You Don’t Find Culture Sitting Still: What Travel Teaches About Belonging

You don’t find culture sitting still. It finds you — in spice markets, buskers on damp streets, aunties insisting you eat more, and cities that don’t quite fit you until they do. From South Africa’s fierce, pulsing energy to o England’s dry humour and Europe’s delicious contradictions, this is my love letter to the beautiful chaos of difference — and what it really means to belong.

Photo by Laura Peruchi on Unsplash

Everyone talks about “finding culture” like it’s a hidden café tucked down a cobbled side street.

Spoiler: you don’t. Culture finds you.

It sneaks up on you in a spice market in Istanbul, smacks you in the face with the smell of freshly baked bread in Paris (baguette, to be specific!), hums through your bones when a busker sings on a damp London street corner and, suddenly, a crowd of strangers becomes a choir.

You can’t plan it, package it or study it. You HAVE TO LIVE IT.

Culture is about connection and belonging even when you’re far from home in places you were never meant to blend in. It’s about feeling seen in cities where no one even knows your name, breathing in the culture, feeling it, living it—letting it fill you from the inside out."

South Africa > Where Culture Roars

I was raised in South Africa — a country that belts its story from the rooftops. To us, culture is everything. You don’t learn it — you inhale it.

It’s in the rhythm of twelve languages colliding; in the auntie who insists you eat more because 'you look thin'; in the amapiano beats that refuse to be background noise; in the food that feeds more than just your stomach; and in the faith, traditions, and rituals that all somehow just work together.

It’s vibrant, alive, layered, and full of heart — a place that makes you feel part of something bigger than yourself!

England > The Culture That Speaks in Undercurrents

Then I moved to England. Everything seemed quieter, more measured, wrapped up in politeness. Polite smiles, endless cups of tea, and the classic English talent of apologising for apologising (go figure!)

But give it time, and you see it a little more clearly - the humour so dry it could soak up the Thames; the undercurrent of rebellion tucked neatly behind well-pressed trousers and of course, the warmth hiding beneath the small talk.

For the first time, I wasn’t just learning about another culture — I was learning how to find myself in one that wasn’t built for me.

Europe > A Delicious Mess of Contradictions

And Europe? Every border crossing feels like a costume change. Italy feeds your soul (and your waistline). France makes you feel under-dressed and over-romantic. Greece teaches you that time is optional. In Spain dinner is ... negotiable?! And Turkey — oh, Turkey — shows you what generosity tastes like.

Every country has its own way of saying, “Here. This is how we live. Come see.”

Culture Isn’t Sightseeing — It’s Seeing

That’s what all these moments taught me. Culture is about how people live, love, argue, dream, parent, and make sense of the world.

It’s noticing the small, human details that make us different —and the even smaller ones that reveal our sameness ... just letting go of othering, and finding bits of home in people who don’t look anything like you.

You Don’t Find Culture by Googling “Things to Do”

You find it when you stumble into the wrong street or order the wrong thing and love it anyway.

When you butcher a language but someone still smiles back and ... when your comfort zone stretches until it feels like a second skin.

Culture isn’t something you collect like postcards or the pretty photos on your camera roll ... it’s something that gathers around you.

It clings to your accent, laughter and taste buds, slowly shifting how you see the world —

and how the world sees you.

When you intentionally open yourself to culture, you stop feeling like the outsider.

You begin to belong — not to one place, but to every place your feet have touched.

You realise “different” never meant “wrong.” It simply meant human.

So Go > Move > Wander > Listen

Photo by mana5280 on Unsplash

Stop trying to study culture. Stop waiting for it to make sense! 

Just go ... move ... wander ... listen ... laugh!!

 Let it overwhelm > confuse > delight > challenge > change and humble you — reminding you how much exists beyond your tiny corner of certainty, and how enormous the world really is.

Culture isn’t “out there” waiting for you ... it’s already everywhere! You just have to notice it — feel it.

And when you do, you realise it’s been teaching you how to belong all along.

P.S. Culture will change you in ways no book or headline ever could — if you let it. 

P.P.S. The more open you are, the more the world opens back.