I'm reading "The best travel memento smells like vacation/Science says smells evoke memories. That’s why I buy a candle on every trip" by Dayana Sarkisova (WaPo).
I'm interested in this because 1. I'm a travel skeptic, 2. I have almost no sense of smell, 3. I never buy "souvenirs," and 4. Even if I had a good sense of smell, I wouldn't want scented candles.
And I do think: 1. Sense of smell is part of the travel experience, 2. The decision to travel entails a cost/benefit analysis and smell can be a negative or positive, 3. Scented candles bought somewhere don't really contain the smell of that place, 4. You can reinforce any memory by linking it to a sensory experience, even one that has only a random connection to that memory, 5. It would be really annoying to travel with someone who needed to take time to shop for a scented candle on every damned trip.
Because I have almost no sense of smell: 1. I can't experience the full dimension of the difference of a foreign place, 2. I can't get too excited about the food (and even have to worry that the food could be bad, even dangerously bad, and I wouldn't know it), and 3. If I had to live with someone who was really into burning scented candles, it wouldn't affect me, unless there was a verbal component — an oh-that's-the-smell-of-Paris narrative.
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51 comments:
AA, I'm with you completely on this, except I'm fortunate to have an excellent sense of smell.
Buy a new, never worn before, perfume, cologne, after shave to use on the trip.
That will create the smell memories.
Scented candles often reek and then smell of smoke.
"Science says smells evoke memories."
So says Proust. In better sentences.
Anyway, scientific question: how does memory work differently for people who cannot rely on smell to evoke memories? Is there some compensation mechanism?
Iran infiltrates and bribes our Secret Service and WaPo publishes this drivel.
I recommend 'A Natural History of the Senses' by Diane Ackerman. Very good, reading, trip through your senses. First time I read it, it made me hyper aware of my senses, especially smell, for a time. I've read is several times to revive that sense memory. I'd say it's a good book if you want to stay home but experience new things. One caution, one when I read it, I was working a fisheries research ship. There are some smells you don't want to renew your sensitivity to. Old fish and diesel fumes are just to name two.
Travel, I would have to say is what I recently saw called Type-2 fun. It's not so fun when it's happening a lot of the time, but fun to remember. Also, for me travel is about who you are with. If the journey is 90% of the trip, take someone nice to overcome the hurdles with.
Anyone who's been to Paris knows what bodily fluid the Metro smells like.
I'm going back to Ireland (where I lived for much of my 30's and 40's) for a month this summer, and one of the main things I look forward to is the smell. I can remember it perfectly.
Maybe Gwyneth Paltrow could expand her famous scented candle collection to include a line with a travel motif.
For example, 'This Candle Smells Like My Vagina Smelled after a week in Luang Prabang.
I've loved scented candles since my college days. They've gotten overpriced, and in too many cases, they smell nice in the jar, but upon lighting emit very little to no scent at all. That said, I still come across some very good ones and I typically end up buying a candle when I travel. And sometimes...they do remind me of the place. Like the candle right in front of me now on our kitchen counter. It's bought it at the Refinery Hotel in NYC. I love the scent and I flash back to a couple of very enjoyable stays at that hotel, back before covid...when New York was still fun. (I had bought one there, then reordered a couple more to have around the house).
Candle scents can remind you of places...or people. And other times.
big cities smell bad. always some industry, commercial kitchen furnaces burning, garbage outside buildings. nothing missed there. and even the countryside smells often of car exhaust, or dust from farming, unless it just rained, then the air smells of roadside dirt. it's not even close to a scented candle, which i would only choose yankee candle apple cinnamon, and even so the duft is so almost none that it's not worth the cost of the candle, or the risk of it exploding and burning your table. my 2cents.
when ever i go to Wyoming in the summer (which is: EVERY summer), i pick some sage; which i toss on the dashboard of my car. For weeks, the car will smell like wyoming every time i get in.
