When Zara and I met...

I entered the corridors of Hotel Azure in Hannover, looking forward to a relaxing week. The receptionist handed me the keys and I proceeded to locate our rooms. As I walked down the central aisle, I ran into the housekeeping staff at the hotel preparing our rooms for occupation. They didn't look German, not even European. I thought to myself, "Middle-easterners as housekeeping staff in a random suburban German hotel? How culturally globalized is our world...". If I looked surprised to see them, they look equally so to see me. The hesitation of having to say "Sorry Madam, five minutes please" to someone who was not expected to be seen in those corridors was momentary, but obvious.

I heard the music play from her I-Pod and said, "Turkish music?". She stopped fluffing the pillows and looked up, surprised. I wonder what had surprised her more, the fact that I had started a conversation or that I had recognized the music she was listening to. She nodded, still not entirely comfortable with this rendezvous. After pondering for a minute on whether it would be appropriate to strike conversation with "the guest", she reluctantly asks, her head down as she straightens the creases off the bedcover, "You like?". I reply, as I open the window to let in the crisp morning air, "Yes, I like very much." She smiled. Her smile symbolising that moment in our brief encounter when something changed fundamentally about the nature of our relationship; she was no longer a Turkish immigrant, making beds for a living in German suburbia; I was no longer an Indian student-tourist, paying for a holiday, for her services, in German suburbia.

When I tell people that I work on "tourism and development", it evokes a range of interesting responses. The most popular, most heard is a simple, polite, I-dont-know-what-to-say-further "Interesting....". Then there are the more curious ones, eager to understand what there is to "study" in tourism. Then there are the ones who think they know exactly what it's all about, "So, you go on holidays and research other people's holidays." Ha ha. And finally, there are ones like I heard last evening, that inspire me enough to open, write and post a blog, all in 24 hours, "But what does tourism have to do with development?". It is a fair question, and not one that I have not faced before. But after 30,000 words of an Oxford thesis and over six years of work, (yes, work!) in the sector, I am on a mission. Not to defend myself, not to pontify to others and certainly not to convince or convert. If anything, I'm on a mission to open a space for reflection and dialogue, for thought and action amongst us, within our middle-class mindsets on something that has become so instinctive, so defining, so assumed in our globalized lifestyles that it is anathema to serious discussion. This is a space to discuss us as tourists, and of what we do when we assume this role; of what we see, what we share, how we act and what we leave behind on our holidays.

When I returned from my brief Germany holiday, a friend asked me what I had enjoyed the most. The beauty of Berlin? The picture-postcard images of Cologne? I told her I most enjoyed a breakfast conversation I had with a Turkish friend Zara. Who made beds for a living in a small hotel in Hannover.