Taking your time : Living and relaxing

The « slow living trend » implies fleeing the type of consumer behaviour   that leads tourists to gang up on the same beaches during the same months, and during the same time slots.  It favors instead a « meaningful encounter ».  People who make this choice refuse to go through agencies which plan everything, preferring to be surprised.

Jonathan Roblin, in Dordogne, had the following experience : 

 « Just when I had planned to travel through Europe on my bicycle, sorted out my stopover points and my itineraries, I was invited to live a true-life adventure on a boat. I willingly stepped into the unknown as soon as it was offered to me. It wasn't really  a vacation that breaks the work rythm, but it was a pause in my life.  A way to see something different. A strong desire to see a new horizon and life itself in a different way, or rather, life as it is, where it is. »  When he arrived in Turkey, Johathan and one of his friends decided to become different sorts of tourists, in Turkey as well as Bulgaria. They hitch-hiked and tried to meet others.

Seeing the world as it is, where it is

In this way they discovered warm and welcoming people :  « People came to us spontaneously, offering their help.  They shared their food with us quite naturally. We played music in the streets with young people our age who were momentarily broke.  Some of them were students, others lived with their parents but had to fend for themselves.  Elsewhere I met young activists.  When all was said and told I learned to live differently during this « vacation ».  I realized that the material side of things is not so important, and that the less you plan them, the more things are free to just happen.  I only had a backpack and that certainly didn't keep me from meeting people. It was life ! That's what I was traveling for.  Having nothing I had nothing to lose and could only gain...in a different way :  by discovering and approaching others ».