Today we will visit...stories

Did I tell you about the time I went to Jordan? Did I ever tell you how I met your mother? Tell me again how your lost your watch and wife on the same day.

Our lives consists of stories. Stories help us shape our lives, give meaning to it, construct and maintain social structures. In other words, stories, or, rather, narrative, are very important to us.

The same goes for tourism: tourists visits stories, and they have a narrativistic attitude, as Scott McCabe and Clare Foster argue.[1] Touristic experiences are expressed by telling stories about people, places and circumstances. When I will be telling about my trip to Jordan, I'm telling a story about myself in this beautiful and exotic country. So, narrative is needed in researching the touristic experience. But is narrative needed to attract tourists?

According to Rustom Mkhjian, deputy head of the Baptismal Site of Bethany, it is very much needed. He talked to us today, very passionately indeed, on the story of Jesus being baptized at the site of Bethany at the Jordan river. Even though the site itself was not one of  the most spectacular (you'd expect more grandeur where Christianity was essentially born), it did inspire awe among the student group. Rustom told us that the site tells an inspiring, strong story, and that they wanted to keep the site as pure as possible. So no big churches or museums or restaurants: only the bare structures of that time as a decor for the story.

Someone confided in me and said that she could easily see Jesus being baptized here, but couldn't picture the ruins of Jerash as a bustling Roman city. Sometimes stories are stronger than visual remains. Narrative triumphs ruins.

1. The somewhat basic baptismal site

 2. The group sitting on the Jordan site of the river. On the other side Israel, which has a different approach to restoring and exploiting sites when it comes to keeping a site 'pure'.

1 McCabe, S., & Foster, C. (2006). The role and function of narrative in tourist interaction. Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change, 4(3), 194-215.