“Well he looked down at my silver chain
He said I’ll give you one dollar
I said you’ve got to be jokin’ man
It was a present from me Mother
He said I like it I want it
I’ll take it off your hands
And you’ll be sorry you crossed me
You’d better understand that you’re alone
A long way from home”
Dreadlock Holiday – 10CC from Bloody Tourists 1978
The lyrics refer to an experience Justin Hayward of the Moody Blues had in Barbados. It helped me become a little more streetwise when exploring less reputable neighbourhoods. The title came about as 10CC were touring all over the world but seeing little more than hotel rooms, concert venues and air planes. The only chance they got to explore the world was as tourists, hence the album title “Bloody tourists”. There are other travel related songs on the album but that’s a subject for another day.

Tourist in Brussels

Non-tourist travel
The theme of Travel Talk on Tuesday on the 22nd March 2011 was “Non-tourist travel”. It stirred up a lot of views. I read all of the tweets from the day’s #TTOT and found that everyone wants to known as a traveller /traveler and not a tourist. Why is this?

Is is because @touristdudes @soultourists3 @quirkytourist @tourismDesigned @luxury_tourism @frommerstourism instinctively sounds wrong? Personally I think there’s something more.

Defining travel and tourism
The USA and Britain are two countries separated by a common language. In the UK a traveller is a person who lives a nomadic lifestyle in a caravan (sorry trailer in the USA). A search on the internet revealed that “Traveler or traveller (see American and British English spelling differences) commonly refers to one who travels, especially to distant lands.” Wikipedia. Then it goes on to include all the categories of traveller, which include tourist, perpetual traveller, itinerant, nomad and more. Then, “The World Tourism Organization defines tourists as people who “travel to and stay in places outside their usual environment for more than twenty-four (24) hours and not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other purposes not related to the exercise of an activity remunerated from within the place visited.” Wikipedia. Thank you @TraveBlggr.  So I and the majority of participants on #TTOT were tourists, yet the term is now considered derogatory, in the same way that professionals look at amateurs. Personally, I have no problem being called a tourist. Although I remember arguing with a Chamonix Council Official after 5 months, that I was not a tourist as I had been living there full time, but to no avail, I had to pay my tourist taxes like everyone else! The result of this is that I am now a perma-tourist, as I am living off a small pension. Unless I work and pay taxes at each location, I will not be able to discard that tag.

My views on the discussion
My personal view, is that nearly all of the responses to question were posed in terms that excluded that respondent from being a tourist. The P Theroux quote regarding tourists and travelers was a common RT. @Roniweiss believed that volunteer travel was not tourism. Others, that working at the destination was also believed to be non-tourism and that certainly corresponds to the WTO definition.

Another popular idea was that non-tourist travel was exploring without maps, guidebooks and itineraries. That I suppose, would have to mean that the traveller must not book any accommodation in advance as even package holidays allow the chance to do this. Which means that anyone travelling to see items on their bucket list must be tourists unless the list was related to work at the destinations.
As usual there was lots of fun, especially when Tweeps allowed themselves to admit to tourist moments.

Recap
A recap has been done by @ConnieHum but with 28 tweets it only scratches the surface of the TTOT experience. I wish there was a way Twitter could archive chats so that you can follow conversations and get the whole picture.

Travel Talk on Tuesday is a live chat, the real fun is participating. So I will not go and post a recap. I hold strong views on the subject. I would recommend any travel chat on Twitter, as it is a great way of finding out more about the personalities on Twitter. Too many accounts are just Tweeting promotional links and not interacting.

In writing this post I also referred to @RoniWeiss‘s post:
Tourist-vs-Vacationer-vs-Traveler

Thank you to the #TTOT hosts and organisers: @traveldudes, @insidetravellab, @mobilelawyer, @roniweiss, @tbloggersunite, @toddwassel, @traveldesigned, and @WildJunket.

Edit 5 May 2011:
Since publishing this post, two other blogs have also had a debate on this subject.
Runaway Jane posted: Is there really a difference between a tourist and a traveller?
Mallory On Travel published: Tourists Travel Too – Defining a Traveller

I love mountains! I marvel at the thought of all that rock pushed skywards by the movement of tectonic plates. They cast a spell over me, in any season I am drawn towards them. The theme of this Friday’s #FriFotos on Twitter is “Mountains” of course @EpsteinTravels is fairly flexible with what constitutes a mountain. Butter mountains, mountains of cakes and the like will all be allowed. For me though, when someone mentions mountains, images come into my head, like those displayed on this page. If I’m there I look up to take in their awesome beauty or if I’m not, I start to long to be back among them hiking or snowboarding down them.

