Has this ever happened to you?
 

I was wondering if anyone had a similar experience.
It goes like this:
You have just returned from a long trip, say an Africa Overland and you run into an old friend (but it could as well be a relative or a co-worker or whatever).
The old friend:
- Hi, where have you been? Long time no see.
You:
- Oh, I just returned from a six (or whatever) month trip in Africa, drove all over the place (or something along that line).
At this point you would normally expect some sort of comment, even something as plain as "was if fun?" or "how did you like it?"
But no, a blank stare appears on your friends face, then he focuses his attention on the tip of his shoes in total silence for a few seconds and finally bursts in something completely unrelated like:
- Oh, by the way did you know that John has bought a new TV?[or anything just as silly].
To which you can only reply with some short smalltalk about TVs and walk away…
Isn't it odd?... Any clue?

Cheers!

Some people don't get the travel bug, that's all.

They have a different focus in their life, like you do in yours. No better, no worse, just different.

That and travel changes a person - sometimes for the better, sometimes not. I've seen it go both ways.

Don't let it get to you. You might find your circle of friends evolving to those who are more like minded - at least that is what happened to me.

Possibly terrified you'll pull out the holiday snaps? I worked with a bloke who built sea going canoes. Interesting way to travel but not something you want a 3 hour lecture on every time water or travel or camping gets mentioned. How people jump to the conclusion that you mentioning a bit of a bike trip will lead to offers of an invite to the book signing is one of the great mysteries of human interaction.

Andy

Happend to us a lot, just back where we started from, I stoped to talk about it... Actually nobody wants to hear about it. I was warned b4 from some fellow travellers, they told me in Sydney "When you come home do not even try to talk about the trip, nobody will get it, they just do not understand it"...

Never mind, thats our memories and learnings for the next part of the trip...

Cheers

Hallo Sascha and Kerstin

Are you back in Europe (Deutschland) yet?

.

I have worked, with short breaks in between, abroad with for the last 14 years. Normally deployed with the army in places like Afghanistan or Africa.
The same happens to me. People don't wanna talk about it because normally they don't have an opinion about the places you worked. Or they have an opinion but they know that you will be the wrong person to talk about it since you have been there and then their opinion could sound ridiculous...

That's why there are so many traveler meetings out there. You wanna talk about your trip and experience, there you'll find the people who share the same feelings and understanding since they have done a trip themselves or they are planning to do one.

Greets from Kinshasa

Claudio

Hi Keith,

"Keith1954 has exceeded their stored private messages quota and cannot accept further messages until they clear some space." :o

Can you PM me your email address? Got it somewhere on my travel Laptop but :blushing:


OK found it... you have a mail... ;)

Very true indeed but there is got to be something else, possibly, as someone else hinted, the hesitation to discuss unfamiliar things. But still...

Cheers

It happens before your trip. Nobody wants to know about your preperations and plans. A lot of people say, why do you want to travel? Whats wrong with "insert place you live" When you try to explain the reason you are going, their eyes glaze over. They just cannot understand.
It used to be the case in the UK, that the majority of people lived within 7 miles of were they were born / lived as a child.
How sad.

not interested
 

Very much so. Not that I wanted to brag or look important but felt that no one could really connect. In most cases now I don't talk about it, making a joke that I got lost or similar.

Having said that, there are people genuinely interested and want to know as much as possible, occasionally.

As my travel buddy said in Iran, "people do ask you, how your holiday was, so that they can tell you about theirs"

I'm now looking to close that chapter of my life as its starting to bore me (well the video edit is) and look to the new adventure.

happens to me a lot too - but one day, I thought about it this way....

I don't want to listen to the person who goes to insert beach / bar resort every year with their family or friends & for the purpose of getting drunk / sitting on the beach and never seeing anything beyond the resort.
That person will never understand why I ride my bike & travel far and wide, just as I will never understand what's so good about their trip :)
Vive la difference!

Just reach that point.
 

As my trips have got longer as time has gone on I have found people have become less interested. Strange? Long weekend trips were very popular with the civilians as were one week trips. Now at 1 month trips and no body seems to want to listen. It is just like they can't compute anything more than 2 weeks away from home. This years trip did it for me when my 2 Girls (18 & 21) "txting" each other during the photo showing event while they were suppose to be "interested" . My own kids in front of me !

So from now on I will only "engage" civilians that show any sense of adventure first.

But on the other side of the coin my wife has had a completely different reaction. When she mentions that she has been away for 4 weeks or more to where ever it was, people ask "oh, where did you fly to?" When she says "no where, it was on a motorbike with my old man" They nearly drop to the floor with amazement and can't get enough of it all.

This really hacks me off sometimes :(

I think it's the same with many things in life...

People aren't generally interested or can comprehend someone else's adventure.

It's like when you see someone you haven't seen in a year or two. They're pushing around their new born baby.

For them it's been a 9 months adventure and a huge life changing experience. for me i'm like "Yeah,cute kid"

I'm genuinely interested and happy for them but I'll forget it even happened ten seconds after I've walked on.

As human beings, we're all pretty self centered if we're honest with ourselves.


I gave up talking about my travel adventures along time ago. No one is really bothered unless they have the same interest. That's why places like the HUBB are fantastic :)

You're charitable, Ted. I'm like "you stupid fcuker, you should have used a contraceptive".

Right: it's not specifically travel which brings out this response: it's whatever people don't know how to relate to. It's natural, it's normal, and most of us do it too--but not so much in response to someone saying they spent the last year on a motorbike.

