Good to see you again.
So—it’s almost the end of 2024. Not yet, but we’re heading swiftly into the fall season in Amsterdam. I’m struck by how fast time passes, and I find myself thinking about one of my first trips to Europe with my friend Roman, nearly 19 years ago. It was one of the trips that set the stage for travel becoming a transformative part of my life.This visit to Krakow gave me insight into just how different life was in other parts of the world. The city was still on its own wavelength - the post-communist era vibe was strongly apparent. The stucco of the city’s buildings was cracked and grey, covered in soot, a bit worn down. Konstal model Polish-built trams clanged down the Ulica Królewska. People dressed to a beat that belonged to that city, not to the trends of Instagram and TikTok. Haircuts were different, shoes and brand names at the grocery stores (not yet supermarkets) all organically connected to each other, following a program of their own design. A program that was much different than the one being run back on Belgrade street.It wasn’t just Krakow. Trends did not yet spread globally with such ubiquity. Around the world, countries, cities and villages each had their own distinct style. I didn’t hear the same music in restaurants in Europe as I would hear in a restaurant in New York. Buying tram tickets, ordering food, or simply finding a place to stay required a willingness to look foolish and step out of my comfort zone. To pantomime biglietto, bilet tramwajowy, or fahrschein when trying to buy a ticket on the metro or bus. Now you can probably just tap your debit card anyway. No need to interact with anyone.
Back then, just planning the trip was a different experience. Airbnb has now made it easy to find a place anywhere in the world, and the hospitality standards have risen globally. Google flights and other similar software make it easy to instantly compare and find cheap travel options.
Back then you had to have an ability to be OK with not understanding and to be forced to figure it out - this, maybe more than anything I learned in school - fostered an ability to problem-solve, to read context clues and to make associations from one context and figure out how to apply them in a different one. This skill was crucial to travel and to many other parts of my life and business.
Fast forward to today, and the landscape has shifted dramatically. English is spoken to some degree everywhere if you are under 40, and certainly in most capitals. The international coffee shop routine (a heuristic I use to gauge how infiltrated a place is with expats) with its minimalist Scandinavian design aesthetic, is as familiar in Krakow as it is in New York, Doha, Bangkok or Yekaterinburg. You simply know how to act in places like this because the etiquette they require has spread globally through social media.
I consider all these advances a good thing. But still, there are many tradeoffs. It’s all more comfortable now - but what have we given up for that comfort?
These changes in travel weren’t happening in isolation - they were mirrored in how I approached work. When I started traveling extensively, I was working for Swindle magazine. The novelty of collaborating with a team in Los Angeles from my bedroom studio in Philadelphia was exciting, but the process was far from smooth. File transfers were a comparative nightmare - we burned DVDs of scanned film photographs for fashion stories and shipped them across the country. When the magazine was ready for print, I’d burn a DVD with the packaged InDesign file and jump onto the 15 bus and then the subway to rush it to the FedEx office on 16th street for overnight shipping to our printer in Canada.
These tech limitations dictated the length and location of my trips. I couldn’t work places where I couldn’t burn a DVD easily. My laptop weighed just a bit too much for comfort. Files were all locally on my computer, not on the cloud. The hard drive wasn’t yet solid state so it was at risk of breaking when I packed it into the cargo of a bus or train. Hi-speed internet was not available everywhere. Internet cafes were still a thing and if I was lucky enough to have a mobile phone plan that had international service it was sure to cost me way more than I wanted to pay.
Today’s tech has blown those limitations wide open. Cloud storage, WeTransfer, Google Drive - they’ve revolutionized how I work. By 2012, with better tech and the rise of “digital nomad” culture, I realized I could truly work from anywhere. I spent a whole summer bouncing around Europe, and even circled the globe by train in 2015, laptop always at the ready. Clients often had no clue where I was, and it didn’t matter. Tools like Google Docs, Slack, and video calls made asynchronous, location-independent work a reality.