For months after, if i grab one of the leaves; and mash it on my fingers: i can STILL smell wyoming
The Only downside is explaining the leaves to any hiway patrolman that happens to stop me
I'm sorry for you Professor, not having smells. Between the pines and the sages and horses; you're REALLY missing wyoming without the smells. I understand better now why you don't love travel
Apologies to everyone, but here are a couple of sentences for Althouse to chew on::
"They were rooms of that country order which (just as in certain climes whole tracts of air or ocean are illuminated or scented by myriads of protozoa that we cannot see) fascinate our sense of smell with the countless odors springing from their own special virtues, wisdom, habits, a whole secret system of life, invisible, superabundant and profoundly moral, which their atmosphere holds suspended; smells natural enough indeed, and colored by circumstances as are those of the neighboring countryside, but already domesticated, humanized, confined, an exquisite, skillful, limpid jelly, blending all the fruits of the season that have left the orchard for the storeroom, smells changing with the year, but replenishing, domestic smells, which compensate for the sharpness of hoarfrost with the sweet savor of warm bread, smells lazy and punctual as a village clock, roving smells, steadfast smells; heedless and provident, linen smells, morning smells, pious smells, rejoicing in a peace that brings only an increase of anxiety, and in a prosiness that serves as a deep source of poetry to the stranger who passes through their midst without having lived among them. The air of those rooms was saturated with the fine bouquet of a silence so nourishing, so succulent that I could not enter them without a sort of greedy enjoyment, particularly on those first mornings, chilly still, of the Easter holidays, when I could taste it more fully, because I had just arrived then at Combray: before I went in to wish my aunt good day I would be kept waiting a little time in the outer room, where the sun, a wintry sun still, had crept in to warm itself before the fire, lighted already between its two brick sides and plastering the room and everything in it with the smell of soot, making the room like one of those great open hearths that one finds in the country, or one of the canopied mantelpieces in old castles under which one sits hoping that outside it is raining or snowing, hoping even for a catastrophic deluge to add the romance of shelter and security to the comfort of a snug retreat; I would take a few steps from the prie-dieu to the stamped velvet armchairs, each one always draped in its crocheted antimacassar, while the fire, baking like a pie the appetizing smells with which the air of the room was thickly clotted, which the dewy and sunny freshness of the morning had already “raised” and started to “set,” puffed them and glazed them and fluted them and swelled them into an invisible and palpable country cake, an immense “puff pastry,” in which, barely waiting to savor the crustier, more delicate, more respectable, but also drier smells of the cupboard, the
chest of drawers, and the patterned wallpaper, I always returned with an unconfessed gluttony to bury myself in the ordinary, resinous, dull, indigestible, and fruity smell of the flowered quilt."
Meh! Music does the same thing.
Oh! and the campfires! Of course, campfires aren't specific to wyoming; but they sure are an important part of camping!
And sunscreen! And bugspray!!!
I think I have the opposite condition with an extra acute sense of smell (maybe to make up for the color blindness?), and part of it is being over aware of natural versus manmade scents, with the latter usually being very disagreeable and lemme tell ya - scented candles drive me nuts!!!!!! There's also a perfume some women wear that smells like bug spray to me :-(
I also have a weak sense of smell. Sometimes I can smell the coffee, most times I can't. I miss the various aromas of beer; can't get the full flavor of it without them.
So the candle smells like lasagna?
This is idiocy.
Any candle she buys will smell like some awful scent that has nothing to do with her vacation spot.
Cue obligatory Seinfeld 'the beach' cologne...
I travel a lot. I've been to over half of the countries in the world. For me, smell is a big part of the experience. I still remember, for example, the smell of Cairo, Mumbai, Marrakesh, Manila, and many more.
Wow- I could have written that scented candle thing! My parents did the road trip vacation when I was growing up, and their favorite places to stop to eat were Cracker Barrels which have that scented candle smell in the gift shop areas. Whenever I smell that odor, it reminds me of childhood vacations to various locations in the south- especially to the Smokies.
Your aversion to travel is about control, not olfactory.
locale honey may be better than souvenirs! for similar foodie interested
Campfire smell on your loss is one of the best smells ever in my opinion.
There are some smells that are so overpowering they'll stick with you. On a night train from Milan to Bologna back in the early mid 80s the train ran past what must have been a pig farm sewage lagoon. Driving up I-5 from Los Angeles to Sacramento you pass the Harris Ranch cattle feedlot. There are a lot of cows there and the aroma is penetrating--you can smell it from five miles south of Harris Ranch to--if the wind is right--five miles north.
And sometimes smells are artificially generated. There is an underground tourist attraction in the city of York England. It purports to show life as it was lived in Eastern England during the Viking Danegeld days. You get in a boat that travels (Disneyland "It's a Wonderful World style) along a canal past tableaus. When you go by the village there is a tremendous whiff of pig manure. I took the trip with my wife and children 35 years ago--don't remember much of the scenes--but I do remember the odor.
Souvenirs of travels-I buy dish towels or other kind of towel. Something I can use every day. Nothings that just sits on a shelf gathering dust.
