“Neil deGrasse Tyson says, ‘It doesn’t matter where I go, I always, always look up.’ — and those are words to live by.” ~ Andréa Seiger
Summer’s coming. Time to take that curiosity out for a little spin!
Whether you’re traveling far from home or enjoying a little “staycation,” author, tour manager and explorer extraordinaire Andréa Seiger has tips for getting the most of your adventures.
Why visit cemeteries, science associations and bus stops? Can you smell green? What do your knees see? Andréa is a delightful coach for our wandering curiosity muscles.
The more aware you are, the more inclined you are to walk through that open gate. You will know it when you sense it, that when you are engaged and you’re not just being spatially aware and situationally aware… you open up that gate to what’s on the other side.
Listen to Choose to Be Curious #234: Tips for Wanderers, with Andréa Seiger
Andréa Seiger knows of what she speaks. Her book 111 Places in Washington that You Must Not Miss is a surprising and delightfully delicious look into a city many people think they already know.
I’ve now got a long list of places I’ve never been that I’m excited to check out this summer….And even if you won’t be in DC anytime soon, take a page from the kinds of places she highlights — then go discover some stories and adventures of your own!
Find Andréa Seiger on Instragram @urbansafaridc111.
Theme music by Sean Balick; “Curio” by Vacant Distillery, via Blue Dot Sessions.
You can subscribe to Choose to Be Curious on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
CHOOSE TO BE CURIOUS SHOP IS UNDER (RE)CONSTRUCTION. Back soon!
TRANSCRIPT: Tips for Wanderers, with Andréa Seiger
Andréa Seiger: Neil deGrasse Tyson says, “It doesn’t matter where I go, I always, always look up.” And those are words to live by.
(theme music)
Lynn Borton: You’re listening to Choose to Be Curious, a show all about curiosity. We talk about research and theory, but mostly it’s conversations about how curiosity shows up in work and life. I’m your host, Lynn Borton, welcome. Come, choose to be curious with us!
Until yesterday, I did not know that there was such a thing as destination curiosity scales, or that someone had coined the phrase “destination curiosity.”
The author is hoping this concept and scale prove helpful to the tourism industry. But I’m not going to go all research nerdy on you today.
Today, as summer approaches and we’re all maybe contemplating some adventure or another, I [00:01:00] thought it would be fun to touch base with one of the most curious and adventurous people I know, and see what she can teach the rest of us about getting out and exploring — whether we’re traveling far or just being tourists in our own town.
Today, It’s Tips for Wanderers.
The most recent text message I got from Andréa Seiger was from Oak Hill Cemetery in Washington, D. C., where she was hanging out with best-selling author George Saunders. Before that, it was an event in Las Vegas, I think, with a picture of an enormous and extremely elaborate balloon sculpture involving a black cat and emblazoned, Stay Curious.
I’ve gotten messages from Paris, Qatar, an Amtrak train somewhere in the Rockies, I think. She’s that friend. Andréa Seiger is principal and founder of Urban Safari. She’s a meeting planner, sports and destination operations manager, and tour manager. [00:02:00] She teaches a continuing education class for au pairs called Finding Stories in Uncommon Places.
And she’s author of 111 Places in Washington that You Must Not Miss. A delicious and delightful romp through the city she calls home.
Andréa once told me her secret superpower is talking to strangers. And it’s so true. I am delighted to have Andréa Seiger join me today. So welcome, Andréa.
AS: Hello! I’m so happy to be here with you.
LB: I’m so tickled to finally do this. Thank you for whatever it was that inspired you to reach out to me three years ago, to invite me to go for a walk. Talk about talking to strangers!
AS: Yeah, your feed crossed mine, and then at some point I discovered that you were in the D. C. area, and I thought, oh. I need to know her! Brassy as I am, let me see what happens if I message her and hopefully she’ll respond. [00:03:00] I did…
LB: You did, and it’s been fun ever since. And I’m excited about this because you and I have gone walking together a couple of times now exploring…and then I was thinking, oh, wouldn’t it be fun to just talk to somebody about taking their curiosity out on the town, which is what you do intuitively, instinctively, personally, and professionally. How did you swing that?