I know that some might view my reflections as just another “back in my day” complaint. I’m 44 after all. And they’d have a point - my early 2000s travel challenges pale in comparison to those of as recently as the 1950s and are basically incomparable to any kind of travel in the 1800s. I’m not trying to romanticize the difficulties. Instead, I’m pondering the rapid pace of change I’ve witnessed firsthand. In just two decades, we’ve seen a massive shift in how we navigate foreign cultures, and stay connected. That’s not to say traveling in some parts of the world isn’t as difficult now as it ever was, or even more so. But my point is not about difficulty; it’s about the nature of the travel experience itself. How do we balance the undeniable benefits of modern convenience with the rewards of genuine cultural immersion? That’s the question I’m wrestling with.
As I reflect on these shifts in travel and work, I’m struck by the double-edged nature of progress. The ease and freedom to work from anywhere have undoubtedly broadened our horizons. Yet, this highlights a stark internal contrast for me. I grew up in a place where such travel and styles of work weren’t valued or even conceived of. This disparity fueled my curiosity about the world beyond my neighborhood, leading me to believe that anything foreign held inherent worth. But in my eagerness to discover the world outside, did I fail to see the value in things that were right in front of me?
These questions have followed me as I’ve carved out my own path in this increasingly connected world. I’ve settled down in Amsterdam, but I’m still able to travel and work from different cities with ease. Recently the day was spent in Utrecht for a change of pace, and my girlfriend and I recently travelled across Japan and Thailand with little effect on my work at all. But still, as I navigate this new landscape of seamless travel and borderless work, I’m left pondering the delicate balance between progress and preservation.
The world has undeniably shrunk, offering unprecedented access and convenience. The move to Amsterdam would not be as easy 15 years ago, and it would not have been so simple to keep contact with clients and friends around the world without things like WhatsApp, Signal, and Slack. Yet, as we zip between identical coffee shops and effortlessly connect across continents, are we losing something intangible? The fumbling attempts at local languages, the serendipitous discoveries born from getting lost, the stark contrasts that once jolted us out of our comfort zones - these were the crucibles that forged the stories that I’ll be retelling into old age.
I can’t undo all the changes in culture and technology that have resulted in the travel landscape of 2024 - but I want to hold onto the unexpected. The digital age has transformed how we move through the world, often making travel more convenient but sometimes at the cost of serendipity and genuine cultural immersion. Despite these shifts, there’s still a way to preserve the essence of transformative travel. The key lies in maintaining my internal software’s original intention - to travel and work in a way that doesn’t just change my location, but continues to profoundly change me.
This means I have to keep seeking out experiences that challenge my preconceptions, embracing discomfort as a catalyst for growth. To resist the temptation to retreat into the familiar bubble of constant online connectivity. It involves cultivating a mindset of openness and curiosity, allowing myself to be shaped by the places I visit and the people I meet. By doing this, I hope to preserve the power of travel as a force for personal evolution, even as the world around us continues to get smaller, pushing us all into narrower ways of thinking and feeling and interacting with each other.
Also of Note
Carving the Divine
Film and detailed blog about the carving and secrets behind Japanese Buddhist Sculptures. Check them out
Price Gouging and Price Controls in Ancient Rome
Diocletian also tried to control prices by decree, but it didn’t work. Read more
Design as Thought
A thoughtful piece by Information Architects about what AI might do well and what it might do poorly. Helps to put things in perspective. Read
Finally! Credit Cards at Burger King
Watch
Advice on Making a Career and How Much Ramen it Can Buy
Patrick McKenzie offers advice to engineers, but I find this widely applicable to anyone in the creative field, and further on. Read
Until Next Time
Each issue of the Random Embassy Papers will have its own flavor. Some weeks you’ll get longer dives into whatever’s rattling around in my brain. Other times, it’ll be more of a highlight reel of my recent work. I’ve got some travel on the horizon too - London and Paris in the fall. Planning to write some longer pieces about why I’m headed to those spots. So keep an eye out for what’s coming up.