I brought home a melograno, pomegranate, scented candle from Florence. One can purchase it at the historic Santa Maria Novella pharmacy, for those who are not into candles it's still an amazing building to visit, for those who are, they now have a scent that connects them to the memory of that visit. The pomegranate symbolizes good luck and good fortune in Italy, we light it during the Christmas season, imagining it will help with these important notions. It's a tradition in our family.
Scented candles can be awful, especially the cheap varieties, if you want nice scented candles you can't be cheap, you have to get the best quality. Natural bee wax candles are wonderful, they smell of warmth and honey, and I light them for romantic dinners at home. What I am trying to say is that candles, as well as natural smells, help create the sensory memory known as the Proust effect.
My grandfather died before I was old enough to have formed any real memories of him, or so I thought. One day after I was adult, I was in a shop with my mother that sold beautiful leather goods, and the whole store smelled like leather. I mentioned to my mom that the smell of leather always made me feel warm, secure, and loved. She teared up, and told me how my grandfather had always carried me tucked inside his leather jacket when I was an infant. Smells evoke some of our most primal memories.
The ability of smell to evoke even distant memories is truly remarkable. A few years ago I was walking down a back stairwell in an old Catholic hospital and was stopped cold by a rush of 45 year-old memories of my parochial elementary school. Weird and a bit psychedelic. One of those experiences that makes you wonder what latent fuckery lurks in the human brain.
I wonder if she lights the candle while she's there and then lights it again when she's back home to remind her of the place that she visited when she lit the candle the first time.
I can barely smell also. I often have the odd experience that I recognize that food is burning on the stove without actually being able to consciously smell it, same with baby diapers. This came in handy when traveling in China years ago when the rest of my family was gagging while passing a dumpster and I just registered that yes, that smells bad. When someone is eating really spicy food near me, I can feel the burning in my nose more than smell the curry or peppers. As to smells evoking memories--not so much.
The word "logorrhea" was invented precisely to describe Marcel Proust's writings.
It's word salad with French dressing.
My aversion to travel is mostly about feeling that you don't really get there. You get to the entry point, but you can't really get in. It's a fake, and you either go in for the game of pretend or you maintain your awareness of your insurmountable outsiderhood.
I can understand why people who lack a love of people, places and things, initiative, curiosity, adventurousness, courage, etc would not like vacation travel.
For me it is a sense of taste....remembering great meals everywhere. If it isn't going to be memorable (e.g.fast food) don't do it.
'You get to the entry point, but you can't really get in.'
My theory of travel fwiw.
Go to the 'big, expected' places like Florence or Paris.
Do the usual things and soak up the sights...even take a tour (not my thing but some people like them).
If you like the area and the people, go back.
But this time, do none of the touristy things as you've already done them.
Stay with a local or rent a house/apartment instead of a hotel.
Eat where the locals eat. Drink where they drink.
Walk every street and alley in your part of the city/town.
It gives you a sense of the true nature of the place behind the posters and brochures.
We did this in Italy and have been back a few times to stay in an out-of-the-way agriturismo.
It helps that I have extended family in another part of Italy so we can go there and do absolutely nothing but decompress.
You will never 'get in' if you're on vacation, but that's not the point...
"you don't really get there" - I don't think it's either/or. Backpacked a lot in my 20's in South America and Europe, and staying in one place for a week or a month lets you see "the game" being played by the tour boats and the "let men check this one off the list" types. Getting just part the way there can be pretty eye opening as to cultural differences and waking you up to assumptions you've been making.
'Backpacked a lot in my 20's...'
Same...6 months is Europe on $8/day and only what I could carry on my back.
You see a lot of what is 'real' about places...
My souvenirs are sweatshirts. I have a Craven Arms sweatshirt from a pub that dates from the 13th or 14th Century, in the English Midlands, near Cheltenham. We made many business trips to Cheltenham and the Craven Arms would always be one of the stops for dinner. I have a sweatshirt from Sandia Peak Tramway in New Mexico, near Albuquerque.
We did a lot of flight testing at NAS Patuxent River, MD, so I have NAS Pax River sweatshirt.
And of course, I have a Oregon Shakespeare Festival sweatshirt. We'd been going there once or twice a year since 2006 except for the last two years and probably won't make it there this year because of our new house construction. Maybe in October.
I always buy salt.
Wear a pair of sneakers with no socks all summer long and you will have recreated the smell of a Paris cheese shop.
If anyone sees this comment, I'll say "I understand what you're saying."
I'm congenitally anosmic, yet I'm an excellent cook, can distinguish subtle flavors, and enjoy travel (well, not getting there, but being there is great).
