What is home?
‘Home’ – A loaded word in any vocabulary. For a traveler it adds additional meanings of local home where you are staying for several months versus the place far away where you plan eventually upon returning to. For an expat the word almost gains another life of its own. I have a home here and plan on staying, but I still talk about things happening “back home”.
Travel adds the complexity of making home different when you do go back. You are changed, you see things in different ways, sometimes you even question what ‘home’ is. Coming to grips with the concept of home is something that is a part of the development of a traveler. Can you really go home again?
Home Sweet Home
Most of us have a concept of home. It is different for everyone of us and changes based on context. As an expat I find using the word home can be confusing, even for me. It has so many meanings.
- If I left my book at home, I mean my local apartment.
- If I talk about books I left in a box at home, I mean the shed in my parent’s backyard across the ocean with a lot of my books.
- When I go traveling in Europe and talk about going home, I mean my home in Germany.
- When I talk to friends back home, I mean people in the US.
Of all of the meanings, what I think they have in common is somewhere where you feel secure and things are familiar, usually where you keep the stuff you value and where you have friends. If that is the basic definition, then it makes sense why there are so many different meanings. Anywhere we feel this sense is a home. So there is not just one home or one sense of home. It changes based on need and location.
Home vs. Away?
In sports the teams are the home team and the away team. I think there is often a similar conflict in the minds of travelers and expats. Last week Keith of Traveling Savage wrote about the motivations of travel. In the comments there were several comments about when you travel being upset when you see things that are too familiar (i.e. things from home like McDonald’s and Starbucks). If a place isn’t different enough from home, then it feels less like traveling somehow. This implies that things need to be unfamiliar and different to make you feel like you are really traveling. So perhaps home is the familiar and away is the unfamiliar.
Even sight-seeing falls into this. “You live in a town forever and never do the touristy things until others come to visit.” I know well enough living in Freiburg that the old stuff doesn’t phase me as much as it used to. The town is beautiful (and highly recommended, but that is a different post), but when you walk the cobbled streets every day, then it becomes familiar and less foreign. It becomes more like home. But when people come to visit, you can see your home in a new light through them. The wonder of the differentness shows up and the sights are interesting again. So maybe home is more about perspective, seeing the same things in a new light can give the feeling of traveling in your own backyard.
As a traveler, moving steadily through the world for weeks or months at a time, you can keep up that feeling of the ‘foreign’ easily just by moving. When a town becomes too familiar, then you move on to get back to the newness. There are varying degrees of this. A tour group in a different hotel every night means you don’t settle in anywhere and nothing is ever familiar. This can be quite stressful. On the other hand going very slow by staying in places 3 months at a time means you can develop a home-type relationship with a place, but have to work more on seeing the newness. A sense of home provides support and a way to reduce the stress of the always-new. It gives a respite without needing to be a specific place.
In the end, it seems more like a struggle for balance between home and away rather than a conflict in which one wins out over the other.
At home in your own head.
Home is really just a mental construct. When you see someone sitting in the front of a sailing ship reading a book among the ropes and say “she looks at home there,” then you get a glimpse of what home is for her. One of the qualities of home for me is that ability to feel comfortable. One of the traits I really admire in some of my fellow travelers is that ability to be comfortable in any situation, at home in it. They have cultivated a sense of home in their own head, so that a place itself isn’t bound to that sense. This to me seems like a key trait for long term travel, to have a feeling of home as support that you carry around with you. To be able to enjoy the moment without yearning to ‘go home’ because it is with you.
Home is where you feel it is. When you go back to the town you left from when traveling and it doesn’t feel like home again, then maybe your definition of exactly what you need to feel at home has changed. The concept of home is one that distinguishes between long-term expats and travelers. While I still think of places across the sea as home, when I think of where I want to be and come home to, it is here.
I expect I will end up writing more about home in the coming months. It is a key point in understanding the reasons for travel and being an expat. It is often a point of conflict as well. I had a hard time finding pictures that seemed to capture the idea of home, further highlighting how difficult it is to pin down. The idea of Home is as important to travel as the travel experiences themselves.
So what does home mean to you? Do you feel at home while traveling? Leave a comment, I’d like to know.
June 6, 2010 @ 6:20 pm
Thanks for the comment and the link. I do remember seeing that article, but good to read again.
Home is a mindset. It is feelings and other connections. Places don't feel like home after a while because the mindset has changed.
I have actually been away from Freiburg before, twice in fact. This is the third time I've lived here, each is almost random chance why I ended up back here. I just feel better here than anywhere else. Each time is different, but really I feel at home.
