The art of flânering…

Here is a paradox – I love traveling, but I hate being a tourist. I mean a typical tourist with a map, walking boots, a backpack, and a camera, looking bedazzled, lost and confused. Instead of chasing the sights, I much prefer to blend in, feel the city, walk around and just experience what it has to offer. I flâner as French would say (and perhaps on purpose use a sensual concept that cannot really be directly translated into English). In high heels, of course.

Even though my French equals my baking skills (i.e. it is pretty much non-existent), somehow I feel I conquered the concept of flânering in Paris, when for the first time traveling alone I realised I cannot really read maps. So I just walked around aimlessly, without an intention or objective, without hurrying myself. By being indirectly and unintentionally affected by phenomena experienced only in passing, I discovered so much more than I would have otherwise. Because flânering is not about a destination, but rather a pleasure of a walk, discovering details, which in the rush of everyday life too often go unnoticed.

It was during my recent trip to Hamburg that I indulged in flânering again on one of those typical autumn evenings, when the sky is heavy and grey, yet the palette of bright colours enlightens the earth, creating the atmosphere, which sets you in a bitter, yet somewhat sweet melancholy.

 

As I was walking aimlessly, experiencing the charms of ducks swimming in the lake, clouds floating in the sky, little cafes giving life to the city and glittering shops overshadowing architectural masterpieces, I realised that the funny thing about flânering is that - before you know it - your mind starts doing exactly the same thing. Thoughts start strolling around your head with no sense or purpose, taking you to new directions and discoveries, which you rarely stumble upon. You simply get lost in your own world, letting thoughts be, letting them go.

In their expedition, they inevitably venture into the matters of the heart. Revisiting memories of people we loved and lost, uncovering voids, some of them so extraordinarily deep that there is not enough sand on this planet to fill them. They are as grey and heavy as the sky I was starring at. Yet they are surrounded by brightness of colours on the ground, painted by the people who stayed. Or found their way back into our lives. The more you think about the reasons why things turned out the way they did or did not, the less sense it makes. Until you realise that matters of the heart are not logical or ever possible to truly understand. They just are. And they are what they are.

While flânering through the city that will never be mine, opening Pandora’s boxes that should have perhaps better remained closed, all of the sudden I stopped and asked myself: how did I get here? Am I meant to be here or have I completely lost track? Was it me who chose this path or was it just a series of happy accidents?   

This is where it becomes evident that there is more to flânering than letting your feet and thoughts go. It is a complete philosophical way of living and thinking, as Charles Baudelaire interpreted the concept of a flâneur. It is about what appears to be small and insignificant making all the difference in your life. It is about taking left instead of right when you are not even thinking about it. And still, somehow, this random decision leads you to become what you should have been in the first place. 

I don not know whether it is destiny that brings us there, but I could not agree more with Steve Jobs (not just because of the recent tragic loss, but because his Stanford commencement speech is one of the best speeches I have ever heard): “You can’t connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect the dots looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.”

My dots of Hamburg flânering connected in a coffee shop with my favourite combination of caramel macchiato and a blueberry muffin. When I looked around me, there were no voids left, just yellow leaves on the floor, brought in by the autumn breeze. Like me, they probably should not have been there. But it was pointless trying to understand why we were all there, because only time will tell how all those small dots, painted by flânering on an October evening, will one day, eventually fit into a bigger picture.