioned in terms of visitors motives: "A great deal of guests are attracted by fashion, accessibility, relatively cheap tickets and the atmosphere of a mall prevailing around museum shops. The hardly throw a glance at a picture, or, at a sculpture. The assumption that visitors pretend being fond of museum exhibits is confirmed by the speed at which they move about the exposition. One can reckon that they drop in at a museum in order to leave it as soon as possible. At that the tempo of their moving around is in direct proportion to the size of the museum" [14].

"Photo — centered" character of mass culture with regard to cultural reality is well illustrated by one more story about "theme-parking The Amanas" (Iowa, USA), described in the article of the same name [15].

In the middle of the XIXs, the Amana, a classical close community with strong beliefs, happened to draw attention of a shaping tourist caste of the 1920−30s. Due to economic problems the community gradually came under the tourist influence, which resulted in tourism being the main source of funds.

Against the backdrop of the tourism boom another process was developing — former, authentic life under a tourist gaze together with exclusion of economic necessity was seen as something alien, as goods bought by tourists. The Amanas had changed so much that they could be taken for white "Americans" in spirit and didn’t accept those values and lifestyle that they themselves sold. It did not affect the tourist inflow; moreover, the demand grew sustainably. The development of tourism infrastructure (roads, comfortable hotel, picturesque guide-books) and visual appeal of the"product" added to it.



Nevertheless, not everything enters this global tourist matrix. Having realized their position many people could penetrate the wall of tourist reality, breathe in real world, become genuine explorers, feel drive and adrenaline rush of Big Travel. They have managed to jump over the precipice separating us from "the Authentic".

I. Brodsky once wrote: "return ticket takes from us any opportunity of psychologically contributing to this place" [16]. As if he had heard these words, one day Andrey Shevchenko bought a single ticket and started his 6-month hitch hiking across Asia, which has provided him with unforgettable memories.

One can open the world in a less extreme way.

Your hobby or your dream can help you

"Everybody has his own passion. Mine is cars. While on a trip we visit local auto and technical museums. Every of them, be it a small private Porsche museum in the Alps or an endless world of Mercedes impresses in its specific way, stirs emotions and recollections".
/ Evgeniy Neustroev

An unconventional idea is

"to deal with family tree and then visit newly-found relatives. I've traveled all over the world and traced my ancestors down to the IVI century. Who knows, you might also have a second grand grandmother somewhere in America"?
/ Kirill Novoselcky

Or a pronounced interest in people and cultures

"India helped me realize what travel used to be a long time ago — to see new worlds, to try to understand their peculiarities, to taste them. But the greatest part is that coming home your grey daily routine turns out to be more colorful, the known — more interesting, ordinary — mysterious. travel, in essence, is an experiment in which you learn about your friends and yourself".
/ Vorokh Andrey

Travel should become an event as it has happened to Aleksandr Veryovkin.

"My life can be divided into two parts. Before and after my trip to Tibet.

Having walked around the mount Kailas I felt as if I'd shucked off the burden accumulated over years (lies, swearing, cowardice, deviation from principals). It was travel towards me.

Now I, a former metallurgical company manager, am the developer of expeditions about Tibet and Nepal, a photographer and, practically, a Buddhist".

In truth, "where" is not that important. What really matters is "how".
These are words about it written 115 years ago:

"Tourism is the skill to stroll. Lots of people ride a horse, or a bicycle, walk, go yachting or boating, but they don't stroll. Maybe, one should learn this skill, or it might be given to us from birth, or it is both, and it may be a science which we have to master and practice, the science that cannot be created? The ability to get pulled by a cloud in the sky, by the light which penetrates deeply into everything, by recollections which grow in your memory while you are moving, by flowers of nature blended in a harmonious mass, by various sounds; to capture artistic and everyday sides of all your feeling generated by being in the open air, to harmonize them, let them engross you and to enjoy them to the full — that's what tourism is. Add to it a bit of human pride of having overcome the obstacles and an illusion of a completely new and intimate sensation — and you'll get a good idea of this novel and so pleasant state of mind [17]".

One of the ways to advance in peering into something, pondering over what you see is to take up drawing. It might be the train of thoughts characteristic of Iliya Zakharovich Makletsky (1840−1902), eternal head of the Siberian Bank, a benefactor, and Yekaterinburg community activist. A devoted traveler, he left 4 albums of drawings, sketches, and landscapes made during his journeys across the Ural, the Crimea and the Caucasus.

Unfortunately, we cannnot read what exactly Iliya Zakharovich had put into his drawings, why he started to paint. We can assume that places portrayed remained pictured in his heart. We want to think that he was familiar with paintings and literary works of his contemporary, a British artist John Ruskin (1819−1900):

"The fact that we have got so divorced from paying attention to details, to important and, perhaps, beautiful things can be proved by our inability to stop for a while trying to observe this or that object for the time necessary to make a free-hand minimal sketch of this object, a person, or landscape. It takes about ten minutes of concentration to make a draft of, say, a tree. But we understand it very well that even the most marvelous tree cannot make us pause and devote more than a minute.

