Five Teeny Ways To Feel Like A Local While Travelling

Feeling like a local while travelling is a rare and precious feeling that we almost feel entitled to experience (we’ve paid the money after all). We want to enjoy our destination by slipping into it seamlessly, blending in like another innocuous blob on the city’s camo jacket, waiting for some sitting duck of a pickpocket target to ask us for directions.

But it’s not enough for us to not want to look like a tourist, which is a pretty tall order considering that’s exactly what you are every time you go travelling. To feel like a local you’ve got to live like one. However, that’s not always easy. Many people who call a city home may live an hour’s commute away, never venture within sight of the local landmarks and work a job they hate for eight hours a day.

Luckily, there are several small things you can do to see a side of your destination that many tourists never see while giving yourself something relatable to talk to the locals about. These are things I do that I can 100% recommend from first hand experience.

1. Visit The Same Venue More Than Once

Think about your favourite cafes, bars and restaurants in your local area. You might visit the pub once a week and you may even stop by your café every day. Well, the people in the place you are visiting might very well do the same. To feel like a local, temporarily make yourself a regular of an eatery you’ve enjoyed on your trip.

One of the easiest ways to feel like a local is to visit the same nearby cafe every morning. The urge to explore other coffee options might be off the charts, but returning to the same good cafe provides you with several avenues to feel like a local; 1) the staff may start to recognise you and share banter as they do their real regulars, 2) there are more opportunities to see the every day life of your neighbourhood and 3) sampling more of what one business has to offer gives you ammo to really sound like a regular by saying things like “Yeah their croissants are good but their pan au chocolat is so much better!”

I’ve done this at a few places including a Parisian cafe around the corner from our apartment where I had coffee and a pastry every morning while I worked and a brewery in Bologna where we had a great rapport with the bartender and ended up trying every pizza and beer they offer. While the Parisian cafe was more or less indifferent to me, Danny from the brewery Zapap ended us shouting us some free drinks in our last night in Bologna which I’m fairly certain he doesn’t do for all the tourists.

2. Attempt The Language

Yes, saying buongiorno like Brad Pitt in Inglourious Basterds will definitely make you stand out as a tourist but that doesn’t mean attempting the local language isn’t worth the effort. In my experience, attempting a basic greeting in a language you do not speak fluently is a great way to show that you’re trying while subtly letting the local know you’re not one of ‘those tourists’ who is going to yell in an American accent that could cause hearing loss.

Trying to familiarise yourself with the language is like having a little working project that you complete by going out and having fun. Ordering something to eat or a drink by using only the local lingo has left me walking away feeling like I was Charles Darwin returning from the Galapagos with an encyclopaedia of unstudied birds in my belly. Some times in Germany (where most people speak English anyway)

But even without that all that effort, a simple ‘hello’ in the native language as you pass a temporary neighbour is a perfect way to make yourself feel like part of the furniture.

3. Buy Groceries

When I was in Amsterdam, an AI generated travel itinerary suggested that I go buy a freshly made stroopwafel which I did at the local markets. An hour or so later I was in a dog park talking to a local about my fresh stroopwafel to which he replied ‘which us Dutch never eat!’ Confused, I asked him where they get their stroopwafel to which he answered with a smile ‘from the supermarket’.

This is a weird sentence but I’m a big believer in going to a supermarkets while travelling. Not only do you see the everyday things the locals see but I think it is the best way to learn about things the locals actually eat that you may not have even heard of before.

There are hardly any tourists in a grocery store, most of them are locals doing their weekly shop like you do when you’re at home. Wait in line with them and you’ll feel like just another regular local weighed down the by the cost of living in whichever expensive city you’re in.

4. Learn The Public Transport

While the city your visiting surely has some elite class who Uber everywhere, the majority of the people you walk by in the street will have used some public transport that day. The Paris Metro, the London Underground, the New York Subway; public transport systems are tied to the identity of a city and are something all tourists should experience if they really want to get to know a place.

Mucking around on public transport is the most effective way to put your fingers on the pulse of a city, especially if you’re mad enough to try it during peak hour. Yes, you’ll go the wrong way a bunch of times, misunderstand the basic lingo the locals are privy too and have to ask people to answer the most rudimentary of questions but the answers you learn will bring you closer to being a temporary citizen of this city.

Once you’re comfortable with the public transport you’ll have the confidence to explore places of the tourist track. As a Sydneysider, I see a lot of tourists get on the Manly ferry but hardly any get on a train west to go get a proper banh mi, which is a pity.

5. Drink Their Beer

Let’s finish on an easy one shall we? Obviously, this whole website is one big endorsement for drinking beer wherever you go so I don’t feel like I need to spend as long on this one.

The local beer says a lot about the people around you whether it’s the clean and efficient kolsch of Cologne or the thick and unctuous pints of Guinness in Dublin. Drinking the same beer of a local is the most convenient conversation starter you can have anywhere in the world. If you enjoy it, start talking about that, if you don’t, ask if they can recommend something better. Chats over beers while travelling sometimes turn into friends for life who let you crash at their place whenever it’s time to feel like a local somewhere else again.