Changing perspectives - The learnings from my 2023 Interrail trip

Sometimes, it just happens naturally while travelling. With or sometimes even without a structured reflection. People learn something while travelling, either from a complete trip they take or a visit to a specific place or country.

This blogpost describes many of the personal learnings that I made on my 3-month interrail trip in 2023. It was my intention to define one overall learning and one specific one for each country I visited, such that you’ll find a lot of learnings in this blogpost :)

Contents:

Why it’s important to change perspectives

My key takeaways from each country

Some more learnings from my complete trip

Why it’s important to change perspectives

It’s one of the most important aspects that influence our decisions and how we live: The perspectives we look from.

Just as a food for thought: When we see a problem that is a large risk to us, it’s a human reaction to be afraid and try to escape from it while activating the fight or flight mode, in which we barely think creatively with our whole brain capacities. When we change the perspective to a challenge we would like to solve, though, it’s possible to be more creative, find a better solution and maybe even turn the problem into an opportunity.

During my interrail travels, I can point out one particular moment when this was the case for me:

While waiting for a train from Warsaw to Prague, all trains heading south-west in Warsaw were heavily delayed. I was pretty annoyed and stressed out and definitely more in the fight or flight mode than creative in the beginning. Once I started to look more relaxed for opportunities, I found a train to Krakow, which would take me a bit closer to Prague at first. It was not a good connection, and it took much more time.

However, this connection gave me the opportunity to quickly walk through Krakow and see the city in some sun for the first time (after I was visiting in a lot of rain for a day 2 years before). I had a stressed morning and lost time in Prague, but looking back I’m happier about the time in Krakow then the “lost” time on that day.

Although I’ve been thinking about different perspectives a few times already, it was a Couchsurfer, whom I met in Rome, that gave me a little sightseeing tour and used it to talk and explain a bit about the advantages of changing perspectives. He also motivated me a bit more to actually write about my learnings of the trip. Hence, if I want to extract one learning from my whole trip, it could be the following:

“Make sure to change perspectives when feeling stuck, heading in the wrong direction or before any challenges and important decisions to find a good way for going forward”

In addition, this learning is not only a helpful one with several applications as explained below, but also one which I personally want to continue developing because I'm not yet close to where I want to be across several dimensions.

Changing perspectives can be used to find a lot of helpful information and other things, which might otherwise remain hidden, for example:

The actual issues (root causes)
Different approaches / techniques
New influencing variables and connections
New solutions and ideas
Motivation
New motivation, e.g. by approaching a challenge instead of facing a problem
Other people’s arguments and hidden challenges
Maybe even out-of-the-box approaches or potential “black swan events”

The following bullet points are just some of many examples, in which “environments” changing perspectives can be helpful:

Analysis & Research: Maybe it’s not possible to see causes or effects when looking only at a few variables from a specific point of view. It could be helpful then to use other viewpoints to understand the whole situation and identify the influential connections.
Personal development: Human minds are lazy. We build our opinions and understandings in the first moments of new acquaintances. Whenever we want to think or do something differently than what we’re primed to, it is critical to be reflective, change the perspective and thus open the door for a new opinion or approach. If we don’t understand why we keep doing something bad in the same way again and again, it remains very difficult to be changed until we understand the root cause.
Socially: We already form our opinions about the new people we meet in the first moments of meeting them. In order to change this first impression it is first of all very important to keep an open mind, but it is also helpful to look again from a different perspectives. It is helpful to put yourself in someone else’s shoes both to understand their background and give them another chance or to find a way how to make a second (better) impression to change their first opinion.
In businesses: Running a business is an incredibly complex endeavour. It’s not the exception but the rule to have challenges, insufficient data and a difficult decision ahead. One of the best ways to get out of the fight or flight mode which usually comes with a big challenge, is to change perspectives. Especially critical business decisions can be better prepared by using different approaches to identify advantages and risks. Just very few of many frameworks are the following ones: doing a SWOT analysis, running a scenario model considering the best and worst case, talking to stakeholders or imagining oneself in their positions, playing the devil’s advocate to identify risks of a plan,…
Macroeconomically: By default, the number of influential factors is insanely big for macroeconomic decisions. When not considering the most important factors, I could happen quickly that an expected output cannot be reached due to the neglected influences. Only when taking all perspectives to understand all influential factors, one could theoretically forecast the output accurately. In practice, this is impossible or at least not practical to remain in “analysis paralysis”. Therefore, the most important perspectives should be taken to reach an appropriately accurate forecast to take a decision.
In all communications: Understanding where the audience is standing and researching or imagining what they need to hear in order to be able to prepare the message empathically in a suitable conversation to reach the purpose of the communication.

