Hey there fellow travelers, Mark here with Wolters World!
You all know I love museums. I love castles, history museums, art museums, archaeological museums, all of it. My kids, on the other hand, sometimes seem to develop a mysterious allergy to museums the second we get near one. Somehow the sneezing and complaining starts right when I say, “Hey guys, there’s a really cool museum just around the corner.”
As much as I love museums, though, there is something they do not always show you. Museums are fantastic for learning about the history of a country, but they do not necessarily show you what everyday life is like there right now. How do people shop? What do families do on a Saturday afternoon? What foods do people actually eat at home? What do they wear? What do they talk about? What sports are they passionate about? Those little everyday things are often what help you really understand a culture.
So if you want to get to know a place beyond its museums, castles, and famous historic sights, here are eight of my favorite ways to learn about the culture while you travel.
1. Go to a Grocery Store
I honestly think a grocery store is one of the best cultural attractions you can visit when you travel. You can learn an amazing amount about a country just by looking at what fills the shelves and what people are putting into their carts.
Take Italy. Everybody already knows Italians love pasta, but you do not really understand just how serious they are about pasta until you walk into an Italian supermarket and see aisle after aisle filled with different shapes, sizes, brands, and types. Or go to Spain and look at the amount of ham they have. In Portugal, there is an old joke that a Portuguese wife can make codfish 365 different ways and her husband will be happy every single day. Then you walk through a Portuguese grocery store and see all that salted cod sitting there and think, “Okay, maybe they were not joking.”
When we lived in China, grocery shopping taught us an incredible amount about everyday Chinese life. We saw what people were buying, how they shopped, what ingredients mattered, and what regular families actually ate. In Lithuania, you might notice people buying those little nostalgic cups of ice cream that have been popular for generations. Those are the kinds of things you would never know about if you only ate at restaurants aimed at tourists.
So do not just go into the supermarket because you forgot toothpaste. Walk around. Look at the bakery, the frozen foods, the snacks, the drinks, and the meat counter. See what local families are buying. You will probably learn more about everyday life than you expect.
2. Spend Some Time in a Park
Another great way to understand local culture is incredibly simple: go to a park. It does not even need to be the famous park that shows up on every sightseeing list. Just find a normal neighborhood park and spend some time there.
This works especially well if you are traveling with kids. Bring a soccer ball and there is a pretty good chance they will end up playing with local children, even if they do not speak the same language. But even if you do not have kids, parks give you a wonderful look at how people actually spend their free time. Are families having picnics? Are grandparents taking care of the children? Are groups of friends having drinks together? Are people exercising or playing games?
One thing that really stuck with us while living in China was seeing older people exercising together in the parks. You would see people doing tai chi and other exercises early in the day while socializing with friends. Nobody needed to explain that part of Chinese culture to us because we could see it happening right in front of us.
That is why parks are such useful places when you travel. They are usually not designed specifically for tourists. They are places where local people are just living their lives.
3. Go to a Sporting Event
If you really want to see the passion of a culture, go watch a sporting event. You can learn a lot about people when their team is winning, and sometimes you learn even more when their team is losing.
I have probably been to around 30 Italian soccer matches over the years, everything from bigger matches down to lower-division games. We have spent a lot of time around Vicenza, and I can tell you that I learned an incredible amount about Italian culture just from watching calcio. You experience the chanting, the cheering, the frustration, the celebrations, and all the conversations happening around you.
It also creates an easy way to meet people. When you are the random American showing up to watch somebody’s third-division club, people notice. They want to know why you are there, how you found their team, and what you think about the match. Suddenly, you are having conversations you never would have had otherwise.
The same idea works all over the world. Go see cricket in India, Pakistan, or England. Go to a football match in Argentina, Germany, Italy, or Spain. If you are visiting the United States, go to a college football game and make sure you arrive early enough to experience the tailgating. That is when you start to understand why Americans can be so obsessed with college sports.
Sports bring out the passion, the rivalries, the songs, the food, the traditions, and occasionally a little bit of the crazy. That makes them one of the best cultural experiences you can have.
4. Sit at a Café and Watch the World Go By
Travelers often feel like they need to be doing something every minute of every day. Sometimes, though, one of the best things you can do is absolutely nothing.
Find an outdoor café, grab a coffee or a drink, sit down, and just watch people. When you slow down, you start noticing all the little cultural differences that nobody writes about in the guidebooks.
I remember sitting in Paris and noticing some of those small details. You would see people sitting outside cafés having a cigarette, but you did not see nearly as many people walking down the street smoking and eating at the same time. You also do not see French adults constantly walking around snacking the way you might in some other countries.
The big exception seemed to be little French kids. You would see some kid sitting in a stroller, gnawing away on a piece of baguette while Mom or Dad pushed them down the street.