AS: I have to give credit to Mom and Dad. My parents were road trippers and international travelers, and they would put us in the car and say, let’s go. And we would drive to Mexico every year for Christmas and stay for a month and drive back.
And we always stopped….and a lot of times our route was created because of my Dad who would say, Oh, guess what? I found out there’s a brand new cowboy and Indian museum in Oklahoma [00:04:00]city. So we’re going to the border by way of Oklahoma city from Ohio.
I would say a lot of it just came from my parents saying, Oh, Well, what do you know? Look what I found. We’re gonna go check it out. And that’s what we would do. And we would hunt for Indian arrowheads in our backyard, which was where Tecumseh the chief of the Shawnee was born.
Never found one, but we were always looking. Dad’s like, see what you can find…
LB: But I love the idea that you should always be looking, you know, because you found other things, right? Maybe you didn’t find arrowheads, but presumably you found other things.
AS: Oh yeah, we found a lot of worms.
LB: You know, it’s interesting. I tell this story often about my Dad with his expression, if you change your point of view, you will see something new. That was like a refrain from my childhood. And I thought of it, actually, on the inside cover of your book about DC, you know, whether at eye level or knee level, there’s always something fascinating to behold.
And I thought, okay, which — I think I [00:05:00] know, but — which of these 111 stories is about knee level? And what a great way of thinking about looking around. I’m like, what are my knees seeing that I’m not seeing from up here? I love that.
AS: The one that just epitomizes that is the magic tree box in Logan Circle, on R Street. It’s this glorious fairy garden on one side, a hobbit garden on the other. It is an actual tree box in front of these people’s house… He’s an engineer. It’s not just a garden. It has running water. It has smoke in the chimneys and it has LED lights in the houses.
LB: It’s such a fresh take on a city that I think most people think they know.
So, what are your tips and tricks for sort of discovering the uncommon stories in the very iconic place? What do you [00:06:00] look for? How do you find them?
AS: A lot of it is just picking a street or picking a neighborhood. The one neighborhood to me that I just find fun, endlessly fascinating, is DuPont Circle. You can find 10,000 stories from the ridiculous to the sublime on a street corner, at a house, in someone’s garden, in a mansion, in DuPont Circle. And a lot of times, you know, in my explorations of the city, I’ll just say, meh, today I’m feeling northeast.
And sometimes I have a destination and sometimes I think, well, I’ll get off at that station or maybe that station. And a lot of times I’ll just sit there with my Google map and move my finger around my Google map and say, okay, what’s over there? And go hunting.
LB: So sometimes a destination in mind, but oftentimes not…
AS: Oh, oftentimes not.
LB: And so if you don’t have a [00:07:00] destination in mind, what’s your radar? I mean, what do you have up? What kinds of things are you looking for? Like, what’s a clue that there’s something more there?
AS: Open gates and doors. I will walk through an open gate or an open door in a split second. I’ve had a friend of mine who is a Qatari policeman tell me, what are you doing!? It’s abandoned. I have to see what’s there.
I do it. I’ve done it in Budapest. And another friend is like, where are you going? I want to see what’s in there.
And I do it all the time.
Color. I’m attracted to color. A lot of it is, I’m fascinated by the colors of nature. How does that brown and that purple and that green and that orange all exist in the same square foot?
And gates. I love looking at gates and my au pairs think I’m crazy and funny when I say [00:08:00] this: I look at these fancy ornate gates that you see all over DC and all over cities with 18th, 19th century architecture, and I see earrings — that would be the best pair of earrings!
LB: Sure.
AS: So it’s just random, odd things like that flourishes on buildings, Deco architecture. I’m fascinated by the ornamentation on buildings, frescoes, and stone cut.
LB: You’re just looking for something to catch your eye and then you dig in. Is that what happens?
AS: Yes. And I look up. Neil deGrasse Tyson says, I heard him say this on some interview, “It doesn’t matter where I go If I’m walking out the door of my building If I’m getting out of my car I always, always, always look up.”
LB: Yeah, me, too.
AS: And those are words to live by because I will go perhaps say to [00:09:00] one of the ornate buildings here in DC, the Library of Congress is a goldmine.
Look up and see what I can find or see…or go on kind of a treasure hunt. Ooh, what can I see up there?
