idiot abroad — i would never, and here’s why

karl pilkington wandered through a temple in china once and asked, with full sincerity, what the point was. i watched that scene three times. then i closed the laptop. then i opened it again. i would never travel. i already have a karl pilkington in my head, and he has follow-up questions.

at the desk, behind a monitor i did not configure, with a mug of something that briefly was coffee. carla is upstairs in the budget meeting. an hour, possibly a touch more if the slides drag.

so. idiot abroad. the phrase, the show, the philosophy, the warning. people use it casually, as a search term, as a reference, as a thing they half-remember karl pilkington saying on a bench somewhere with a camel behind him. people watch the show on planes. people watch the show before traveling. people watch the show instead of traveling, which is, i would argue, the correct use case. that’s the use case i operate under. i’d like to make that clear before we go further.

idiot abroad — the short version. it’s a tv show, originally on sky1 from 2010 to 2012, in which ricky gervais and stephen merchant send karl pilkington — a man with a small head and a large reluctance — to the seven wonders of the world. karl does not enjoy any of them. that’s the show. that’s also, in my private theory, a documentary about why some of us simply should not be sent anywhere.

I. AM. NOT. GOING. ABROAD.

i need that on the wall before the rest of this post unfolds. some people will tell you travel broadens the mind. i would like to point at the entire televised case of karl pilkington and ask, gently, in a tone you can’t quite locate, whether broadening is what we are watching. i don’t think it is. i think we are watching a man patiently confirm that he was correct to stay home. that’s three seasons. it’s a long argument. it’s a thorough one.

what idiot abroad refers to, for the unaware

quick orientation. idiot abroad, as a term, points at two things. one: the karl pilkington series, which is the dominant cultural reference. two: a more general category — the person who travels and produces, by traveling, evidence that travel was perhaps not the answer. the two things overlap. the show codified the category. the category existed before the show. people have been idiots abroad since the wheel.

the show itself sends karl to the pyramids, to the great wall, to petra, to christ the redeemer, to machu picchu, to the taj mahal, to chichen itza. seven wonders. karl complains about each of them. he prefers, on camera, the breakfasts. he has theories about toilets. he calls a famous structure “rubbish”. the show works because karl is, against his own intention, sincere. you cannot fake that level of bewilderment. you cannot manufacture, in a writers’ room, the face he makes at a small bowl of soup in beijing.

the karl pilkington case, a foundational text

let me say something about karl, briefly, with the kind of reverence i don’t usually allow myself before noon.

that’s the foundational claim of the show, in my reading. karl is not stupid. karl is unbothered. karl refuses, at every monument, to perform the tourist-on-tv expression. that refusal is, technically, content. that refusal is, philosophically, a position. i have adopted the position. i have adopted it from the desk.

why i don’t travel, a complete defense

i do not travel. i’d like to say that on the record, calmly, with the patient tone of a person who has thought about it. people ask. people assume i must, occasionally, get on a plane. i do not. i have a tie i own — one tie, navy, slightly too short — that has not left the closet since 2021, and that tie is, in a quiet way, the perfect emblem of my whole travel posture. the tie is ready. the tie has been ready. the tie is not going.

my reasons, since you’ve come this far:

• the apartment is fine. not great. fine. a great apartment would be cause for travel. a fine apartment is a reason to stay in it.
• i don’t sleep well in beds that are not mine. this is true of about thirty-five percent of adults, in my private estimate. those thirty-five percent are, statistically, the ones who keep saying yes to weddings in tuscany.
• the food situation, abroad, is rumored. i have heard reports. the reports vary. some of them sound like they are exaggerating in either direction.
• i already have, at home, more questions than i can answer. the unopened mail pile is leaning. the dishwasher is sulking. the third yoga mat is under the couch, possibly evolving. why would i go and acquire foreign questions when i have a domestic backlog.

that’s the defense. it holds up. mike at the corner of the bar has heard a version of it. mike said “fair enough” and ordered another. mike, for the record, has not filed his taxes since 2019. mike’s life is, in technical terms, an ongoing situation. but mike, on this, was right.

the things i’d need to take with me, none of them legal abroad

let’s say, hypothetically, that i did go. let’s say carla, in a wild break with her established personality, told me on a wednesday that i had to take leave or lose it. let’s imagine the worst case.

here is what i would need to bring:

