Travel Local Advice: How to Quickly Get to Know a Place Without Knowing the Language
By: Kristin, Take Your Big Trip
Tags: Trip, Travel, Travel Writing, Travel Tips, Traveling

How does one get to know a place without knowing the language? That was a question one traveler posed at a past Travel Salon to a panel of four travel writers.

Rapallo is where the Italians go on the Italian Rivera. Portofino is for the tourists.

Who better to ask than travel writers? Alex Leviton, Stuart Schuffman, Mike McColl, and Erin Caslavka have jobs where it’s essential to show up at a place and talk to locals to get a sense of the place and help others visit it. They have talent to enmesh profoundly and honestly with locals and culture. Plus, their knowledge seeking is a pass to those one-of-a-kind experiences that make for great reads and even better adventures. Here is their advice on how to travel local and get to know a place without knowing the language.

Follow Your Passions

Panelist Alex Leviton loves Scrabble. She was heading to St. Barts and just had the inkling that other people, perhaps in St. Barts, would like Scrabble too. With a Google search and a curious mind, she found the Scrabble Club of St. Barts. This curiosity led to a) scrabble playing and b) massive amounts of introductions including to the director of St. Barts tourism. If you have passions like Ukulele playing, calligraphy, or dancing, chances are there’s a local who may like the same things as you do…and they are a Google search away.

Hire Help

Hire a great driver to get to know the best places to eat local food. These are the men who go to cheap, quick food joints that serve filling and delicious local fare. Want more than a tasty bite, more history? Hire a guide either for the day, the area, or an event. Writer Erin Caslavka pointed travelers to two places: find local universities and colleges and the tourist office. “They are amazing.” BUT, according to Erin, if you’re really on a budget, “Talk to cops, they know everything.”

Another tip: Viator.com lists local guides and trips by destination. Airbnb Experiences connect you with an activity led by local hosts. What used to happen via concierge, driver, or a tout — and frankly a little shady when there’s a lot of commissions in the mix — now shows up

in a rated and reviewed list.

Try an Online Community

CEO and founder of Gogobot.com, now Trip.com, Travis Katz started the online travel community because he and his wife could not get a fitting answer on what to do in the south of France. Sure, guidebooks provide a list, but they offered a big list and had the tendency to be a bit outdated. Better to take the advice of friends, but not many friends had been there. The solution? Ask for help from friends and locals who are just like you. Travis and his wife received excellent recommendations on where to go to in Southern France.

Online communities like AFAR.com, Matador Network, BootsNAll, and Lonely Planet’s Thorn Tree Forum provide advice from travelers and locals who’ve been there, done that and know a little more than the guidebooks recommend.

Another tip: E-mail or tag people you know who travel like you do (not everyone) and ask if they know someone who lives where you want to go.

Tap into the Local Travel Groups

Panelist Mike McColl is all over the local travel movement. On the first Tuesday of every month he hosts the monthly AdventureDrinks in the Bay Area. Travelers and industry get together to geek out about travel, and meet other travelers and locals. Around the world, travel groups are full of social ambassadors looking to share their culture over a few drinks at a bar, usually several steps off the tourist path. Tripping, Travel Massive, and Couchsurfing host events around the world and get travelers in with locals.

Per Mike, you’re meeting “locals who want to give you a local experience.” I love meals with locals and other travelers. However, it’s a little awkward to invite myself to a dinner with a stranger, so I’ve used Eatwith.com, where you can find dinners or foodie tours with local chefs.

Sleep with Locals

Sleep on someone’s couch for free or pay for your room right in the thick of a neighborhood. Both Couchsurfing and Airbnb.com get you into the local mix quickly and easily by actually staying with people who live there. I stayed in Amelie’s neighborhood on a recent visit to Paris, in a downtown condo in Vancouver a third the price of hotels on the same street, and at a goddess temple in Kauai.

Staying in a house revealed best the places to eat and discover. Not to mention all the kind and interesting kind people I met — including an actual real-life Kahuna over Thanksgiving dinner in Kauai.

No matter the method, there are always opportunities to go a little deeper despite not knowing (or being particularly challenged at learning) the language. The best advice is from Erin Caslavka: “Always say yes” or Ja or Si or Oui for a great adventure and more in-depth experience of a place without knowing the language.