Changing perspectives takes some practice and needs to be executed again and again – individually for each environment. I wish that I would always recognize when I’m already on a path that leads me in a direction that I actually don’t want to go to, but it’s not that easy. Luckily, I often notice some tiny signs while moving “off-track”, but I don’t always listen to these. Hence, I also need to actively reflect where I stand, where I want to go and what would be a good way to get there.

The following photo gallery from the Oslo Opera in sunset is supposed to show how much different something can appear when looking at it from different angles metaphorically to describe the above learnings ;-)

My key takeaways from each country

In the case of my 3-month interrail trip, I decided to find one personal learning for every country I visited in addition to all the places to see and foods to try or making a subjective comparison what the countries were best for on my trip. These personal learnings / key take-aways developed from what I learned about the countries history or culture or even very personal experience.

Just a few examples of the all country learnings including their explanation and / or inspiration where they came from in this spreadsheet

Similar to some of my other reflections on this website, I like to find social / psychological learnings in many areas. The following examples were either inspired by the overall society and political focus in two Nordic countries or the inspiring examples of the car-free Ljubljana and the International court in Den Hague as part of Andrew Carnegie’s intentional investment:

Denmark: "Aim to establish positive reinforcement cycles (flywheels)"
Finland: "Put the society's focus on the most important base for development: young children."
Slovenia: "Many people prefer a cleaner and more sustainable environment, even if they protest to keep the status quo."
Netherlands: "Invest early on in knowledge and understanding to avoid conflicts"

Three learnings with regard to personal development were inspired both by the know stories of famous people (Alfred Nobel), a personal learning and the development of popes:

Sweden: "Reflect on coincidental incidents in your life and let use them to adjust your trajectory in life for the better"
Lithuania: "Visiting unknown places with little preparation can exceed expectations more easily"
Vatican: "Start building a good network early and all your life to facilitate reaching and influencing many people"

Two very personal learning derived from visiting countries again where I had amazing and unforgettable experiences during my studies:

Norway: "It's more about the things you do and the people you do them with - not only the places"
Italy: "It's impossible to repeat social experiences"

For most of my country learnings, I also wrote down which country-specific aspect inspired me for them and / or what they are supposed to mean more specifically. Here is one of these examples for Poland:

Inspired by the different food origins of the nowadays local Polish food (e.g. dumplings from Asia, potato pancakes from Lithuania, cabbage from Germany etc.):
"Leverage the melting pot: Find the best mixture out of all different inputs you can get"
Food is a good example, but the learning should also be consciously applied to socio-cultural learnings, how to make business, finding new technological solutions etc.

All of my country learnings including the 13 you not shown in this blogpost are written down in this spreadsheet including the inspiration and additional explanation for most of them.

Some more learnings from my complete trip

During the whole trip, I learned many other things and created ideas about how life and society “work” or just how I would like to travel. Without the physical and mental change of perspectives while travelling, most of the following thoughts and ideas would probably not have crossed my mind. Here you find the current status of my current articulation about them:

Nordic countries are content and thus performing better on happiness rankings compared to southern countries like Spain where people are openly happy. Happiness rankings might thus not be leading in the right way to show us what most of us are looking for in the results. Maybe the metric needs to be changed to show us what we’re looking for in our pursuit of happiness. In the meanwhile, everyone could also consider whether they can find happiness closer to themselves in their current life by both changing things in their “direct control” and accepting what cannot be changed.
If more people were more like the people I met traveling, the world would be a better place. Especially if people in leading and deciding positions would be kinder, more considerate and reflected.
Short stays like a weekend are better for trips with friends or family.
As a solo traveller, a longer stay (>1 night) is nicer to actually get to know locals or other travellers.
Next time I travel >2 weeks, I should thus travel slower to have more time to meet people and actually get to know them while maybe forming longer lasting connections.
Either plan everything completely or be completely flexible. The middle feels like the worst of both worlds.
Write out and test my framework to quicker get into deep conversations while traveling to talk about what interests me and where I could add “value” to someone’s life, which is mostly based on navigating questions.
Be aware of my motivation to make selfie videos to keep making them: I want to feel more comfortable on the camera for future professional content (related to my freelance consulting, other jobs or whatever important projects that require me to speak publicly / towards a camera).

Practical Interrail-related learnings of how to plan and travel while avoiding or managing problems are gathered in this blogpost.

What did you learn while travelling? Does reflecting and personal development seem to work quicker while travelling or trying out new things for you, too?

I would be happy to hear about your learnings and experiences in the comments or via my contact form :)