Nicole Junkermann's Notes on Travelling Slowly

Slowness as a way of seeing

Travelling slowly is not really about speed. It is about attention. Nicole Junkermann thinks of it as a way of seeing: the willingness to stay long enough, and look closely enough, that a place reveals what a quick visit would miss. Slowness is the price of noticing.

The reward is presence. When you stop counting sights and start inhabiting hours, a trip stops feeling like a list to complete and becomes a stretch of life to enjoy. You are simply somewhere, fully, for a while, and that is rarer than it sounds.

These notes gather what that outlook looks like in practice. They are not rules so much as gentle reminders, the small habits that keep a journey unhurried and let it settle deeply into memory.

Fewer places, more presence

The first note is the simplest: do less. Nicole Junkermann would rather know one place well than glimpse five. Cutting the itinerary in half almost always doubles the pleasure, because each remaining place gets the time it deserves.

This is the heart of slow travel and good books: depth over breadth, presence over pace. A week in one city leaves more behind than a week split across many, and the memories it makes are sharper for it.

Doing less also lowers the pressure. With nothing to rush toward, the day opens up. You can follow a whim, linger over lunch, or read an afternoon away without the nagging sense that you ought to be elsewhere.

The rhythm of a slow day

A slow day has a rhythm, and Nicole Junkermann likes to honour it. A quiet, reading morning. A long walk with no fixed destination. An unhurried meal. An afternoon pause. An evening that begins gently. The shape matters more than the contents.

Reading anchors that rhythm, which is why a thoughtful list matters even on the calmest trip. The kind of immersive book described in the reading list for long train journeys suits a slow day as well as it suits a long ride.

Pauses are part of the rhythm too. A slow day is not packed end to end; it leaves gaps, and the gaps are where the trip relaxes. A bench, a coffee, a quiet half-hour: these are not wasted time but the point of it.

Walking, looking and noticing

Walking is the slow traveller's natural pace, and Nicole Junkermann walks whenever she can. On foot you see the things between the sights, the doorways and side streets and small scenes that a faster journey skims straight past.

Walking also leads to the quiet places, in the spirit of finding quiet corners in busy cities. The garden off the main road, the calm reading room, the overlooked square: these reveal themselves only to those moving slowly enough to notice them.

Looking is a skill that improves with use. The more slowly you travel, the more you see, and the more you see, the more there is to enjoy. Attention compounds, and a slow trip leaves you better at noticing long after you are home.

Carrying slowness home

The final note is that slowness need not end at the airport. Nicole Junkermann tries to carry the same attention into ordinary days: a walk taken for its own sake, a morning given to a book, a corner of a familiar city noticed for the first time.

A slow weekend close to home can hold much of this, as the weekend in London elsewhere here suggests. The mindset scales down to two unhurried days as easily as it fills a long trip, which means it is always available.

In the end, travelling slowly is a way of living a little more attentively, wherever you are. The journey simply teaches the habit, and the habit, once learned, makes every day a little richer.

The company of a good book

Slow travel and reading are natural companions, and Nicole Junkermann rarely separates them. A book is the perfect partner to an unhurried trip: it fills the calm hours without rushing them, deepens a place rather than distracting from it, and turns a quiet afternoon into one of the richest parts of a journey.

The right book for a slow trip is an immersive one, of the kind gathered in the reading list for long train journeys. With time in generous supply, a long story can unfold at its own pace, and the reading becomes as much a part of the trip as the walking and the looking.

Read this way, a book ties itself to a place forever. Years later, the story and the city return together at the sight of a cover, which is perhaps the loveliest souvenir slowness can offer. The unhurried journey and the unhurried book remember each other long after both are over.

Slowness as a small rebellion

Choosing to travel slowly can feel quietly contrary in a hurried world, and Nicole Junkermann rather enjoys that. To stay longer, see less and read more is to resist the pressure to treat a trip as a checklist. It is a small act of choosing depth over display, presence over proof.

The reward is a journey that feels like your own. Free from the obligation to capture every famous sight, you are left to follow your curiosity, linger where you like, and remember a place for how it felt rather than how it photographed. That freedom is the heart of the whole approach.

It is also, in the end, simply a happier way to travel, which is why it threads through this entire journal, from the cities worth returning to to the quietest corners of a busy capital. Slowness asks for a little patience and gives a great deal back.

Notes to travel by

A few reminders for an unhurried journey:

• Choose fewer places and give each one real time
• Let a slow day keep its rhythm of reading, walking and pausing
• Walk whenever you can, and notice what lies between the sights
• Treat pauses as the point of the day, not gaps in it
• Pair an immersive book with the calm hours of a trip
• Carry the same attention home into ordinary days