Lost Letters and Slow News: What Travel Was Like Before the Internet
When Traveling Meant Adventure
A time when selfies still meant developing vacation photos.
Once upon a time—and no, dear digital natives, this is not a fairy tale—“traveling abroad” really meant being abroad.
Back in the ’80s and ’90s, when shoulder pads were huge, mobile phones could have been used as throwing weapons, and the word “roaming” was something you only heard in Western movies.
Traveling Today: Netflix Instead of New Lands
Why many travelers can’t (and don’t want to) part with Wi-Fi.
Whether you’re stuck in some tiny village in a so-called “third-world country”—if you have internet, you get the full home-diet dose.
Your favorite radio station is playing. Your streaming services are flickering on the screen. You’re up to date with every cat video ever posted in your family WhatsApp group. Your friends know exactly, down to the second, when you’re sipping your third cappuccino—thanks to Instagram stories.
In short: You simply live your home life on a different time zone.
Traveling Back Then: Welcome to Planet Elsewhere
Foreign culture, foreign language—and no Google Translate to the rescue.
In the ’80s, a train ride to Madrid felt like landing on a different planet.
No German radio stations, no news in your language, and when you turned on the TV, strangers with strange accents talked about things you didn’t understand.
With a lot of luck, you caught a faint BBC signal—so bad you had to guess half of it—or “Die Deutsche Welle” if the wind was right.
Poste Restante: When Your Mail Traveled More Than You
Email? Forget it—hardly anyone had one in the ’80s or early ’90s.
Contact with home meant letters—on paper, stamped, with delivery times that would be considered outrageous today.
How did you get mail on the road? Simple: You had it sent “poste restante” to a post office in the next city you planned to show up in.
Sounds romantic? It wasn’t, because often your letters were lost in oblivion.
Frustrated, I eventually changed tactics: from then on, everything went to my home country’s consulate or embassy. That worked—but embassies were usually only in capital cities.
Sometimes no problem, sometimes a multi-day detour. For example, Brasília: for me personally—the ugliest city in the world. Far from everything, nothing to see, nothing to do. Except: get mail.
Embassy Visits: The Diplomatic Snack of News
A slice of home served between gray walls and passport applications.
At least diplomatic outposts had their perks:
Usually, newspapers and magazines from home lay around, and sometimes you could exchange a few words in your mother tongue. News was a rare commodity back then.
Local media? More like semi-reliable.
When the Gulf War broke out, I was in Peru. To get reliable info, we went to the big fancy hotels, ordered an overpriced drink—and watched CNN. That was our “Breaking News” subscription.
Paper Time Capsules
A week old, three times the price—and still priceless.
In nearly every major city in the so-called third world, you could find them: International Herald Tribune, Newsweek, Time Magazine.
A week old, tattered, overpriced—and infinitely valuable. I bought them like an addict, devouring every line.
These magazines were more than just news—they were time capsules.
While trekking through Bolivian mountain villages, the world turned around me: governments fell, athletes became champions, new movies premiered—and I learned about it… when I learned about it.
Strangely, it didn’t bother me. On the contrary—it somehow made life on the road easier, almost more relaxed.
The Harsh Reality of Delays
Breaking news delivered by snail mail.
In the ’90s, Australia! It could take months to learn a relative had died—via a letter from Mom.
The letter, having followed me across the continents, had been sitting in Sydney for who knows how long before it finally reached me in a backpacker hostel in Darwin. Eight months total. Today, I’d know in eight seconds.
Conclusion: Wi-Fi Shrunk the World—Maybe Too Much
Back then, you really were gone. Today, you’re just somewhere else online.
Back then: No constant connection to home, no push notifications, no 24/7 life documentation. You were in a new world—sometimes lost, often overwhelmed, but always fully immersed.
Today: You’re never truly away. Your smartphone is the digital umbilical cord to home. Traveling often feels more like “working from home with a better view.”
Sometimes I wonder if we still experience the foreign as it really is—or if we’re just hopping between global Wi-Fi islands while the rest of the world passes us by.
To be honest: I sometimes miss that real distance.
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