Beyond the Map: Discovering Europe’s Soul

Part 1 - The greatest attraction is not always a monument.

For me, travel begins long before I board a flight. It begins with planning. an itinerary, studying maps, tracing railway connections, searching for small hotels and charming motels, checking the weather and deciding what to pack. Sometimes, the excitement lies simply in discovering how two seemingly insignificant towns are connected by a local train, a scenic bus route or anunexpected road.

This is why I have always been drawn to places that do not appear on every traveller’s checklist.

Travel, for me, is not merely about reaching a destination. It is about understanding it, experiencing it and allowing it to surprise me.

As Pico Iyer beautifully expresses in his celebrated essay Why We Travel, “We travel, initially, to lose ourselves, and we travel, next, to find ourselves.” Travel has the remarkable ability to take us away from the familiar and introduce us to another version of ourselves.

That thought resonates deeply with me. Every journey can change something. within us—a new perspective, a friendship, a taste, a landscape, a conversation or simply the realisation that there are countless ways of living and looking at the world.

Offbeat Europe

When we think of Europe, our imagination naturally turns to Paris, London, Rome, Switzerland, Amsterdam or Prague. These iconic destinations deserve their place in the traveller’s imagination.

But Europe has another, quieter personality. It lives in mediaeval villages tucked between mountains, riverside towns, little cafés in cobbled squares, farmers’ markets, countryside railway stations and family-run restaurants where the menu may not even be available in English.

Sometimes, the greatest attraction is not a monument at all. It is a street. a railway journey, a bakery, a local market, a conversation, a village square where elderly people gather on a Sunday afternoon, or a small hotel where the owner remembers your name.

Discovering the Undiscovered

Imagine arriving in a small European town with no long list of attractions. Instead of rushing from one monument to another, you walk slowly through its streets. You stop at a local café, watch people go about their lives, visit a weekly market and take a regional train because the route looks beautiful.

You buy something from a little shop. You taste a local dish. You try to communicate despite not knowing the language. You exchange a smile. Perhaps you have a conversation with the café owner or another traveller.

For me, these moments are often more precious than photographs in front of famous landmarks.

The great travel writer and explorer Freya Stark captured this spirit. beautifully when she wrote, “To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world.”

There is something wonderfully liberating about arriving somewhere. unfamiliar with curiosity rather than expectations, allowing a place to introduce itself rather than deciding what it should be.

That, perhaps, is the difference between simply visiting a destination and truly travelling through it.

The Pu. La. Way

Among Marathi travel writers, one name that has always fascinated me is Pu. La. Deshpande.

His Apoorvai, Poorvarang and Jaave Tyanchya Desha are not merely travelogues. They are journeys seen through the eyes of a wonderfully curious, humorous and sensitive traveller.

What makes Pu. La.’s writing so special is that he did not simply tell us what a place looked like. He showed us how it made him feel. He noticed people. their habits, humour, peculiarities and little incidents that an ordinary tourist might overlook.

In the preface to Apoorvai, Pu. La. makes a self-aware observation: the book contains not merely a description of the journey he undertook but also of himself who was travelling.

That, to me, is one of the most beautiful philosophies of travel writing.

No two people experience the same journey in exactly the same way. The city, the railway and the monument remain unchanged—but the traveller transforms the experience. What one person notices, another may miss.

Pu. La. had that extraordinary ability to notice the apparently insignificant and turn it into something memorable.

His descriptions of Europe, particularly England, celebrate little streams. and rivers, green hills, villages, church spires, grazing cattle, children waving at passing trains, cricket grounds, winding roads and ordinary people going about their day, rather than just famous landmarks. Reading those passages makes me realise that this is precisely what I seek. when I travel.

I want to see what exists between the famous places: the landscape outside, the train window, the character of a small town, a local café, a regional dish, a bustling market and, perhaps, a conversation with someone whose life is completely different from mine.

(The writer is a tourism professional and runs a company, Global Voyages. She could be contacted at goglobalvoyages@gmail.com. Views personal.)