Interesting post. I also believe you need to get a mix of local and expat views to truly understand and get a feel for the city. All expats will have a different view of a city than any local (whether they stay in their own bubble or not), and vice versa, because of what each person compares it to. I am an “expat” though I mix mostly with the locals and other latinos. However, no matter how much I mix with the locals and pick their brains for insight to their city and culture, I continue to see things differently than a local, and certainly different than the expats the stick with their own cultural groups. And that’s what makes traveling fun and interesting

Lovely post! And great to see you on the Matador expat list.

I think the advice expats give is that of someone who knows a bit more than a traveler passing. Whenever we have Couchsurfers staying with us, I feel like we’re exploring the city together. I can help us get around and suggest places to stay, but a traveler brings a “newness” that you sort of lose after living in one place for a while.

Sam: as a recent expat to Argentina, your comment hits home. I love where I am, but I’m not sure I’ll ever 100% belong here. Not that belonging is something I always need or even want, but sometimes it’s nice to really be home.

I think a sense of place is integral to humans and I am not sure that many people can ever get beyond that however long they live away from the place their conciousness was formed.. VS Naipaul wrote the definitive books on the subject.

Years ago I worked for a travel agent and I sold a one way ticket to Delhi to an elderly Indian gentlemen who had lived in the UK since he was in his early teens. He said to me that the ‘thing is, my children, they love the mud and the rain, they are British, but me, I need the dust and the sun to die easily’.

However, you can also be an expat in a place that speaks your native tongue. Brits in Australia and vice versa; the French in French Guiana; Spaniards in Latin America. I guess you can be in a bubble there and not even realise it.

“Being inside a country’s psyche can also be blinding” – I like that observation from Andy. At uni I remember studying literature from second-generation immigrants in the UK. Made me aware of things in British culture that I’d never even noticed.