An Unknown Town
On 20th February 2023 we started the process of deep-mapping from our tourism textbook (1). A team of young professionals in Slovenia began with Step 1, the Library investigation of the town of Brežice. Yes, for readers in Britain and the United States, Brežice fits the category of 'the unknown town'. Where is Brežice? And how can an English speaker even learn to say the name of the town?
Our First Workshop for Travel Writers
Our first workshop was to write about heritage. Underlying
the training of new writers is the need to build confidence in the new writer's
own emotional response to cultural artefacts when they encounter them. To that
end we looked first at jpegs of paintings from the region around the town. This
elicited stories in that past tense in English which does not really have a
formal name in grammar, it is the used-to tense. It's rather like the imperfect
in French. Listen to this from Kaja:
'The picture reminds me of my grandmother because she used to have chickens and a big farm, with pigs, and rabbits and of course there were cats and a big dog. We lived in the town of Brežice, near the city center. We used to have our own field just exactly where the store parking lot is now'
Yes, I know my British readers will immediately notice two signs
of American English in there, but I'd like you to see how the new travel writer,
Kaja, begins to create an experience from her childhood that she can share with
the visitor who will be looking at the painting for the first time. The writer
positions the picture back in the days of her grandmother and we are transported
back to that time of authenticity. The next step in our deep-mapping was to research
for links in the collection of local museum to the local foods and plants still
available to tourists today. We call this ethnobotany. Can visitors eat what is
in the paintings? Can they connect with the writer's experience of growing-up
there? This is a step towards co-creation.
The tourism team settled on a local museum that British and American
tourists can easily visit when they are there. It is within the old castle in the town. It is
called the Posavje Museum Brežice. Again, a lot of hard work for the English-speaker
to get hold of that Slovenian phrase and understand it. A challenge all small
towns try to solve. Let’s see why it is so difficult. Posavje is the local name
for that region of Slovenia, but you would not be able to find it with that
name in English. In English we now call it the Lower Sava Valley. Not much further
forward, we need to know what Sava is. The Sava is a huge river that drives the
hydroelectric power station in the town. At last a geographic connection, the
deep-mapping has helped with the name. Let's get back to the art.
Our research uncovered a wonderful landscape picture in the museum's collection by Miroslav Kugler. Kugler was a teacher at Brežice grammar school. The picture shows hay, that is drying in racks but more importantly for our food experience, it depicts a field of buckwheat in flower. Buckwheat was something we could investigate under the heading of ethnobotany. Kugler's picture shows us it is perfect for pollinators, the bees must love those white flowers. But can the tourism team find any recipes that use buckwheat? Can you remember eating anything local made from buckwheat?
Reference: Hayracks with Flowering Buckwheat by Miroslav Kugler, Late Summer 1972, Lower Sava Valley Region, Slovenia.
In the Book for Travel Writers
If you'd like to follow where we are in the travel writer's process you can find our 3 steps in Table 5.7 on page 96 of the paperback edition of the book.
(1) Mansfield, C. & Potočnik Topler, J. (2023). Travel Writing for Tourism and City Branding: Urban Place Writing Methodologies. Abingdon: Routledge.
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