Travel the world to find unique differences!!

Imagine you are sitting on an airplane, one of the many you were flying with in the last couple of month. This time you are flying from Amman to Barcelona. You planned to do this trip already for years, your big dream, traveling the world, seeing all this major cultural differences and unique foreign places. You thought to travel from city to city would be a good idea, since nowadays the biggest amounts of citizens are crowded in the centers, the metropolis, and the cities, there, you were convinced, you would be able to find the greatest, unique cultural differences and originalities. But now after 2 month of traveling you feel disappointed, something went wrong, yes you heard about a lot of different histories and you saw all those antique places but something always seemed to be the same to you, something that never made you feel that you discovered something accentual different between Asia, Europe and the US.

No matter where I went, if the Pyramids in Cairo, Jerusalem, New York, Paris, Prag or Tokyo. Yes I saw amazing sides, but a couple of meters walk away, there were all this familiar things waiting for me. To buy Coke in the desert is easier than to find mineral water and MC Donald’s has in every place a lot more than just one branch. A women in Tokyo had my green shirt, what I was buying back home in Zara, the family I staid with in France had the same IKEA table than the Hotel in Saudi Arabia. And in case I feel like Pizza, Fries or ice-cream, no problem, Pizza Hut and MC Donald’s are always just around the corner.

In Europe people complain about Americanization that is pushing aside their individualism. In Asia people complain about westernization, that is taking over and push aside their own traditions and things they were proud of. Americanization, westernization became often used words in world society. We are copying, going global, big companies buy small ones and conquer the world. If I want to go shopping in South Africa, Asia or Europe, I don’t have to search long and find what I already know from Home. I even could find the order of products in my favored shop back home, in countries on the other side of the globe.

Do people still believe that we have an individual, national life? A life they are predicting according their national norms? Of course we all have still our local traditions that you may just know if you are living in one place for a number of years. But what is about the big picture? What is my impression of a country after I spend one night in a fancy Hotel in all of the different continents, the first impression? Is it not natural to look for things I know, I can identify with? And will you find those things within a very short time, during for example just the first taxi ride through a new city? I did!

The problem is, that I as a western person, find my home known products, but what is about Asians coming to Europe, yes, most of our products are made in their countries but made by their branches or is not standing behind this western management and money?! The west, as a whole including America is dominating the world and yes it might be although a political tool. With the standards of today’s technology, the strongest do not have to make war or using arm force to remind others of their presents. It is enough to spread labels and marketing ideas and all by a sudden the strongest powers are present, everywhere not by war or arm force but in the simple there in our every day life.