BY HOLGER HOFFMANN & SYLVIA FURRER
Our passion is travelling, preferable to remote areas with only a backpack. Trips like these are always a hard stress test on our relationship. That we are still a couple, can be attributed to three strategies that we have developed during our travels over the last 47 years.
Strategy 1: Damage Report
Shortly after we fell in love with each other in 1975, we started travelling together and traced the historic sites in Greece, Turkey and Iraq. Having finished university we had a window of five months to go on a longer backpacking trip to the Indian subcontinent. In the beginning we did everything that could be done wrong: We travelled on a shoestring, drank ice-cold soft drinks instead of hot tea and were often ripped off. Consequently, we ended up suffering from bedbug bites, abdominal cramps and diarrhea and we were constantly on the look out not to be scammed even further. Our trip was threatening to become a disaster.
The lowest point came in Varanasi: Sylvia felt really miserable and asked me to bring her back to the guesthouse. As I was completely engrossed in taking photographs, I didn’t understand her situation. She was too weak to answer my questions, and I had no idea what was wrong with her. We had a communication problem. Only when she did not move from the spot, did I realize the seriousness of the situation. We decided that we could not travel together like this any longer.
Nevertheless, we continued our trip and science fiction saved us. Following the damage reports from “Star Trek”, we began to check every morning on each other’s condition from head to toe (medically one could also call it a short physical and psychological status check):
- Head: Are you in pain, are you tired, how did you sleep last night?
- Respiratory System: Do you have difficulties swallowing, breathing or coughing? Do you have a runny nose?
- Digestion: What about your appetite? Do you have any stomach problems, diarrhea or constipation? Did you drink enough liquid?
- Limbs: Do you have any pain in your back, shoulders, knees or feet? (This is especially important when trekking.)
- Skin: Do you have sunburn, insect bites, blisters or other injuries?
- And finally: How are you feeling yourself generally speaking? The latter is given a mark (from 6 to 1). Less than 4 is an alarm condition and may result in a day of rest.
The benefit of a damage report lies in the early detection of possible or impending problems. If these are communicated, the partner can check at the next rest stop or in the evening whether there are any changes or not, he can show understanding, and measures can be taken early enough.
Strategy 2: Ritualized Review of the Day in the Recovery Tent
Encouraged by the positive experiences on our trips, we were open to cultures that are so different from ours. Often, however, we reached our limit, be it because of extreme climatic conditions, physical exertion, poor hygiene, sickening food or unimaginable local public health problems, not to speak of the complete failure of certain states to provide education or the most primitive infrastructures such as wells, roads or an energy supply. Our aim has always been to treat each and every one with respect. But how do you do that when we, who come from a wealthy environment, encounter so much misery and unsolvable problems? And how does one manage not to let one’s dismay influence us in such a way that we take it out on them or on the partner? Over the years we have developed a further strategy step by step.
We learned a lot through observation and participation: when we were trekking in Kamchatka with three Russians and the food threatened to run out, our guide took out a bottle of vodka and everyone had to make a toast before drinking from the small glass. Mostly the toasts were to friendship between the peoples, but also about the success of our trip. Also later in Siberia with the reindeer nomads nobody ever got drunk.
Another ritual that we learnt when travelling with our guide Frans in the southwest of Angola was that as soon as we found a spot to stay overnight in the bush, the camping chairs were set up, the glasses filled with coke and brandy and a review of the day was exchanged whilst enjoying the sunset. Only then did we pitch the tent and start cooking dinner.
On our treks to the Korowai in West Papua, to the Kogi in Colombia or the Naga in Myanmar, where we spent the whole day close to people of very different cultures, we experienced how important it was for our mental hygiene, to retire to our tent in the evening. We usually did it for half an hour before dinner in order to create a little distance from the intense impressions of that day. We call this a withdrawal to the recovery tent.
In the meantime, we have realized that we become tense when we are in a civilization not familiar to us and which affects us more than we thought it would or if we don’t know what the next day will bring. This emotional tension can easily be acted out in the wrong way. Our strategy to reduce tension is a ritualized review of the day – combined with three toasts – in the recovery tent. Thus, we retire to our tent for happy hour and both get three bottle caps filled with whiskey, from the duty free shop, each one alternately emptied with a respectful toast to the country, its people and the partner. In Islamic countries, we have learned that this ritual also works without alcohol.
Strategy 3: Run Lola Run
Even in a long-term relationship, communication between partners is often characterized by misunderstandings. This inevitably leads to spiteful remarks and strife. In spite of working on improving our serenity, we occasionally embark on a downward spiral and hurt each other, with little chance of turning back the clock. Looking for alternative behavior patterns, Star Trek has come to our rescue once again: in some episodes of Deep Space Nine, an alternative reality emerges in a parallel universe. There, the main characters sometimes have completely different personalities. Besides Star Trek, there are quite a number of movies where alternative realities are created, e.g. by telling alternative storylines (“what if …?”). One example is the German award-winning movie “Run Lola Run” that shows the same time span of twenty minutes three times, each time with small differences, each leading the plot to a different ending (butterfly effect in the form of a time loop).
On our almost six-month journey to Central Asia, we developed the following strategy: as soon as one of us felt hurt by the other’s statements or actions, we spoke the magic words: “run Lola run!” The message was to stop the film there and then and to give both of us the opportunity to gain emotional distance to the situation and to reflect on what was going wrong in our communication. Only then was it possible to create an alternative reality with a choice of words or actions that were less offending. The sooner the intervention took place, the easier it was for the partner to step in. It often made and makes us both laugh.
We now use this strategy mainly for misunderstandings that come about, when:
- one of us has relied on information from a guide book, a map, or the internet, and assumes that the other has the same information, or
- there are different, unexpressed interests or expectations of the partner: one makes an enthusiastic suggestion that the partner understands as an order for something he dislikes, and accordingly invalidates it.
On our trips over almost 50 years, where we have had the good fortune to encounter the most interesting peoples on Earth, these three strategies have proven to be the most helpful for maintaining a healthy relationship.
SYLVIA FURRER, a Swiss lawyer/economist, and psychiatrist HOLGER HOFFMANN have traveled to over 100 countries since 1977. They became more and more fascinated by the customs and the daily life of indigenous peoples who preserve their traditional culture and subsist in remote areas under harsh conditions – from Siberia to the Danakil Desert, from the jungles of Western New Guinea to the Himalayas.
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