The tension between proximity and distance, the familiar and the supposedly foreign, the known and the imagined: this dialectic is as inherent to tourism as the bow wave is to a ship. When we travel, all our antennae are out, always looking for differences from the familiar. The approach to the foreign begins with constant comparison: “This bay looks so much like the one in Portugal!”, “They make pasta in a completely different way than we do!”, “You wouldn’t see such filth at home!”, “These leather jackets are much cheaper than ours and so chic, let’s take two!”. Our own frame of reference, our own cultural order serves as a frame of reference, the familiar as a measure of things. It has to be this way at first, because travellers need a point of view, especially when they are moving so fast through space that they see nothing or only the outlines of an impenetrable reality.