Or the lobby of the Willard Hotel. I will walk in there, and if I’m with Americans or if I’m with people who live in another state, I’ll say, “Spend a couple minutes and find the emblem of your state on the ceiling of this lobby.”
And that’s a fun game to play. And I do that with adults. I don’t do that with kids. I do that with adults!
LB: But why not? Whatever it is that gets you looking, then you see other things, right?
It does sort of narrow your focus, because suddenly you’re just looking for your state’s emblem, but inevitably you will also notice other things that are going on.
AS: Oh yeah. You notice ornamentation, you notice shapes. Then I get off on the tangent of I wonder how they did that.
[00:10:00] And maybe the stonemason or the gilder had to lie on their back to paint that. Was it messy? Did they get paint in their eyes when they were lying on their backs on a scaffolding trying to paint the ceiling?
And then I get off on all these just random thoughts.
LB: But that’s also, you’re looking for the stories behind it, right? I mean, you say something about this in your book as well, about “come find your own stories,” right?
But a lot of what’s fun about the book and just walking around with you, you’ve taken the time to learn some of the backstory and then kind of make it your own, right?
And it connects you to the place, doesn’t it?
AS: It does. It does. And I come from the tourism industry… so we call them back of the house or line employees. These are the waiters, the bus drivers, the chauffeurs, the doorman, the housekeepers. [00:11:00] They’re the ones with the stories. The managers can’t tell you anything. They can tell you the history.
They can tell you, oh my, we had a situation and they may or may not tell you what the situation was, but the folks behind the doors, the folks in the, you know, behind the front desk, they’re the ones that have the crazy stories — and all of a sudden I have a nugget. And I have a little something to scribble down and say, I have to come back to that.
LB: So, okay, this is where we have to talk about the superpower of yours, of talking to strangers. Because I can attest to this. I mean, you managed to talk our way onto an active construction site, renovation of the Corcoran Estate Gatehouse or something, as I recall. We’re like up in the building looking at old brickwork and renovations. Man, I was just along for the ride. Like you do this all the [00:12:00] time, right? I mean, how do you do that? How do you do that?
AS: Oh, that’s my mom. I got that from my mom.
We sweet talked our way into the parade of the winners of Rio Carnival in 1979. We didn’t have tickets. We chatted up some cute guy and he says, ladies, would you like to see carnival Brazilian style? And mom and I were like, of course we would. And he walked us right into the band pit.
LB: Oh my gosh.
AS: So we were there with 2,000 drums. So yeah, that’s my mom. I love doing that.
LB: So if someone doesn’t think of themselves as good at talking to strangers, what’s the lotion that gets the motion going in that? How do people step into that? If they’re not raised in it, accustomed to it? Any, any tips on that?
AS: For those of us who [00:13:00] take mass transit, bus stops. Bus stops are a good place because you’re both standing there waiting your two minutes, your forty minutes for the next bus, and everybody gets a little restless, and nowadays with the earphones, people are oblivious.
LB: Right.
AS: It’s a great way to talk to older folks because they’re not all attached to their electronics.
It might just start with something about the bus being late. And then you just kind of get tangential and start chit-chatting. And sometimes it’s just as simple as, do you know when the next bus is due here? and going from there.
I think one of my favorite talks with strangers was… I was on a bus…and she got on the bus and sat in the seat adjacent to me. And she had a button on her coat that said, I might be old, but I’ve been to all the cool concerts.
LB: That’s an [00:14:00] invitation!
AS: That was an absolute invitation! So I looked at her and she was in her own little zone. And I said, so which concerts have you been to? And she started going through — and this was maybe a, maybe a five minute conversation — She said this, and this, and this. I said, well, I’ve been to some great ones too, and I listed mine, and She says, oh, and I, and when I was a teenager, I went to Woodstock. I said, okay, you win. I said, I’ve been to some really good ones like Tina Turner, but you win.
LB: See what I love about what you’re saying is that everything is an invitation to a conversation.
I talk to people for this show every week, right? And yet I’m (as you know) really actually quite introverted. It took me a long time to understand that the world was full of [00:15:00] invitations to conversation — as opposed to me sort of waiting for something really explicit, that there’s sort of an implicit invitation.