Gentlemen, I want you to get it right: I didn't dare teach you to draw. I wanted you to learn to SEE".

This does not imply that only drawing can help us open the world. Photography is no less interesting tool of learning the world: if you know some techniques and strategies. Igor Sorokin, a guest of the exhibition monitoring, told us about one method that works for him: "take photos of scratchy things, from your hip, don’t bother with angle. At home you can find a lot of details that you haven’t noticed on a trip".

But you can even do without a camera. One of our visitors introduced his approach to observe museum exhibits. Not to convert himself into a "flaneur", and the museum into a clip with a kaleidoscope of pictures, artifacts and messages he goes around the exposition choosing 2−3 objects to his liking and then stops at each of them for the time needed for a detailed scrutiny. Then he ponders over them and discusses with his friends.

Sometimes it is enough just to open your eyes. And a lot of fantastic thing will be in front of you, under your feet or, as in case with one of our travelers, under your "paddles".

Years ago a barque with coins from Yekaterinburg mint bumped up against the Denezkin Kamen. In the archives there was no evidence but people kept remembering the story…

In October, 2005 the team of Ural Dive Club "Triton" examined the underwater bottom of the rock and found a pair of small anchors and an old wrought nail with the letter "А" stamped on the nail head.

It is in everybody access: diving course — from 2 weeks for 7000 rub., wet suit — from 30 000 rub. (suit rental — from 600 rub.).

"I've dived in the Red and Black seas, but most memorable is diving in the Ural lakes. Shall we swim through the drown forest"?
/ Nadezhda Gryaznova, an 11^th grade student, Yekaterinburg

These petrified remains of brachiopod which lived on the sea bed is about 326 million years old.

You can bring along more of them from your trip down the Iset river on the banks of which Yekaterinburg stands. You will follow history of gradual ocean shoaling, underwater eruptions taking place 320 million years ago, emergence of derelict land and young Urals mountains formation.

"At one seminar which was a part of my course of lectures we examined certain trips and one lady shared her experience of turning a routine way from her house to the public transport stop into a set of interesting journeys — 3 kilometers on foot from Matveevsk to Mozhaisk highway (the East of Moscow). She developed different routes and was lucky to discover lots of curious things, for example, a beaver dam on the river Setun. She had corresponding sensations (she also was half-way equipped). The findings added to the place, enriched it. The landscape came to life and started to "speak"! [18]

Yekaterinburg is rich in such enthusiasts. For instance, Tatyana Yurievna Serykh who due to age cannot go on long-distance hikes makes photo-trips around the city. City bridges construction, design of street benches and trash cans stir her curiosity and transform walking into expeditions, examination of construction and design solutions the number of which seems to be endless.

While meditating on it you see the wisdom of A. Einstein words: "There are two ways to live: you can pretend that there are no miracles in the world, or you can live as if everything in this world were wonderwork".

It is no wonder, it is truly magic when a person travels… around his apartment.

"In 1790, Xavier de Maistre lived in a small flat at the top of a tenement building in Turin. It was the very place where he realized he would be a pioneer in a new type of exploring the world which later would be named after him: a voyage without leaving a room.

Introducing "Voyage about my room" to the reading public his brother Joseph, a noted politician, underlined that the author had not meant, in any way, to cast a slur on the heroic deeds of the greatest explorers of the past – "F. Magellan, F. Drake, G. Anson or J. Cook". Magellan set a westward route to "Spice Islands" around the south of American continent; F. Drake carried out the second circumnavigation of the world in a single expedition; Sir Anson brought home detailed maps of the Philippine Islands, and J. Cook achieved the first recorded European contact with the eastern coastline of Australia and the Hawaiian Islands, and the first recorded circumnavigation of New Zealand. «All of them are undoubtedly outstanding people», — wrote Joseph de Maistre. In his opinion it was Xavier who had succeeded in discovering a new way to travel available for those who could not exceed these grand travelers in intrepidity and financial sources.

«Millions of people who haven't dared to start a journey to a strange land, millions of others who haven't had the opportunity to wander round the world and those who haven't had such an idea now can follow my pattern. No longer will the laziest and incurious humankind representatives question a possibility to make a remarkable, full of joy and pleasures voyage for a song». He strongly recommended this way of travel to the poor and to those who were afraid of storms, robbers and steep inclines.

To our great regret, the author's voyage as well as his first ballooning flight did not last long.

The story has a stunning start: de Maistre locks bedroom door and changes into pink-and-blue pajamas. It goes without saying, he no needs no luggage at all. Then he immediately heads for the sofa – the largest thing in the room. The raid awakens him from lethargy. Examining the sofa with a new look he discovers its unexpected properties. As an objective analyst he admires elegance of the sofa's legs and recollects hours spent in a blissful comfort of its soft pillows: the hours during which he was imagining his great love and career advance. Sitting on the sofa he acquaints himself with the bed considering its importance and complex design. He feels gratitude and prides himself on the fact that his pajamas match the bed linen" [19].