Those are the little observations you remember. How quickly do people eat? How long do they sit over coffee? How loudly do people talk? Do families eat together? Are people constantly checking their phones? Do strangers talk to one another?
You do not always need somebody to explain the culture to you. Sometimes you just need to stop moving long enough to notice it.
5. Go Shopping, but Shop Local
I already told you to visit a grocery store, but regular shopping can also teach you a lot about a place. The important thing is to avoid spending all your time in the same international chains you have back home.
If you walk into H&M, Zara, or IKEA, the experience is going to be fairly similar whether you are in Lisbon, London, or Los Angeles. Instead, look for small boutiques, independent shops, markets, bookstores, and even pharmacies.
Pharmacies are actually fascinating places to visit when you travel. You can learn a lot about how a country approaches health and wellness, what medications are available over the counter, and what products people use in everyday life.
Small local shops can be even better because you may actually meet the owner. We have had wonderful conversations with shop owners in France, Portugal, and Italy. They often know the neighborhood incredibly well and will tell you about the history of their business, how the area has changed, where people really eat, and what is happening around town.
And I will be honest with you: if you are traveling in South America and you want to know what is really going on locally, sometimes the people working at the pharmacy know everything. They have the medicine, they have the neighborhood information, and they usually have the gossip too. It is basically a cultural information center that also sells aspirin.
6. Eat at a Small Local Restaurant
Food is obviously one of the best ways to understand a culture, but there is a huge difference between eating at a giant restaurant aimed primarily at tourists and eating at a little neighborhood place where the owner may actually be cooking your meal.
Those smaller restaurants are where some of the best travel memories happen.
We have a restaurant in Rome that we have visited for years and years. When Liam was a baby, and I mean maybe eight weeks old, we went in there to eat and they basically said, “Give us the baby. You two eat.” They held him while Jocelyn and I had our meal.
Now Liam is 14, and we have gone back over the years. They have watched the kids grow up, and every visit became about much more than simply ordering dinner. You get to know people, and they get to know you.
That is one of the great things about a small local restaurant. You start learning why a certain dish is important to the town, why people prepare it a certain way, what ingredients are local, and how the neighborhood has changed. They will tell you what else you should eat and which places locals actually recommend.
A McDonald’s can teach you something about globalization. A little family restaurant can teach you about the town you are actually visiting.
7. Get a Haircut or a Shave
This is not something I do on every trip, but if you are traveling for a while, getting your hair cut or having somebody trim your beard can be a surprisingly good cultural experience.
Whenever we have spent time in Italy, the boys have gotten their hair cut there, and they always come out looking like little Italian models. It is hilarious, but it is also a fun way to experience everyday life.
When I lived in Portugal, I would often go have somebody take care of my beard instead of doing it myself. Part of the fun was simply talking to the people there.
Think about barber shops and hair salons back home. They are gossip central. People talk about sports, relationships, politics, work, and everything happening around town. The same thing happens when you travel.
You are sitting there for 20, 30, or 40 minutes with somebody whose job involves talking to local people all day. You can learn a surprising amount just by having a conversation.
And as an added bonus, I did not have to bring my clippers with me. That is what I call a win-win.
8. Stay at a Real Bed and Breakfast
Finally, if you really want to learn more about local culture, consider staying at a traditional bed and breakfast.
And I mean a real B&B. Not an Airbnb apartment. Not a giant hotel. A proper bed and breakfast where the owners actually live there.
We have done this in Scotland, England, and Ireland, and some of our favorite travel conversations have come from those stays. You come back after spending the day sightseeing, sit around talking with the owners, and suddenly you are learning things you never would have picked up from a guidebook.
The owners live in the community. They know the local history, the restaurants, the people, and all the little stories that make their town unique. Most importantly, they are usually proud of where they live and want you to enjoy it.
A hotel receptionist may give you the official tourist recommendations. A B&B owner might say, “No, do not eat there. Go two streets over and tell Mary that John sent you.”
Those are the recommendations you remember, and those conversations can sometimes teach you more about a place than another hour walking through an exhibit.
Culture Is Not Only Something You Look At
That is really the biggest thing I want travelers to remember. Culture is not just paintings hanging in museums. It is not only castles, monuments, and historical dates.
Culture is what people eat for breakfast. It is what grandparents do in the park. It is what fans scream at the soccer match. It is how long somebody sits over coffee. It is what people buy at the supermarket and what they talk about at the barber shop.
Sometimes culture is the neighborhood restaurant that has been serving the same family recipe for 50 years. Sometimes it is sitting around a fireplace at a B&B listening to somebody explain why they love the town they call home.
So yes, go to the museums. I will be there too, probably with my son sneezing dramatically somewhere beside me.
But make sure you also spend some of your trip experiencing the country as people actually live it. Those are often the moments when you stop simply seeing a destination and start actually understanding it.
Happy travels, everybody!