June 6, 2010 @ 4:43 pm
Interesting question you present. For me, home has always been where I was born and raised, Colorado. The comfort I feel in Colorado can't match anywhere else. Also most of my family still lives in the state. However, I did live in several cities in Italy for several months at a time. They became “home” in a sense that they were less foreign when I arrived and familiar and comforting when I left. When I returned to some of these places, they didn't feel like home anymore. I don't know if you have ever left Freiburg for say 6 months to a year, if it would feel like home to you still. I only say that because I had that reaction with this small town in Sicily I lived in. Here's the post if you are interested http://suzyguese.com/can-you-really-go-home-aga… .
June 1, 2010 @ 6:13 pm
That is a good answer. Is is always nice to have a home that moves around with you.
June 1, 2010 @ 6:39 am
Really interesting post. This is something that I have given quite a lot of thought to over the last year since I came home from living in Australia, which had been my home for a couple of years. I came to a different town to the one I grew up in and have been busily trying to make a home there. I have finally come to the conclusion that home for me is where my wife is 🙂
May 31, 2010 @ 6:09 pm
These days I try to stay in one place for 4-6 months and then spend 5-6 months traveling around with shorter stays in each place I visit. And over the years, I've been able to train myself to be somewhat detached in most circumstances. I guess it's natural when you're constantly moving around, saying hello and then goodbye to everyone you meet. So now my theory is that moving on to a new place will bring new opportunities into my life that I would never know about otherwise and so instead of it feeling painful (which it still does to an extent), I normally head off with increased excitement, eager to know how the next stage of the journey will turn out.
May 31, 2010 @ 4:19 pm
Great comment Earl. It is amazing how much the concept of “home” affects travelers who from some point of view don't have one. I like how you say you feel at home on the road. That is a cool place to be.
How often do you change locations? Does it feel painful to move from a place, or exhilarating to be on to a new one?
May 31, 2010 @ 4:19 pm
Great comment Earl. It is amazing how much the concept of “home” affects travelers who from some point of view don't have one. I like how you say you feel at home on the road. That is a cool place to be.
How often do you change locations? Does it feel painful to move from a place, or exhilarating to be on to a new one?
May 31, 2010 @ 4:15 pm
Hey, thanks for the thoughts. I'm totally with you on some places feeling more like home quicker than others. Knowing what a place like that offers to make it feel like home is important in understanding what makes you happy. People and relationships are definitely a part of it. I feel better in places where i know people and hang out with people. There is also the relationship with the self to look at. If Home is in your head, you can be happier unattached to place. No, I haven't managed this yet, but I've met some that seem to.
May 31, 2010 @ 4:15 pm
Hey, thanks for the thoughts. I'm totally with you on some places feeling more like home quicker than others. Knowing what a place like that offers to make it feel like home is important in understanding what makes you happy. People and relationships are definitely a part of it. I feel better in places where i know people and hang out with people. There is also the relationship with the self to look at. If Home is in your head, you can be happier unattached to place. No, I haven't managed this yet, but I've met some that seem to.
May 31, 2010 @ 3:54 am
This is a great post Andrew as it touches on a subject that affects every traveler. I am actually back in the US at the moment for a short visit, so technically I am home. However, the more I think about it, the more I realize that I am only truly “at home” when I am overseas, exploring new lands, whether familiar or unfamiliar ones. And the fact that I am eagerly awaiting the day when I can leave the US again (not too long to go!), is not necessarily due to my strong desire to travel. After 11 years of near constant travel, I now consider my comfort zone, my home, to be wherever it is I may be during my adventures. So naturally, as most people do, I long to be “there” even though it is not a specific place.
These days, I am more “at home” in places such as Delhi, Prague and Mexico than I am right now in the US. To say that my trip “back home” has been a struggle, would be a great understatement!
May 30, 2010 @ 6:45 pm
Hi Andrew,
Great post! I often think about same things you talked about.
After moving so much it is hard to define “home”, but as you said, I call a place home when I feel confortable there. When I know how to get around, where to find the services I need, how to use the public transportation, where to go to enjoy my free time, etc. However, after some time, a place is not home anymore because after so many years it will be so different, people I knew might have changed from there and I might not remember the basic things about that city (as I have mentioned…getting around…etc).
I guess, it depends of your experience in the place. I can tell from my experience that I have felt more like “at home” in a place after leaving only for a month than in another after spending more than half year.
Perhaps the key word is relationship or family/familiar. When you develop links with people it might be easier to call a place “home”. Am I wrong?