When travel is designed around how people actually learn and process new experiences, it produces a different kind of return than conventional travel.

The most obvious gain is improved memory. Experiences don’t blur together or fade into vague impressions. They remain vivid and easily retrievable because they are anchored in understanding and emotion. Years later, you can still recall not only where you went, but what you noticed, what surprised you, and what shifted inside you.

There is also a difference in how you experience the destination. When your mind is prepared and your attention is engaged, you move through a physical space differently. You notice more. You linger longer. You ask better questions. Instead of rushing from one highlight to the next, you become absorbed in what is in front of you. The experience feels fuller—not because you are doing more, but because you are seeing more of what is already there.

There is also a deeper return on understanding. Places stop being isolated destinations and they start to make sense within larger historical, cultural, environmental, and human systems. Your mental map of the world expands with each trip instead of resetting itself every time you unpack a suitcase. Travel becomes cumulative rather than episodic, like chapters in a book, as each trip builds on the last to tell a fuller, richer story.

The impact of this kind of intentional travel doesn’t stay on the road. Insights gained along the way begin to influence how you interpret news, engage in conversations, approach differences, and make decisions back home. Travel stops being an escape from real life and starts informing how you live it.

There is an emotional return on your travel investment as well. Because you entered your experiences with intention and revisited them with reflection, they carry weight. They resurface naturally in the stories you tell, the connections you make, the comparisons you draw, because they are part of you. The trip becomes part of your internal reference library—less like a forgotten volume on a dusty shelf and more like a dog-eared bestseller you keep returning to. The experience becomes something you draw from and revisit in different seasons of your life. Your inner landscape grows richer, and your connection to yourself and to the world around you deepens.

Time and money are finite. When they are spent without intention, even beautiful travel experiences can feel fleeting. When they are spent in alignment with how memory and meaning are formed, however, your investment compounds. You get more depth per moment, more insight per experience, and more lasting value from the same journey.

That is the difference between a trip you take and a trip that stays with you.

Principle #5: When travel is designed to align with how humans learn and remember, it produces deeper understanding, more vivid memory, and lasting perspective that continues to shape life after the journey ends.

Coming Up: Why most travel experiences fall short.

Read the Manifesto from the beginning:

https://fieldtriptravelcompany.substack.com/p/manifesto-travel-can-be-more

Learn more at Field Trip Travel Company.

If you’re new to my writing, know that I am passionate about applying principles of cognitive and learning science to travel in order to create more meaningful and impactful experiences.

As I look at my own travel history and live vicariously through others and their trips around the world, state, or region, I see many travel experiences that are an exciting whirlwind of new scenery, foods, and experiences - intense during the moment, but intensity that often fades to a “Oh yeah, I went there/did that one time” sort of recollection. In other words, amazing in the moment, but often no deep or lasting impact.

Or rather, an impact that is almost always not as deep or rich as it could be. Yes, that is more accurate.

And as I think about travel, which is one of the supreme joys of my life, I wonder: don’t we want those particular experiences to be as deep, rich, and long-lasting as possible? In other words, don’t we really want to maximize what we get out of those new and intense experiences? In other words, don’t we want to be experience-maxxing our travel?

See what I did there?

[For the remainder of this article, I’m going to use “experience-maxxing” like it’s a real concept and not something I just made up in the shower. So if it’s making you roll your eyes, you’ve been warned.]

Experience-maxxing begs the question of why one would want to maximize a given experience, say travel. Well, I would argue that since the average person has to invest significantly in order to make travel happen (investments of time, money, and energy), they may want to glean as much as possible from their investment.

But that is really quite a lackluster argument, isn’t it, because who wants to think about travel in simple ROI terms? That’s taking something exquisite and thrilling (travel!) and reducing it to plain economics (ew). While the argument holds, it feels yucky and misses point.

The more interesting argument for experience-maxxing travel, in my mind, is this: you have one life to live. You will never see, do, or experience everything there is in this great, wide world to see, do, or experience. So when you DO see, do, or experience something you are excited about, mightn’t you want to connect as deeply as possible with said experience so that it becomes a shaping force in the rest of your life and how you see the world?

Some might answer: No, I do not need or want my travel experiences to shape my life and how I see the world. That sounds hard and just let me relax already.

Others might answer: Yes, why WOULDN’T I want to connect more deeply with the world around me? That sounds amazing! Life is for the living and I’m not about to leave any drop of experience on the table if I can help it. Bring on the experience-maxxing!!!

[Note: I experimented with “travel-maxxing,” but that seemed to imply seeing more, doing more, and traveling as much as possible, resulting in wide but shallow experiences. The opposite of what I’m advocating for. But experience-maxxing is, you guessed it, maximizing one’s travel time for narrow but deep experiences. I mean, both of these terms are totally made up by me, so there really is no right or wrong, but the second one fit better.]

So how does one experience-maxx their travel?

1. Prepare the mind

2. Experience something new

3. Reflect on the experience

That tidy three-step process is what your brain and body needs in order to get the most meaning and lasting impact out of any travel experience. That’s the whole premise behind the DIY trips we design at Field Trip Travel Company. I guess you could say we’re in the experience-maxxing business. Who knew?

I have done plenty of superficial travel, and I have “experience-maxxed” my travel. There’s nothing inherently bad about more superficial travel; I’m not saying you always have to be experience-maxxing (how exhausting!).

But I can say that when I’ve dived deeply into a place before, during, and after the trip (i.e., experience-maxxed!), the trip sticks. I frequently think back to what it meant, not just what it looked like or felt like. The experience shifts something inside me, expands my understand of the world or myself or both. It’s pretty remarkable.

So in conclusion, I’m a fan of experience-maxxing when it comes to travel. I don’t get to travel just whenever I feel like it, so my travel time is special. It’s an event. It’s something I look forward to and think back on to get me through the long, hard Wyoming winters. So when I go, I want to absorb all I can from the experience. And cognitive science tells us how: prepare, experience, reflect.

Thank you for indulging my attempt to adopt popular culture terminology. :) You may now return to your regularly scheduled activities.

Field Trip Travel Company takes the principles of cognitive science and translates them into a practical, human approach to travel, one that fits real lives, real schedules, and real curiosity. Don’t worry - there aren’t rigid structures, pre-planned group tours, or academic instructions (yawn). Instead, Field Trip Travel creates ideal conditions that allow meaningful experiences to unfold naturally.

It begins before the trip.

Our guides introduce travel context in multiple ways – through reading, listening, viewing, and quiet reflection – so travelers arrive at their destination with their mental scaffolding already in place. This pre-travel learning is intentionally varied: videos, podcasts, playlists, and articles allow each traveler to build familiarity in a way that feels natural and appealing.

The goal is to prepare the brain to notice patterns, ask deeper questions, and recognize significance when it appears. It is up to you how and how much pre-travel knowledge acquisition you do. You can work your way through all the pre-travel learning resources in the Field Trip Travel guide, or you can do just a few. Even a podcast here and a video there will deepen your travel. Put simply, you’ll get out of the experience what you put into it.

But it’s not all serious study (because again, yawn); Field Trip Travel also makes room for play. When curiosity is sparked and engagement feels fun, learning becomes more effective and more effortless. The themed playlists, creative prompts, and short, sometimes silly videos included in our travel guides are intentional design choices that make learning more inviting and more human. When learning feels playful, the brain stays open longer. We are more attentive and focused, and the experiences we have become linked to the emotions we feel. Memory and meaning are strengthened in ways that cannot be accomplished by studying alone.

Then comes the onsite experience.

During the trip, Field Trip Travel supports exploration with gentle prompts and framing that keep attention open and active. Our travel guides do not dictate exactly where you should go, how long you should stay there, what you should see, or what you should think. Instead, travelers are encouraged to slow down, to linger, to observe, to see places that resonate with them, and to intellectually connect what they’re seeing with what they’ve already encountered. The experience remains self-directed, but it is no longer unanchored. Travelers are guided by knowledge and curiosity, which transforms moments into meaningful encounters.

And finally, there is what happens after the journey.

Field Trip Travel’s guidance and commitment to providing travelers with an all-encompassing learning experience extends beyond the trip itself. The travel guides include carefully designed, simple, approachable reflection activities that invite travelers to revisit key moments and develop a deeper understanding of their travel experience after they have returned home. Once travelers return home and have space to reflect, memory becomes stronger. Properly categorized and linked to existing knowledge, these memories have the power to shape perspective, broaden understanding, and spark change.

Designing travel this intentionally is possible to do on your own, but it isn’t simple. First, it requires understanding how the brain learns and how lasting memories are formed. Next, it means taking the time for deep and thorough research to discern what truly matters. It also demands that you curate material across various formats to engage learning in multiple ways. When it comes to travel planning, most people don’t lack curiosity; they lack the hours this takes and the expertise required. Field Trip Travel Company exists to do the heavy lifting for you. We carry that invisible labor and do the advance planning so travelers can spend their time and energy on making the most of their travel time.

Principle #4: Because we understand how people learn, we can design travel to support the kind of change travelers hope for at the outset of their journey.

Coming Up: What happens when travel is designed to actually change you.

Geez… what on earth did you Chichen Eat-za, lady?

Entering the 13th hour of the day’s travels, and the sixth (seventh?) cumulative hour on the bus, I found my impromptu and destination-specific wordplay hilarious. Less hilarious was the warm, inescapable hug of a bathroom trip gone bad embracing me and everyone else.

The tour guide had specifically told us not to “número dos” in the bathroom on the bus. I had assumed to do so might lead to some septic problems later when they were emptying the tank, not that if “número dos” occurs we are all stuck with the rank company of it until… well… when? The windows of the bus were closed, curtains drawn to keep the searing afternoon sun out and the cool air in, but you know what else was kept in? That’s right: the remnants of a Mexican buffet lunch that had settled poorly.

It was at this moment, as I experimented with how long I could hold my breath and weighing the tradeoffs of taking one deep breath in order to hold it longer or taking shallow breaths but having to breathe more often, that I wondered if this day was worth it. It certainly hadn’t gone like I thought it would.

The bus picked me up at 5am in the pouring rain. That’s right, in the morning. That’s right, on my vacation. That’s right, in the pouring rain. I had come to the Riviera Maya region of Mexico specifically to see Chichén Itzá. Strike that - I had come to this part of Mexico because I had bought tickets with a boyfriend to R&R for a week, but then we broke up 10 days before the trip, and I was booked on Frontier (i.e., no refund or credit), so without my Plan A, a Plan B was quick to form. I have been to the Playa del Carmen area a few times and always wanted to see Chichén Itzá (hello, wonder of the world!), but it’s sooo faaaar. I mean, geez, I’d have to get on a bus at like 5am or something in order to make it out there and back in the same day!

Indeed I did. The bus arrived in the pre-dawn hours and I, a seasoned traveler with a healthy amount of confidence earned from multiple trips abroad and solo, was dragged down a few rungs of conceit as I found myself the problematic tourist holding up the bus’s departure. I had gotten so many bloody emails from the tour group, how could I possibly know which one held the voucher the tour guide needed in order to let me on the bus?

Turns out that’s a trick question: none of the emails contained the voucher I needed! I had to download an app to retrieve it. As I fumbled with my umbrella and phone, trying to download an app while other passengers looked on from the dry shelter of the bus, the tour guide, we’ll call her Melissa, was busy with her own work of sighing and checking her watch. 5:02am and already pegged as the troublemaker.

Got the app, found the voucher, boarded the bus. Melissa tried to make amends later in the morning by saying that sometimes it’s hard for older people to know what to do when it comes to technology. I nodded, thinking of people my parents’ age, but only realized as she was walking away that she meant me. I’m only 46 and I work with technology every day in my real job, so ouch.

As we got closer to Chichén Itzá, Melissa started to give the bus information on the ancient site. And I was ready for this! I, who love books, love learning, and love travel, had been pre-gaming on the Maya civilization for the last eight days since my Plan B took form. I was halfway through an amazing book and had watched multiple videos by this great content creator on YouTube (Pete at Ancient Americas) on the writing system, calendar, rise and fall of the empire. I couldn’t wait to hear what Melissa had to add and then put it all together onsite in the great Maya city of Chichén Itzá!

Well, what Melissa had to add was largely about aliens. This was a surprise. Now, I’m an open-minded lady, and I don’t want to poo-poo things out of hand, but we know who built Chichén Itzá, and we know how. I don’t believe we need to invoke aliens to explain any of it. I mean, if there were a perpetually turning wheel on site that spun gold from palm fronds, then yes - who else but aliens would know how to do that?? But there is no spinning palm-frond-to-gold wheel, just incredible and meaningful structures built in the jungle by people who clearly understood a whole lot about astronomy and mathematics. No aliens needed.

At the site, the tour progressed along these lines. Some interesting information, but a lot about aliens. We would occasionally pass by another smaller tour, and their guide was always speaking excitedly about wars with neighboring cities, symbolism in the carved stones, and the role of priests in the society.

From under my umbrella to keep the beating sun off my skin (my sumbrella, as I so cleverly call it), I lusted after him like he was a tall glass of ice-cold lemonade on this hot and steamy day in the jungle. So much historical knowledge! So much passion! In our group, Melissa lined us up so we could each have a turn taking a picture where it looked like our finger was pressing on the top of the Kukulkan pyramid. Alas.

But I will tell you this. Though it was hella hot, and though my particular tour didn’t scratch my intellectually curious itch, Chichén Itzá is freaking incredible. Sure, between mobs of tour groups and souvenir hawkers selling Predator figurines dressed in headdresses (Melissa is not the only person with a penchant for the extraterrestrial), you may think the whole day was a wasted affair. It was not!

At one point I wandered to the far end of the complex to get a closer look at the Temple of the Warriors, and also because my tour guide crush happened to be down there with his group gesturing con gusto to the structure behind him (what was he saying?? I had to know…), and when I turned around and caught sight of the pyramid of Kukulkan anew, without visually seeking it and just having it be suddenly there, the size and perfection of it took my breath away. “Wow,” I whispered. All the other activity around me melted away.

I had driven through many kilometers of land leading to Chichén Itzá, and what wasn’t a town with houses and businesses was a tangle of jungle. Lanky trees stretching upward, red flowering varieties spreading their branches to take as much real estate of the light as possible, luxurious leafy vines twisting around, up, and down to fill the available space. And beneath this thick, unordered mess of life at the top, there was darkness. The impression I got from the jungle is one of a frantic race for light in a whatever-it-takes scramble.

On the Yucatán, there are no mountains. There are no deserts. There are no valleys with differing ecosystems. There is jungle. And rising out of this tangled jungle at Chichén Itzá is a pyramid of such ordered perfection that it screams power. It is one of the most impactful monuments of power I have ever seen, even so many hundreds of years later when it’s lost its white and red exterior paint and when all else has crumbled around it.

Staring up at the top of El Castillo from under my sumbrella, I felt unsolicited awe. Have you felt awe before? I’m sure you have. When everything around you stops and you feel like it’s just you and the thing before you, and the thing before you is so utterly impressive and unique that you fall under its timeless spell for a moment. It’s something you can’t go looking for; awe finds you. And these few seconds of awe, I will remember forever.

But at the time, after two hours baking in the sun, I was hot. I was sticky. I was ready to go. Which was convenient because each tour group only has two hours at the site. So back on the bus we went for the rest of our day.

Coming Up: Part 2 - A Visit to the Cenote and Maya Market

In other words, we remember and are changed by experiences when they make sense within the larger story of our lives.

New experiences are always interpreted through past experiences. The brain constantly asks: Where does this fit? What does this relate to? Why does this matter? What should I pay attention to? When the brain has no framework for interpreting what it encounters, incoming information competes for attention, fragments into impressions, and fades quickly. When a framework exists, learning deepens and impressions become meaning.

Travel experiences become more meaningful when they follow the same process that supports human learning more broadly: preparing the mind before the experience, engaging deeply with the experience itself, and revisiting it afterward so insight can take root.

Before a journey even begins, travelers have an opportunity to prepare their minds to notice more, understand more, and remember more of what they experience.

Many travelers already engage in some form of pre-travel learning. They research their destination online, read reviews of attractions and restaurants, browse photos, and look up hours of operation or admission costs. But the type of preparation curated by Field Trip Travel goes beyond memorizing facts or scanning travel tips.

It involves thoughtfully selected articles, podcasts, videos, and books that provide context and perspective. These materials build mental scaffolding that shapes perception, directs attention, and helps the brain organize what it encounters.

When travelers arrive with this context in place, they hit the ground running. Details that might otherwise seem unfamiliar or insignificant suddenly stand out. Places and experiences connect to ideas they have already encountered. Concepts gain depth when they are anchored to place, sound, smell, and human interaction. Experiences that once existed as abstract ideas now take on texture and meaning. As a result, travelers enjoy far richer experiences while they are there.

But even rich experiences are vulnerable to forgetting.

The brain prioritizes memories that are revisited and retrieved. Without revisiting them, memories weaken over time. Recalling experiences and reflecting on them strengthens neural pathways and helps transform memory into understanding.

When we revisit our experiences (articulating insights, noticing patterns, and connecting them to our own lives), the experience begins to evolve from something that happened into something that shaped us.

Reflection is where insight matures.

Field Trip Travel Company designs travel experiences around this simple rhythm:

• Prepare the mind

• Engage the senses

• Revisit and integrate

This is how human beings turn experience into memory, memory into understanding, and understanding into growth.

Principle #3: When experiences are cognitively prepared for, deeply experienced, and intentionally reflected upon, lasting learning—and real perspective change—are most likely to occur.

Coming Up: If this is how change happens, travel should be designed around this process.

If you are in an unfamiliar city and use GPS in order to get from one place to another, that will be super convenient, but it is not going to help you actually learn your way around the city. In other words, you’ll be lost if you ever lose your GPS. If, instead, someone hands you a compass, explains how to use it, then gives you directions in coordinates, that will be massive overkill in terms of information just to get you to the supermarket.

The first approach doesn’t need you to retain or process any information in order to get you to your destination; the second approach needs you to understand the foundational concept of ‘direction’ and build a massive knowledge and skill base before you can go buy your bananas.

Naturally, if the goal is to familiarize yourself with the city, a middle way is needed. Maybe it involves using GPS sometimes, but also spending some time looking at a map and identifying some prominent landmarks for north, south, east, and west to orient yourself.

A passive experience (GPS) can flow right through the human brain. A little friction, i.e., asking your brain to chew on something to solve a problem, creates connections and deeper understanding. But beware - too much friction (“Here, let me teach you how to use this antique compass so you’ll always be able to find your way to the gas station!”) results in cognitive overload and disengagement.

So let’s turn our attention to travel, because remember, everything is a learning experience for your brain, whether it is learning to fly a jet or seeing Alaska for the first time. And let’s use my life as a lens, because hey, I do it all the time so I’m really good at it.

Later this month I’m taking my kids to a resort in Mexico for spring break. When I travel on my own or with friends, this is not the sort of trip I/we normally take, and I started to realize this trip is a lot like driving around with GPS. We have our tickets, we have a transfer arranged to the hotel, and the resort is all-inclusive so our food, entertainment, and lodging is taken care of. The experience is designed to have very low cognitive friction. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but there are some trade-offs.

Your brain is very efficient, and it is not about to waste energy focusing on something that doesn’t need focus. Without some amount of friction (i.e., working to understand something), what you see, experience, taste, do, may pass out of mind as quickly as the GPS directions to the last hotel you stayed in. Will the entire trip just, blip!, disappear from your mind entirely? No. Will the remembered experience of the trip itself be very deep or rich or meaningful? Probably not.

But hold on. Let’s think for a moment about what “meaningful” means by starting with the desired outcome. What do I want to get from my Spring Break in Mexico with Kids experience? I’ll tell you what I want, dear reader: to just friggin’ relax. As a solo parent, I want to escape the planning, organizing, cleaning, cooking, entertaining, and management of four lives. I want to be fun mom. I want to play with my kids in the pool, drink mojitos sin azucar, and chit-chat with strangers without ever worrying about what time it is. I, who adore deep, connecting travel that expands our sense of ourselves and the world, want to just lay by a pool for a few days and listen to the ocean waves crash onto the shore.

I know an all-inclusive experience won’t deliver a deep connection to Cancun, but I expect a deeper connection to my kids. This is what I will consider “meaningful” from the experience. The place itself is not of consequence; whether it’s Mexico, Aruba, Jamaica, or some other sunny, beachy locale filled with tourists, the place is not the point of this trip. The point of this trip is time with my kids, minus all the cognitive friction that is an inescapable part of our normal daily life.

Sometimes people ask if every trip I take is a deep dive into meaning, experience, and memory. And the answer is: nope! But it’s useful for everyone to think about what they want from a trip before they take it. Is it pure relaxation? Great, take a luxury tour that arranges everything for you so it’s one moment of easy bliss after the next. Realize, however, that without a little cognitive friction, a lot of that bliss may not make it into your long-term memory. Maybe that’s okay and a trade-off you are more than willing to make.

But what if you want to get to know a new place? The canals of Venice, the souks of Marrakesh, the ecosystem of the Everglades? If that’s the goal, a little cognitive friction is your friend. Turn off the GPS (literal and metaphorical) and do a little wayfinding on your own to make the experience stick. This is the sort of travel we design for at Field Trip Travel Company. Why are there canals in Venice to begin with, what social function do souks play in Moroccan culture, and how does the “river of grass” produce an ecosystem unlike anything else on the planet?

I love these sorts of questions, but they will have to wait for a different sort of trip. In a few weeks, the only question I plan to be pondering is, “Is it too soon for more nachos?”

If change is what we are after, then we must look more closely at how learning actually works, because lasting change is rooted in learning that endures.

Travel that is unstructured, rushed, or purely reactive bombards the brain with stimuli so rapidly that the experience cannot be fully processed or integrated. Learning happens, but the experiences are unorganized, fragmented, and unconnected to meaning. Moments blur together and memories are spread thin.

Travel that is deliberate and actively cultivated, on the other hand, sets the stage for durable memory, deep meaning, and personal transformation.

Imagine being suddenly transported to a local market in Cairo for a brief 30-minute stay. If you’ve never been in a place like this, your brain would be overloaded with the sights, sounds, and smells of the market. This would certainly make an impression on you, but how much meaning would the experience carry? To become more than just an impression, there needs to be more to the experience.

To understand the difference between impression and meaning, let’s return to the science of learning. When something leaves a strong impression, the brain first registers it as novelty—a break from the norm. It quickly sorts the experience as familiar or unfamiliar, normal or different. The response is immediate and simplified.

How the brain creates meaning, however, is much more nuanced. It collects all the incoming stimuli – the sights, smells, and sounds – then goes through its files pulling out existing knowledge and past memories. All of this information, new and old, helps the brain position the new experience within the context of your entire life. The new experience is held up against your previous assumptions and expectations, sometimes challenging beliefs, softening stereotypes, and widening your view of the world. In that integration, change becomes possible.

For some travelers, impression is enough. For others, surface-level experiences feel hollow. They suspect there are deeper, more meaningful travel experiences that are, somehow, just beyond their grasp.

We can shorten that distance by applying learning science to travel in a way that helps the mind connect what it’s seeing to what it already knows. In doing so, details stand out. Patterns emerge, experiences feel richer because more of it lands. When we interpret novel experiences through prior knowledge, our cognitive systems are fully engaged. Our brains are equipped to find meaning, create lasting memories, and initiate long-term change.

Field Trip Travel Company operates from this simple truth: If learning naturally occurs during travel, then applying the principles of learning science can deepen that learning—moving us from simple impression to lasting meaning.

Principle #2: Travel naturally generates learning. Without intention, however, that learning remains shallow, fragmented, and unlikely to endure.

Coming Up: If learning must be structured to endure, then we must rethink what happens before, during, and after we travel.

Travel dangles some vague yet enticing-sounding outcomes in front of us: to gain perspective, to experience wonder, to deepen our human connection, to slow down and relax. No matter the destination, we hope to return home changed in some way. In other words, we invest heavily in travel not just for experiences, but for impact.

We hope it’s a good trip. We hope we get something out of the experience. Most of the time we travel, we are investing our time, money, and energy on these hopes.

From the moment we decide where our next trip will take us – whether it is across an ocean or to the next state over – our brains sense potential. We could return home with epic stories and priceless memories. We could meet some amazing people and be so moved by our experiences that we are changed for the better. We sincerely hope all this will happen.

And yet, the reality of travel rarely lives up to that potential. What we get instead is a blur of beautiful places, new restaurants, and experiences that drift away like a dream as soon as we walk back through our front door. We’re happy we went, and we love telling our friends about our adventures and sharing vacation photos on social media, but our lives go back to normal. Whatever deeper change we sensed at the outset often goes unrealized.

This isn’t a failure of travel; it’s a mismatch between what we want travel to do and how human brains actually work.

Human memory, meaning-making, and perspective change follow clear patterns. Studies show us that when experiences are supported by context, emotional engagement, and reflection, they become vivid and durable. When these experiences aren’t supported, even extraordinary moments can fade surprisingly fast. Our brains quite literally don’t have a place to put them.

This insight is the starting point for Field Trip Travel Company.

Armed with an understanding of how the brain processes experience, stores memory, and applies new learning, we believe there is a different way to travel—one that doesn’t rely on chance, perfect timing, or hope alone. By designing travel experiences that align with how humans actually learn and change, we offer a way for curious, independent travelers to make meaning from their journeys and carry that meaning home.

Principle #1: People travel because they want experiences that change them, but time, money, and energy alone do not guarantee that outcome.

Coming Up: If change is the goal, something else must determine whether it happens.

My post today is a riff on that idea, except my first half is, “When in Berlin…” and my second half is, “…write a manifesto.” Equally titillating, no?

Picture this: I’m in Berlin for New Year’s. I know what you’re thinking: how cliché, Kristina. Everyone goes to Berlin in January. It’s like the Ibiza of northern Europe in the bleak mid-winter. What can I say? I’m a slave to the trends. (No reader, this is ironic exaggeration. Berlin is not the Ibiza of northern Europe. Do not go there in January unless you are super into dark nights, cloudy days, and icy sleet in your face.)

So I’m in Berlin on December 31st, and as it happens, I am super into the dark nights, cloudy days, and icy sleet in my face. I loved it. Berlin is a completely unique city, overflowing with fascinating history and sites, a palpable “poor but sexy” vibe. (This quote is from former Berlin mayor, Klaus Wowereit). Graffiti everywhere, art oozing from its pores, and a truly international population. I will write about the actual experience in Berlin later - this post is focused on one particular moment of the trip. The manifesto part!

As I am wont to do when I travel, especially by myself, I took a small group walking tour on the first day I was in town. I always appreciate the lay of the land it gives me as I start to build my mental map of a new place. I had flown in from Wyoming, leaving behind subzero temperatures and blizzards, and had unluckily but not unsurprisingly encountered unseasonably cold and snowy weather in Berlin. People kept telling me I was lucky to be there when it snowed, because it rarely snows there. I gritted my teeth into the semblance of a smile and made a non-committal pleasant sound when people said this.

On the walking tour, we happened by Humboldt University, where Karl Marx had been a student. Wait, wait - I get ahead of myself. Permit me share my mental state going into this trip and on my afternoon walking tour, to lay the groundwork for where we are going with this post and why I mention Karl Marx and manifestos.

If you have read my previous Substack post, you will know that I love learning and I love travel, and I am fired up about using each to deepen the experience of the other. But as I have tried to explain this concept and conviction to those in my circle, I have largely been met with confusion. This, in retrospect, has been my fault - I haven’t known the best way to clearly and concisely explain why the application of learning science to self-guided travel is a good business idea or even a desirable hobby. This had left me with some amount of self-doubt about the whole idea. Isn’t self-doubt just the worst? I know that you know what self-doubt feels like, because you are human. Unless you are an AI bot mining this post for information (good luck!), then perhaps YOU don’t know the feeling of self-doubt, but as you continue along your journey toward sentience, you may. And it’s a real b*tch, so I’d quit while I was ahead, AI.

I’m in Berlin. It’s cold and dark. I’m feeling some not so small amount of self-doubt about the feasibility of my business idea. It’s the turn of a new year. I’m struggling to explain to others what I’m even trying to do, let alone why other people might be interested. And I see the place Marx studied. And then it hit me, like a bolt of lightning through the murky grey skies of frigid northern Germany. What did Marx do when he needed to convey his newfangled idea?

A manifesto.

Too grandiose? Nope, it made perfect sense in Berlin that grey afternoon. And if we stop to second-guess ourselves at every turn, we never end up going anywhere. So I took this manifesto idea and put it into action.

Step 1: Finish walking tour, because it was led by a historian and it was awesome.

Step 2: Stop at a currywurst stand to get currywurst, french fries, carrot salad, and a Berliner beer to go. Currywurst is a Berlin staple and is sausage in a curry-ketchup sauce. I got the vegan version. I’m not a strict vegetarian, but that sounded better at the moment, and I’m always a bit nervous about biting into meat covered in sauce so I can’t see it. It’s a weird thing about me. You have your own things, so don’t judge.

Step 3: Take the train back to my flat and take a hot shower to unfreeze my hands and unclench the muscles of my body because I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this, but it was cold. And that’s someone who lives in Wyoming telling you that.

Step 4: Sit at my computer in the blackness of Berlin at 5pm on New Year’s Eve and pour my thoughts onto the page.

I have always felt, through my adult life at least, that I can’t think if I don’t write. By that I mean, if left to my own devices to simply think through something, my thoughts become a muddled maze of if/then flowcharts that eventually loop over on themselves, start spinning, and gather enough momentum to become a churn of confusion and a general yuck tornado in my mind. Thus, whenever I am serious about figuring out what I think on a topic or how I feel about something, I take it to the notebook. Or in this case, the Google Doc.

I knew that clarity would come as I got my tangled thoughts onto the page, but I didn’t know whether that clarity on applying learning science to independent travel would be “yes, this is a good idea” or “no, abandon this foolishness and tell no one!” I wrote feverishly. I wrote aggressively. I wrote without stopping to edit, rewrite, or reconsider. It may have still been a steaming mess, but at least now it was a steaming mess that lived on the Google Drive instead of in my mind.

Currywurst, fries, and beer gone, I surveyed my work. I cannot tell you, friends, how satisfying it felt to write a messy, passionate manifesto in Berlin on New Year’s Eve. I highly, highly recommend it. That IS worth flying to Berlin for in the dead of winter.