Here are some of my favourite mountains:

Nearing the summit of Ben Nevis, Scotland on a May weekend.

Mont Blanc Massif from Verbier, Switzerland

Mont Blanc from Brevent, a mountain that I have climbed and also snowboarded from the summit down to Chamonix.

Snowdon range, Wales from the Cob in Porthmadog

The Dru and Aiguille Verte, from Les Praz, Chamonix

North Face of the Eiger, Switzerland, the most challenging climb in Europe. I’ve no intention of attempting that climb though.

To travel to Chamonix, from Brussels, I booked a seat on a Eurolines coach, boarding by Gare du Nord. One of the main advantages of travelling by bus, is the low carbon footprint. Buses are generally light and do not use much fuel per person. They can also be quite cheap. I noted that the tickets from Brussels to Chamonix start at 9 Euros one way, shame mine wasn’t quite that cheap. I actually paid 90 Euros return, but had no extra fees for baggage etc.

I departed the Euro lines bus station at 18h00 on Sunday, after checking in a good sized bag with another in a snowboard bag. From what I read on the website for Eurolines Belgium, they don’t accept skis and snowboards, but the crew stowed mine in the baggage locker. Just don’t go turning up expecting them to accept your winter sports equipment in Belgium. If you are travelling from the UK then it is no problem. It all boils down to the fact that each country has a different coach operator badged as Eurolines operating their part of Europe. The journey was uneventful. We drove out of Brussels and on to Lille in France, a DVD was shown as we left Brussels, then another DVD on the leg from Lille to Paris.
Most of the passengers alighted at Paris and new passengers boarded, some with skis in carry bags. It was now about 11h00, so no more DVD’s were played. The coach then travelled down the Autoroutes headed for Geneva, but stopping for a break every two hours or so. Fortunately the coach was half empty so everyone had two seats each to try top get comfortable on for the night. I did manage to sleep in a number of unusual positions before waking after about half an hour each time.
As we went through the Jura, I noticed that the scenery looked very white, I was having difficulty making out why as I had removed my contact lenses for the night. It soon became apparent that it was snowing heavily. The bus stopped at the border at Switzerland and all passports were checked. There was a short stop at Geneva and then we headed back for France and Chamonix.

Chamonix, my destination

It was just getting light as we entered the Chamonix valley. It looked magnificent with its new covering of fresh snow. The coach had difficulty with the build up of snow on the streets of Chamonix, but managed to get to the bus stop outside the railway station.

I was tired most of Monday and slept really well on Monday night. Would I travel by coach again? Yes, in fact I have to on my return leg. It would be good to find some of those 9 euro seats and may well look out for them.

I wrote an earlier post to voice the things that annoyed me most on Twitter.  The new Lists function allows me to create my own targeted streams. If find that a member of that list is publishing spam, being offensive, or just tweeting multiple Tweets that are not of interest tome, then all I need do is simply drop them from my list.  The list I read the most is a Private List.

Twitter Team List

As it is new, it has thrown many of those into SEO, and marketing into a spin. My view is that lists are there for the Twitter members, not for the marketers. At this moment many of us have produced lists. I find them refreshing, as they enable me to find many new Tweeple. I foresee that many lists will be created and followed. However, being listed on a large number of Public Lists may not be an accurate measure of popularity. If my favourite lists are my private ones, then how many other Twitter members will also have private lists as their most used. There will be no statistics for being on someone’s Private List.

I feel that the follower count as a measure of credibility is dead, but the number of listings is also likely to be unreliable as the most important listings could well be on Private Lists. It is also obvious to me that, there is absolutely no point in following anyone who will not follow you back.  Following and being Followed allows the members to exchange DM’s, it is not needed to read someone’s Tweets.

I suspect that many will follow Public Lists and in doing so find Tweeple we like to follow and perhaps  include them in our own private lists. We might then stop following that Public  List. An exception to this would be Lists that are revised constantly through interaction by the Curator of that list or by feedback from followers.