I look at it this way: I'm nothing special. What I spent the last year doing is no more or less adventurous than what everyone else does from time to time: raise kids; suffer through deaths of parents or partners; get seriously diseased or injured; return to university to re-train at mid-life; get married or divorced.... Sometimes I can relate, but sometimes I can't, don't want to, or am afraid of getting sucked in by someone who can only talk about their own wondrous life (or terrible frustrations) without any give and take.

And along those lines and for whatever it's worth: I've met overland riders whom I've got no interest in discussing this with, despite their own apparent sense of overwhelming importance. Others I could spend weeks with, just comparing notes and trading stories. Basically, I'm not that interesting and neither are you...to a lot of people. Become more interesting and you'll get fewer thousand mile stares in response to whatever you say. Better yet, become more interested in whatever THEY have to tell, and most will become in response more interested in you.

Having said that, I'll retire into my boring, stuffy, sedate and predictable corner of the world now.

Mark

Now ain't that the truth.....


No one likes being given a compulsory ticket to the 'Me show'

I've had a couple of polite "oh where you been" after a trip but realized they were just being polite so they could insert their own travel woes.

what does tick me off is at work my holiday plans crop up as they have to arrange cover & end up inevitably questioning my destination & or sanity then end with a promise to send me a link to easyjets website.. ho ho 1st time but but boring now..

last year I bumped into a guy I know through work, his opening gambit was "oh your back" me .. yep appears so.. him "you been gone ages where you go?"
me .. prison but not for anything serious all sorted now.

he smiles and nods knowingly when he sees me now.. ha.. what an asshat.

regards all
Gren

I stay on the road most of the time, one trip flows into the next one...Nobody wants to see the pictures, nobody seems to care. Life goes on, we have our adventures and they stay caught up on the soaps and football and work M-F. They are busy with their lives, no matter how boring they seem to us. I think it is all about fulfilling your expectations of your life, if you find somebody that is interested, good luck with that...Life is short, better go for a longer ride next time! Ride the wind!
Smoke

There are uncountable amount of reasons to do an extended trip. There are too uncountable amount of situations from where the people start.

All of these combinations will give you an completely different start when you come back I guess.

Surfy

Has it not happened to all of us overlanders?
 

It is so true what I read here and both me and my husband have had the same experience. As my husband said to me: 'you have to be able to tell your whole trip in 5 minutes, no matter how long you have been away!'
It is also true that when you listen to what 'normal' people have to say, they tend to listen to you brag about your adventure. Because lets face it, if you tell people about your trip, in their eyes you are bragging. They just want to hear that the food sucked, all the people were mean to you and you got ill and will never leave your comfort zone again....
We are so looking forward to going to the next HUBB UK meeting, so we can finally share our stories with likeminded souls! :scooter:

Ha - enjoyed reading this, esp the first post by Habari. The thread has moved elsewhere since, but I well remember coming right back to earth on my 1st day back @ work after an 18 month sabbatical when someone came up to me and said "Did you have a good trip? Glad to see you back - when you've a moment, could we have a quick look at what's gone in and out of this cost code?"

Mind you, he was an accountant, so perhaps one shouldn't be too harsh :(

I do hope the story will last a little bit longer than 5 minutes in 2 weeks. I don't mind if it lasts well into the night. :cool4:

Heart of Darkness
 

"I found myself back in the sepulchral city resenting the sight of people hurrying through the streets to filch a little money from each other, to devour their infamous cookery, to gulp their unwholesome grog, to dream their insignificant and silly dreams. They trespassed upon my thoughts. They were intruders whose knowledge of life was to me an irritating pretence because I felt so sure they could not possibly know the things I knew. Their bearing, which was simply the bearing of commonplace individuals going about their business in the assurance of perfect safety, was offensive to me like the outrageous flauntings of folly in the face of a danger it is unable to comprehend. I had no particular desire to enlighten them, but I had some difficulty in restraining myself from laughing in their faces so full of stupid importance."

(Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad 1899)
.

Finally I found some people who wanted to hear it all. You will never guess who?

I started to send out CV´s. In the beginning I wrote for the last two years "Sabbatical... bla bla..." - not many responses.

Ok, I changed my tactic. I wrote: "Travel Journalist and Photographer. Details look at page 3"

Page 3 of the CV had all information of the trip, photos and, "last but not least", a lesson learned section with 10 bullet points.

Whow, some days later I got my first interview invitations. From 1.5h talk we talked half of the time about the trip and the lessons learned. They loved it. Within a week I got a very interesting job in an interesting location. Moving on, trip continues, just different. :clap::clap::clap:

I've experienced the same thing. One of my first eye-opening experiences was on the first time I traveled far from home. I was backpacking at the time, and not overlanding.

I'd traveled to Nicaragua, and was quite proud of myself because Nicaragua always seemed so exotic, dangerous, and inaccessible.

When I found a room and went to an internet cafe, I found my niece online, who was about 15 at the time. She asked me how I was. I said, "Awesome! I made it to Nicaragua today."

She replied, "Cool! Me and Grandpa are going to Walmart this afternoon. I can't wait."

And I realized that like anyone, the things she does in her life are very important to her, but not so interesting to others. Like my trip to Nicaragua was a life goal of mine, but she merely thought it was "cool."

On a related note, I've done bits of travel off and on over the past ten years or so. I've found that almost nobody (except for very rare individuals) asks much about the trip, and nobody ever asks to see photos. But they all want to know what I'm doing next.

Jamie

You bet it will last waaaaayyy longer than that!! We have already got everything we need to make sure nobody dies of thirst…. bier jeiger
See you soon :clap: