A few months ago I read a memoir by a European woman who moved to America. It was filled with all the usual cultural contrasts, “Americans do this, but Europeans do that,” and while some of the observations were sharp and funny, I found myself growing increasingly irritated. Every difference she pointed out came with a scorecard. Americans were louder, brasher, more optimistic, less stylish, but above all, wrong for being different.

This got me thinking. It’s one thing to notice contrast, another to immediately assign value. Once we grade a cultural difference, we’re no longer observing, we’re evaluating. And more often than not, we’re using a ruler carved from our own upbringing.

We like to think that when we travel, we’re encountering something new, but most of the time we’re just running foreign input through familiar filters. Like eating a dish and asking, “Is this better or worse than what I know?” We catalogue the experience instead of experiencing it.

Travel is supposed to broaden the mind, but this doesn’t happen by osmosis. It’s not enough to relocate your body. You have to rewire your responses, especially in the moments that confuse you, frustrate you, or make you want to retreat.

I’ve lived in the Czech Republic for several years and I still compare. Prices. Manners. Tone of voice. I try to blend in, but something in me resists. There’s always a moment, waiting for change in a shop, watching how people speak to strangers, when I notice myself slipping back into Britishness. Not out of pride. Just habit. Culture isn’t clothing you can take off. It’s bone-deep.

Sometimes, though, travel provides just enough contrast to see yourself clearly. I recently noticed a girl in a supermarket buying three kinds of tanning lotion. It took me back to China, where the locals stocked up on whitening cream. I used to tell them Europeans paid money for the skin tone they were trying to erase. They couldn’t understand it. But that’s the point. Beauty isn’t universal, it’s cultural.

And so are most things we assume to be true. Is a place expensive? Compared to where? Is someone reserved? Compared to whom? These judgments rely on a benchmark we often don’t realise we’re using: our home country. Strip that away and much of what we think we “know” disappears too.

Over the years, I’ve begun to realise the goal isn’t to stop comparing. That’s impossible. It’s enough to simply notice when we’re doing it, and to understand that our comparisons say more about us than the world.

Edward T. Hall once wrote that “culture hides more than it reveals, and strangely enough what it hides, it hides most effectively from its own participants.” Travel doesn’t just show you how others live, it reveals the water you’ve been swimming in all your life.

The real journey isn’t geographic. It’s psychological. From reactivity to reflection. From “this is wrong” to “this is unfamiliar.” And that shift doesn’t require a plane ticket, it can begin the next time someone skips a queue or says something that rubs you the wrong way. Ask yourself: what story am I telling about this? And who taught me that story?

I forget all the time. I react, grumble, compare. But when I catch myself and remember to pause, I get a glimpse of something deeper. Not just about the world, but about the lens I’m using to see it. And in those moments I feel like I’m really travelling again, not just through space, but through layers of myself I didn’t know were there.