Improving Lists

The Twitter Application, Twibes provides the means to read Tweets from a group of Twitter Members on a specific theme or subject. Only Tweets containing one of three keywords gets posted in the Twibe stream. Currently the negative feature of Twibes is that there is no list function therefore you have to take read every Twibe members Tweets as long as they contain  a keyword. Twibes will be integrating with lists, so this likely to be addressed. So, what does this mean for Twitter? In my own case I Tweet on at least three different topics but followers of my Tweets may only be interested in one of the topics. It would be great if there was a way of filtering a List Stream by keywords. I am not sure how practical that would be. Perhaps someone could comment and let me know?

Twitter – the Future

These are my current views. I’m sure they will evolve with Twitter. Where do you see the future, especially with Google Wave being rolled out?

PS Matt here is your Pingback

Twitter is an excellent tool if used responsibly. I am fairly new to the Twittersphere, but already I am finding some activities very annoying. Here is my Top 10 Terrible Tweets on Twitter.

Spoof Twitter profile

10. I am not going to start with Tweets but Profiles. How many times do you read; “I am an expert at SEO, Web2.0, blah, blah, blah. My site is rated No1 on blah , blah , blah”?

Come on who are you trying to kid? If you were that good, you would not be posting tweets with links to your site. If you are that good, then go and spend time with your family and let someone else Tweet for your company!

9.”I am listening to “Your song” on Blah.FM”.

To be honest I don’t care. All you are doing is Tweeting a plug for the online radio station. Now if you were to Tweet  “Listening to: “I fought the Law, by the Clash”.  I am reliving that failed bank raid, I carried out”. Then it might well catch my attention!

8. “Good morning, Thank you and welcome to all my new followers who joined over night”.

I really don’t like this. It comes across only a little better than the auto DM’s sent to new followers. This is just the thing that those operating pyramid follow schemes post everyday.

7. “RT @twitrant New web page: How Twitter can change the world. http;//www.twitrant.com/change_the_world.htm”

ReTweeting masses of Tweets to inflate your number of updates. Unless your followers are likely to be interested in a Tweet, don’t do it. If you can,  say why you liked that the Tweet you are ReTweeting.

6. “ @twitrant New web page: How Twitter can change the world. http;//www.twitrant.com/change_the_world.htm Please Retweet this”.

Asking followers for ReTweets, MrTweets, followfridays, Stumbles. etc. I’m sure I don’t need to explain this. If the Tweets are good, then they will get Re Tweeted and if we think Tweeple or their web sites are worthy of recommendations, we will give them. Its a sure sign of a commercial outfit, when they ask for this.

5. “New web page: How Twitter can change the world. http;//www.twitrant.com/change_the_world.htm”

Twitter streams that are nothing more than an RSS feed of their owners web site. So you joined Twitter, but can’t actually be bothered to Tweet about anything, so instead you add a widget to your site to automatically Tweet your web pages. Sorry, you will have to try harder.

4. “Pandemic of copied news headlines”

Looking up the news sites and posting the latest news headline. There are a few Tweeple that do this every single day. They just get a news headline, make a  TinyURL , then Tweet it. No thinking required.
My browser already has a BBC News Headlines button so I don’t need your Tweeted copy.  Now if you were to give your reaction or feelings to that news maybe I would be interested.

3. “Look how wonderful I am, I have 2000 followers”.

Don’t you realise that all you need to do to get followers is to find out those who will most likely follow you back and follow them? Of course its also bad form to brag.

2. “A quotation on Twitter only needs Control C and Control V – John Williams 2009″.

Excessive use of quotations annoys me and I believe Twitter, as they have suspended accounts for excessive use. Looking up quotations is real easy on the Internet. Unless your quotation describes how you feel at a particular moment or reinforces a point, then don’t Tweet them. A long list of your favourite quotations just wastes bandwidth. Furthermore, as internet servers have quite substantial carbon footprints, they are hastening climate chaos.

1. “Click on the link and you’ll get thousands of followers”.

There are lots of pyramid follow schemes available for Twitter. As I said before all you need to do to get followers is to follow people, who will follow you back. Then you could have thousands are even hundreds of thousands following you. However you could also be following thousands of Tweeple as well. What good is that?

That’s my rant over. Actually, Twitter can be very useful and will only improve as stream filtering produces more relevant Tweets to your likes. Twibes seems like a good start in this direction, with Tweets grouped by like minded people and including up to three keywords. I am hopeful that Twitter will be an even better experience in the future. Which Tweets annoy you on Twitter? Where do you see the future of Twitter?