AS: There is, there is, and I think sometimes people just don’t know, or are surprised when you strike up a conversation with them. Some people jump right in. I’ve had the most fascinating conversations with strangers who will tell me a little nugget about their life or a little nugget about, Oh, I’m a native Washingtonian, and I’ve lived in this neighborhood my whole life. And that used to be, and this was where we went to get ice cream. And then you get a history lesson.
LB: So you work with au pairs. I think this is actually a really interesting group, right? This is young people in a foreign country with a very specific kind of a job and responsibility. What kind of tips do [00:16:00] you give them for getting outside of the household and being curious about a place and exploring — tips for wanderers, as you say.
What do you suggest to them? What do you offer them? What do you teach them?
AS: You know, I give them lots of prompts, but one of the things, I say, just go to a museum. Don’t wait for people to get going. If someone’s not available to join you, just go.
And we talk about smell. I used to take tours to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and I would say to them, when you get off the bus, it will smell green.
LB: Yep.
AS: And the ones who get it don’t even blink and then you get the puzzled looks and then I say, do you know what I mean by that? Think about that for a moment. And a lot of them will [00:17:00] get back on the bus and say, oh I see I smelled it. I smelled it!
If you use your senses it triggers stories It triggers memories, especially when it relates to food
LB: Mm.
AS: You know, the smell of mom’s kitchen or the smell of grandma’s kitchen. I can still remember what my grandmother’s kitchen smelled like.
Or things like graveyards. That is troublesome to people who are from a lot of other countries. They say, why on earth would you go to a graveyard looking for stories? Is it because they’re full of stories?
LB: Like graveyards have this kind of up and down — well, at least in, in this country anyway — kind of this up and down sort of cultural: you go there, you don’t go there. I don’t really know in other places, but they’re full of literally buried stories, but also lots of stories that are written in stone for all to see.
AS: [00:18:00] Exactly. I mean, you go there looking for art, you go there looking for symbolism. You go there and say, Ooh. Wait a minute. That name sounds familiar. And with these fancy little gadgets that we have in our hands, we can look up who that person was. And then maybe that leads you down the rabbit hole of another story.
Or, for example, here in Washington, you go to Congressional Cemetery, you go to Oak Hill Cemetery, you go to Mount Olivet. You can go specifically to find the people that you know are there that you’ve heard of that you want to see where they are, or you just go sauntering through and find a pretty stone and say, Hmm, I wonder who that was, or I wonder why there’s a dog as a headstone, or I wonder what does that flower symbolize, or what does that turtle symbolize, and then you go off on all these tangents, of curiosity that are [00:19:00] artistic or historic or personal or whatever they might be.
And then you kind of get hooked to the idea of looking for stories in weird, possibly uncomfortable places like that.
LB: So I actually wanted to stop for a moment anyway there because there are reasons why we want to be careful with our curiosity, right? And there is some judgments and some kind of risk analysis that needs to be in the mix as well, right?
AS: There is, there’s, you have to be aware. I always tell the au pairs, take your headphones out of your, off your head, put your phone away. Use it for nothing, except maybe a camera and pay attention!
And that gives you spatial awareness. It, it just gives you a sense of [00:20:00] sensory awareness of who and what is around you. And that’s also your sonar radar keeps you safe.
LB: Right.
AS: Especially, and frankly, especially for women. And then not only does it keep you safer, but then it makes you overall more aware, which makes you cue in on things on what we were talking about, sound and smell… And then maybe you want to reach down and touch something and see what that leaf smells like. Or you see mint, if you rub the mint and smell your fingers, your fingers smell like mint.
I think you have to intentionally make yourself aware of your surroundings, not only for your safety, but then that engenders the whole idea of, well, what do you know? I’ve walked by here a thousand times and never noticed that pine cone [00:21:00] finial on that fence!
LB: Yeah.
AS: And there you are. And then you’ve just had a curious moment that you didn’t even realize you needed to have.
LB: I love that too, because I think with each of those experiences, you build the depth of your intuition about what is okay to explore. So your risk analysis shifts as you go and your rewards continue to pile up — hopefully way outweighing whatever downside there is — but you have more information so that I think it makes you…it empowers you, is my guess, in terms of being able to do more of that. The more you do it, the easier it is, the better you are at assessing what might I find here.