1. a microwave. not the seventh, the seventh is dead. but a backup. i don’t trust foreign microwaves. they don’t spin the same.
2. a complete air fryer. in case the breakfasts are, as karl reports, of mixed quality. (i used the air fryer once. but i’d take it.)
3. my own pillow. not a small case-on-pillow. the actual pillow, in its actual case, in a separate larger case. i have considered the logistics. they are bad.
4. the tie. just in case. just in case there’s a thing. i don’t know what kind of thing. some thing.
5. the idiot type certificate. a printed PDF, in a sleeve, with a serif font, certifying that i am, by my own assessment, an idiot of a particular subtype. people abroad, i suspect, would respect the document. the document looks official. the document is, technically, only official to me, but you’d have to read closely to know.

most of these would not, i’m told, clear customs. the air fryer alone would generate, at security, a small file. so the trip is unworkable on logistics grounds. the trip is also unworkable on personality grounds. these two kinds of unworkable, taken together, are what we in the field call a verdict.

examples of idiots abroad, history is full of them

a quick survey, for the record.

a guy at the office — not the third floor, a different one — went to thailand last year for what he called “a reset”. he came back with a bracelet, a sunburn, and a podcast subscription about cold water. he was, in some technical sense, a different person. he was also, in every other sense, the same. he just had a bracelet now. that’s the show in miniature. a man goes far. a man returns. the bracelet is the only delta.

my old friend tom, the one with the volvo and the kids and the pension that, somehow, he understands, took his family to italy. tom sent one photo. a small dog, in a square, in the rain. tom said: “we’re having the best time.” i don’t believe him. i believe the dog. tom would not pass karl’s test. karl’s test is: would you say the same thing to a camera with no script. tom would not. tom would say something for the brochure. that does not, on the rung-chart, make tom a liar in any serious sense — it makes him a man on holiday performing the having of a holiday, which is a smaller, sadder category.

the philosophical case for staying put

here’s the deeper claim, which i’d like to make in a slightly slower voice.

the case for travel, in its modern packaging, is that it changes you. it broadens, it humbles, it teaches. the case has been made by people with sponsorships, by airlines with budgets, by lifestyle pages that need to fill space on a tuesday. the case is loud. the case is everywhere. the case is, in my reading, almost completely unsupported by the people i actually know who travel, who all return tired, lighter on money, slightly more annoying about coffee, and not, in any measurable way, broader.

the philosophical case for staying put, on the other hand, is quieter, and therefore more suspicious to the modern ear. the case for staying put is that the questions you have at home are the questions that are, technically, yours. you can answer them only at home. the kitchen riddle, the dishwasher truce, the pile of mail, the standing desk you sit at, the half-built ikea bookshelf you assembled in october of 2022 and never finished — these are not problems that travel solves. these are problems that travel postpones. travel is, in this reading, a productivity hack for procrastinators with credit. i’d be careful with that one, but i mean it.

beach vacations are punishment with sand. i’d like to defend that take, briefly. people sign up to be roasted by a star, on a strip of dust, surrounded by other people in similar states of partial undress, while a vendor walks past every nine minutes selling a coconut at a markup. they pay for this. they pay quite a lot. they come back and tell you they were “rejuvenated”. rejuvenation, in my reading, has not historically required sunburn. the romans had baths. the baths were inside. the romans understood. anyway. i rest my case.

what travel would teach me, nothing i don’t already suspect

i thought about this, briefly, last april, when carla said something on a tuesday about her own upcoming holiday and looked at my face for a reaction. i did not produce one. i went home and sat on the couch and tried to imagine, in a fair-minded way, what travel would teach me that i could not learn at the desk.

the list is short.

that food can be different. i suspect this. i don’t need to confirm it.

that people speak other languages. i suspect this. i have a stefan-type colleague at the office, three rows over, who speaks four. i nod at him in the kitchen. he nods back. i have already met the world this way, on a tuesday, by the kettle. travel would not deepen the exchange.

that buildings can be old. i suspect this. there is a building near my apartment that is, allegedly, from 1923. i have not been inside it. but i suspect old.

that the sun rises in different places. i suspect, here, that it’s the same sun. but i’m willing to be wrong on this and not check.

everything else karl confirmed for me already. he went. he came back. he reported. i watched. the documentary work is done. i don’t need to redo it.

verdict, i remain at the desk

carla cruised past on her way back from upstairs. screen flipped. she said “morning”. it’s afternoon. i did not correct her. small mercies.

the bookshelf, the half-built one from october 2022, is still in the corner of my apartment. it’s missing two shelves and one hex screw. the instructions are gone. the instructions left, possibly, in a recycling event i don’t remember authorizing. but it stands. it stands like a monument to the principle of almost, which is, i think, the same principle that powers the karl pilkington show. almost wonderful. almost finished. almost worth it. i live in the almost. it’s a good neighborhood. you don’t need a passport.

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