Obviously I don't smell foreign environments, but for me their charm and novelty are contained in visual experience. Photography and other visual representations are externalized mediums of memory.
Perhaps it's how my brain has compensated for sensory loss/absence. In concrete forms we can't miss what we never had. Our only option is to extract meaning as it's possible to achieve, it's truly all we can do and what we must do.
My souvenirs are my photos. On my last trip, I didn't get to take my real camera because I knew I'd be out all day everyday and didn't want to carry the big camera around. The phone did okay.
I remember West Hollywood by smell. Urine and pot. Candle not available.
Ann Althouse said...
"My aversion to travel is mostly about feeling that you don't really get there. You get to the entry point, but you can't really get in. It's a fake, and you either go in for the game of pretend or you maintain your awareness of your insurmountable outsiderhood."
My experience has been very different from yours. Ever since our family's first trip back to South Dakota, I felt more at home there than I did in California where I grew up. Eventually, a job change led me back to the Midwest and I was among the first from the CA office to move to Madison. The only thing I can say I missed was the mountains.
After several years in Madison I had an opportunity to travel to South America with my dad, partly as caregiver as his dementia had progressed to where we didn't feel comfortable even though he was in a tour group, and partly as translator. Even though we did the touristy things when they were scheduled, during our free time we shopped, ate out, and explored the areas near the hotels. In some of the stores we made small talk with the counter staff or other locals. Later in the trip we ate at a restaurant in Santiago, Chile, with outdoor seating. Buskers were playing music nearby, we tried out some local dishes, and took in the late summer weather. It was wonderful.
There's also a perfume some women wear that smells like bug spray to me
That's a good description of it. I should start asking women what fragrance they're wearing when I smell this. (I don't because I'm afraid it will come out as, "What's that foul stench?".) I've always just mentally tagged it as "chemical dump site". Because I can recognize others as floral, citrus, or spicy, I think the ones I dislike must be herbal/grassy, but they don't smell anything like any grass or herbs I've encountered.
I don't care for scented candles very much, though they have their uses.
My wife was a super-smeller when I met her, but not so much anymore (don't tell her I said that). I think it's connected to her extreme skin sensitivity--she needs non-scented plain body care products--cosmetics, deodorants, shampoos, you name it.
One of my earliest memories of travel-smell is an afternoon and evening in an old house in a small town near Bremen in Germany, when I was traveling with Oma and my aunt for three weeks.
I think the house was that of Oma's girlhood pal Alma Mundhenke (shout-out to all you Mundhenkes out there!) but I'm sure that it reeked heavily of . . . I have no idea.
Might have been paprika or something. Made my eyes water. I was too polite to complain
and spent as much time outside as I could. I have only caught a faint whiff of that aroma
a few times since, and am still not sure what it was.
The flip side of that privilege was helping my uncle Jimmy take care of some small rental houses he owned in less desirable neighborhoods. Plumbing was especially delightful.
Hey Mary Beth!!!! Thanks so much for the backup! Only down in the comments of an Althouse post would I even mention that. I can tell you it's been around a while as I first noticed it back in the 80's. And you're right about asking! That first time I actually said where's the bug spray coming from and the wearer said it was her perfume. Awkward ;-)
Hey Mary Beth!!!! Thanks so much for the backup! Only down in the comments of an Althouse post would I even mention that. I can tell you it's been around a while as I first noticed it back in the 80's. And you're right about asking! That first time I actually said where's the bug spray coming from and the wearer said it was her perfume. Awkward ;-)
"My aversion to travel is mostly about feeling that you don't really get there. You get to the entry point, but you can't really get in."
But then, do you really get in anywhere? If you feel relatively alien where you live, travel is no different.
When my wife and I Eurailed around for two months in '78, we carried backpacks and stayed in pensions and the like. The only vivid stink-memory I have is being in a slow train from Milan to Venice on which most of the passengers were Italian army conscripts on leave.
We didn't smell that great ourselves, but these young men all vibrated with BO. They were polite though, and didn't eye my wife too openly.
Sometimes when we walk through the neighborhood the evening air is a bouquet of dryer-pad aromas.
I recently travelled to Louisville and did a distillery tour. If they could do a candle with the scent of the warehouse where they age the bourbon barrels, that would be a good thing.
One souvenir you DON'T want to bring back from Southeast Asia is the fruit durian. In fact, it is prohibited in many places and transportations. I consider it smells like rotten onions soaked in diesel fuel. But there are those who think it is wonderful - the king of fruits. YMMV.
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