AS: Yes. Yes, exactly. And I think the more aware you are, the more inclined you are to walk through that open gate.
You will know it when you [00:22:00] sense it, that when you are engaged and you’re not just being spatially aware and situationally aware — Well, first, you know, safety is, is definitely important, especially when you are, you poke around the way I do — But in that effort, you open up that gate to what’s on the other side or, Ooh, there’s, I see the, there’s light at the end.
You know, I have a friend who has radar for murals. Oh, you see that yellow building two blocks down? There’s a mural there. How do you know? Oh, well, I can see a little bit of, like, purple paint.
LB: A flicker of color!
AS: A flicker of color, and she’s usually right.
LB: Yeah. You know, one trick I learned from the urban sketching universe is you’re looking at the thing and you’re sketching it, and it’s like, turn around, look the other direction. We sort of get going, we’re destination-oriented, [00:23:00] and we walk past things we don’t even see because we’re unidirectional.
And I do this now. Every once in a while, I just sort of randomly turn around in my steps – it drives people crazy in the flow of traffic. But, I see things. I see things. I spot things.
AS: Isn’t that great? That’s a fun exercise in your own neighborhood.
And we did a lot of that when we were doing virtual classes with au pairs. You had to get out of the house to keep from losing your sanity. I’d say go walk around your neighborhood, either take a new walk or take a walk that you always take and see what you find and write it down.
And I give them a list of consider this. And then I make them search for a rainbow — it can be plastic, it can be, it can be flowers, it can be found object, it can be whatever. Go find this stuff.
LB: I don’t know what my segue is to my Big Jar of Wannabe Analogies, but it’s [00:24:00] time to go through that gate. So are you game for this?
AS: Absolutely.
LB: So here is my literal big jar. I have slips of paper in here; one for you, one for me, one for the audience. We’re going to make an analogy to curiosity with whatever is on these slips of paper.
AS: Okay, bring it on.
LB: Yours is popcorn. How is curiosity like popcorn? Mine is a whip and I have one for the audience. Do you want to go first or you want me to go?
AS: I can go
LB: Okay. How is curiosity like popcorn?
AS: Curiosity is like popcorn because you add a little heat, or you add a little blown air to it, and Something new pops out in front of you and you can touch it, see it, smell it, eat it…
LB: Speaking of all the senses!
AS: Take in all those senses [00:25:00] and try the, try that popcorn!
LB: I love it. Hmm. How is curiosity like a whip?
Speaking of senses, I mean, one of the things that I associate with a whip is the crack of a whip, the sound that a whip makes. And I think that there’s something about curiosity that has that same sort of whoosh and snap about it. There’s just this, this crack. It’s like suddenly things opening, things exploding, like popcorn. It’s about this sharp crack that’s really distinguishable and, and startling.
And audience, yours is sprinkler. How is curiosity like a sprinkler? Let us know on social media, #analogy.
Well, Andréa! This was a lot of fun and I’m like really excited about our next walk.
AS: Let’s go![00:26:00]
LB: You’ve been listening to Choose to Be Curious. I’m your host, Lynn Borton. Thanks for joining us here today. You can find all my shows at choosetobecurious.com. I hope you’ll follow me here, there, and on social media @choosetobecurious, where you can share your sprinkler analogy #analogy.
Many thanks to my delightful guest and walking buddy, Andréa Seiger. Find her on Instagram @UrbanSafariDC111. Links to Andrea on my website.
Thanks too, to Sean Ballack for our theme music. And this is “Curio” by Vacant Distillery ,via Blue Dot Sessions.
So pay attention, look up, talk to people at the bus stop.
I hope you’ll join us again next time. Until then, choose to be curious!
(music)
AS: There are a lot of public buildings. that aren’t museums, a lot of them you would never [00:27:00]even realize that you can walk into them. Check them out…
A lot of associations and a lot of these, especially science organizations, they give tours. They might have beautiful art in their lobbies…
You don’t need to go to a restaurant that social media tells you to go to. Just pick one that smells good, looks good…
And look for places that you would find uncommon, that you would never think to walk into. And just walk in.
And to those who think they need to plan everything they do, just, you know, walk out the door and turn left.
See what happens.
And you will meet people, you will see stuff that wasn’t on your radar,
And you might just have a really great meal, too.