Memories & Experience

Overwhelmed by the seemingly never-ending appearance of buildings, I stared quite wonderingly out of the window of my airplane. What a city. After obtaining my visa and collecting my luggage I stepped out of the airport and had my first proper interaction with a local. One must know, as background information on myself, that I never seek the dispensable western comfort in exchange for tourist prices. I have slept in 1$ dorm rooms in Asia, have eaten – and sometimes also regretted eating – from the most poor-looking streetfood stalls around the world and sat many times in vans and busses crowded with locals, regardless of the hassle. Consequently, I did not take a taxi to the city centre but the bus that cost me around 3JD and a bit of interpretation effort, as the man who sold me the ticket proceeded talking to me in Arabic. After encountering and successfully overcoming the same situation with the taxi driver I finally reached the hostel and got a good night of sleep (aka Lukas vs. Mosquitos). On the agenda for the first day was a continuance of what I experienced during the approach for landing, the evening before; staring. Tourism, be it a weekend-trip to the city close-by or a backpacking adventure in rural Cambodia, is always connected to seeing things – gaze at them, as John Urry named it. I was overwhelmed by the endlessness of the city and looked, as Urry “at the environment with interest and curiosity”. (Urry, 1990) Retrospectively, I can explain my excitement with Urry’s words; gazing is conditioned by memories and experience, as it is not much elaborated in depth, I imply the following: we connect what we gaze upon to what we’ve seen and experienced before. Our connection and therewith also our reaction to what we look at depend on how this fits into our history of seeing things, of experiencing things. I personally have seen many wonders of nature, astonishing landscapes and such. But as someone who rather skips metropolis, looking at the vast and vivid city of Amman, coupled with the excitement of being in an Arabic country, brought up the feeling of joy I had while gazing upon the hills and buildings.
LLM

Urry, J. (1990). The tourist gaze. London: Sage Publications.

Man sliding down the rail, Amman No end in sight