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The author completely misses what travel is for. Compare it to a museum. You can see almost all of the artworks on the museum's website, in high-definition, accompanied by backstories and references. It's much more suitable to learn about art. But it's not _impressive_. You need to experience the artwork to understand and internalize what you studied about it. Same with travel.

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A good example is trying to explain to someone from a car based culture (like the US) why they might enjoy living in a European city that eschews the car in favour of walking, bush bikes and public transport. The typical reaction is to explain why it would be impossible in their country, or that Europe was a historical accident, or 100 other reasons, most of which will be wrong.

You can try and explain the tradeoffs being made, but it seems mere words and video can't paint the picture. They have to experience it for themselves before they can truly understand, and consequently make sensible a judgement about whether they might like the lifestyle, or not.

Many people do not invest that much into researching a location (or museum and it's art), before they visit them. Even afterwards they probably still won't invest much more. They just go there with a bare minimum of knowledge, often even less, and then call themself educated enough. Experience is not education, it has little value on itself for understanding something.

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