Reiseziel unbestimmt

Where do we go when we travel? What do we want from vacations, are they coming up? Who do we focus on, do we think about the best time off of the year? And who can't go on vacation and why? And what about the global relationship, do we travel to distant countries, usually believing that our presence also benefits the locals there?

Valentin Groebner, a historian at the University of Lucerne and specialist in the Middle Ages, has also studied the subject of travel in depth from a historical perspective. He says that our destination is always, paradoxically, our desires. That which must always remain a little unfulfilled in order not to feel an inner emptiness.

And he has an explanation for why the sea, the beach, the distant shores with sunsets create so much longing - and why no landscape used to be as feared as the one where beaches are located: The sea as an element that brings death.

In conversation:

🐾 Valentin Groebner is a professor of history specializing in the Middle Ages and Renaissance at the University of Lucerne.

🐾 Jan Feddersen moderates this talk. He is taz editor for special assignments and curator of the taz Talks and the taz lab.