Heritage Sites - Petra

Petra is Jordan’s most-visited tourist attraction and one of the new Seven Wonders of the World, among other top attractions such as Machu Picchu or the Great Wall of China. It was undoubtedly what we were looking forward to the most, thinking back to our first plenary session. As noted in many blogs, including mine, the diminishing number of tourists coming to Jordan is economically hurting the tourist sector. However, even though Petra visitors number halved since 2010, as a reaction on the unrest in neighbouring countries, the historical and archaeological site continue to be the most important anchor in Jordan’s tourism industry. We visited Petra on our fourth day and the site truly had an impact on us all. In this post I will describe the affect and importance of heritage sites, such as Petra, and connected them to what I could observe myself. I believe that Lowenthal’s (1985) idea that heritage sites subconsciously provide “a reassuring sense of continuity” and a sense of identity is correct and definitely explains our desire to visit such sites. However, I was more interested in the conscious part, the observable. I refer to the overwhelmed reaction of my classmate, who couldn’t grasp the beauty of the monastery and the treasury. I believe that the idea of Ashworth and Tunbridge (2000) can provide an explanation. It says that heritage sites have a great importance to a unique place or location, it is contrary the process of globalisation in which everything becomes less unique but rather part of a bigger shared culture. The reaction of my classmates showed exactly what this ‘difference’ between what you usually see and Petra generates: an overwhelming feeling of excitement that left most of us slack-jawed. To end this entry, I want to bring out another thought: I’ve visited most of the Seven New World Wonder and honestly, Petra did not overwhelm me. I kept comparing it to Machu Picchu and Angkor Wat and finally I came up with the idea that on a large scale (meaning, the more other heritage or natural sites you can compare it to) the more similarities you detect and the less impressed by the site in particular you are. So maybe the idea of the homogenisation of sites is not far off. Debatable!

LLM

Lowenthal, D. (1985) The Past is a Foreign Country, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Graham, B., Ashworth, G.J. and Tunbridge, J.E. (2000) A Geography of Heritage, London: Arnold.

The Treasury, Petra

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