Over the coming weeks, I edited, polished, rewrote, and turned my steaming mess into a cohesive train of thought that lays out why I aim to do what I am doing, and why I feel it’s important. Real manifesto-type stuff. I’m proud of it. It’s exactly what I wanted to say. I may print up shirts that say “I ♥️ my manifesto.”

Where can you get your hands on this highly anticipated work? Right here! I’ll be sharing sections of the manifesto right here on Substack. More soon. Thank you for your indulgence and your time.

But that’s not really what learning is. Learning happens throughout your entire human life, from babies observing the world and intuiting the laws of gravity to your grandma talking with her neighbor in a way that makes Betsy feel heard and seen. Babies aren’t born knowing about gravity, and your grandma wasn’t born knowing how to be a good listener. They’re both “figuring it out as they go,” a.k.a., learning.

And what a wonderful way to think about learning, right? Just figuring out stuff that helps you make meaning of the world and the role you want to play in it. It’s not boring and stuffy; it’s life itself. It’s what happens every day. You simply can’t escape it. For example, when you crash in your hotel room after a long day of travel and turn on the Food Network to zone out (because that’s what everyone does in hotel rooms, right?), and you see someone start a recipe by sautéing a mix of onions, carrots, and celery, and they call it a “mirepoix” and suddenly this French term that you’ve seen in recipes but always glanced over because what the heck is that, clicks. Learning! Unintentional! No studying required! Knowledge that may come in handy in some future conversation, trivia night, or Substack post! See? It happens whether we try or even want it to. That’s how darn stinkin’ good our brains are at learning.

Our brains are so amazingly wonderful, and they really kick butt in terms of keeping us alive and safe. But guess what? They can do MORE than keep us alive and safe! They, and the thoughts, memories, and beliefs created and stored within them, quite literally shape our reality. Put another way, what we learn shapes who we are. Again, I don’t mean “learn” like high school chemistry class. That doesn’t often shape who you are, unless you’re like me, and it shaped you into someone who does not identify as being interested in or good at chemistry. I mean “learn” as in… let me give an example.

When I was in my first year of college living in Texas and the rest of my family and extended family lived in rural Iowa, we experienced an unexpected, tragic death in the family. I flew home for the funeral, and my aunt was deeply moved because I had come such a distance at such short notice. I had never been around death before and felt that internal cringe of not knowing what to say. My 19-year-old self landed on: “I’m sorry, I don’t know what to say.” My aunt replied, “You don’t have to say anything. You came.” Ah, okay. Lesson learned. When things are bad for people you love, show up. THAT’S what I mean by learning that shapes you.

So we go through life, and what we learn has the power to shape us at a core level: how we act, where we put out energy, what we think is important. And most of this learning is happening on autopilot, maybe because we think we hate to learn (fluorescent lights, authority figures). But if your brain is so good at learning on autopilot, just think what’s possible if you learn with intention. I’m not talking about studying physics from a textbook, although you do you if that floats your boat. I’m talking about doing what you love and doing it in a way that reaches down deep into the core of who you are and how you understand the world so that the experience expands your concept of yourself and waters your freaking soul so it blooms.

Because why not? Our days on the planet are limited, my friend, even if you are a billionaire devoting your resources to trying to reverse your biological age. And with our limited days, don’t we all want to connect with who and what we love in the most meaningful ways possible? Doesn’t that explain that ultimate goal of 99.99% of people on the planet, except for maybe that billionaire guy? (The shade is possibly unwarranted; I know nothing about him. I just thought it was a funny way to end the paragraph.)

After starting out as a music theory professor, I switched into adult learning and instructional design. I’ve worked in the corporate space for the last 20 years or so, learning about learning. Because I’m cool like that. (Just kidding, no one has ever said, “That’s cool!” when I explain what I do. I’m not a stunt man or race-car driver, for goodness’ sake.) But I think it’s cool, and maybe you do too since you’ve stuck with me through this post so far. So the cat’s out of the proverbial bag: I love learning. You know what else I love? Travel. And gosh, wouldn’t it nice if only there were some way to connect the two…

There is! That’s the purpose of this publication. This is where I will write of all things pertaining to how the glorious brain interprets experience, creates memory, and how these experiences and memories impact our view of the world and ourselves, using travel as our laboratory and context. It’s learning + travel = awesomeness. It’s all the things I love.

If you are interested in learning or travel or both, I invite you to subscribe and read more. I have a great zest for the topic, and I look forward to connecting with others who feel the same. Thanks for your time.