[bluetomcat]

The idea of “traveling the world” when young is a very recent, very privileged and very Western perspective.

Growing up in post-communist Bulgaria during the 1990s and 2000s, I had never been abroad with my family as a child. At an age of 18 years, I started working from home as a PHP programmer for a guy from Switzerland I found online. When he invited me to his place in Basel for a 2-week visit, to me it felt like flying in space. I was valuing every second of my stay there like I am on another planet.

[brabel]

I grew up in a "developing country". Our family travel was limited to around 200km radius. The first time I went somewhere with only a friend that was like 1,000km, I felt the same as you describe! It was like going to another planet. People had very different accents and liked different types of music, different food etc. In my 20's, though, I managed to migrate to a rich country and started meeting people from all over the world. I met people who spent 6 months in each country, more or less, and had been to like 20 countries in the last few years alone. These were not millionaires, they were young backpackers who did small jobs to pay for their travels. I did not even know that kind of thing was possible at the time. This changed my perspective and after a few years I started doing the same! Went everywhere I could, staying on backpacker hostels. Like many others are saying, it gets tiring after a while. Today, like top commenter, I prefer to stay at the Fours Seasons (or whatever 5-start hotel is available) and just get slightly off the beaten track... but I still want to talk to the locals and try to experience as much as possible the local culture as it is still illuminating to me.

[adammarples]

It's not all that recent, the concept of a Grand Tour around Europe's cultural touchstones in order to complete your education was quite common among the rich from the 17th century onwards

[mantas]

Key word being „among the rich“.