There was a time when someone could seriously say, “Want to leave for an island tomorrow?” Today, that sounds about as realistic as proposing a trip to outer space.
The budget is daunting. The planning is relentless. And even the view can disappoint.
I have a photograph from 1987. My father is wearing flip-flops, carrying a watermelon in one hand and a newspaper in the other. He looks into the camera with the expression of a man who has no idea what he’ll eat tomorrow or where he’ll be in two weeks.
In other words, he’s on vacation.
Today, if someone doesn’t know where they’ll be in two weeks, they’re either considered suspicious or terrible at managing their digital calendar.
I’m not sure exactly when summer lost its summer-ness.
Maybe it happened during that July when everyone was chasing Pokémon. Maybe a little before that, or a little after, when we started planning vacations with the same diligence once reserved for Monopoly games. Maybe it was the years when we boarded ferries holding up health certificates behind face masks. Or perhaps it was when the carefree philosophy of “Let’s go and see what happens” was replaced by a spreadsheet with six tabs, four color codes and a link to discounted ferry tickets.
The truth is that vacations used to begin with an idea.
Now they begin with a notification.
In January, you buy tickets for August. In February, you book your accommodations. In March, an influencer from Oslo posts a video about the island you’ve chosen. By April, prices have doubled. In May, you start worrying whether your hotel has enough photogenic corners. In June, you’re reading articles titled “Ten Secret Beaches That Are No Longer Secret.”
By July, you’ve spent so much energy preparing for your vacation that you’re already exhausted before it begins.
We used to travel to broaden our horizons.
Now everyone stares toward the horizon for a different reason: they’re waiting for the other tourists to move out of the frame.
Then August arrives—the sequel to a movie that was overhyped and can’t quite live up to expectations.
The same photo. The same angle. The same brunch. The same whitewashed walls. The same wooden sign featuring an inspirational quote in English.
People now travel thousands of miles to recreate an image they’ve already seen thousands of times.
Overtourism is the natural outcome of this phenomenon. We are no longer searching for discovery; we are searching for confirmation. When everyone wants to visit the same “hidden gem,” it stops being hidden and often stops being a gem altogether. It becomes a monument, something you queue up to see and pay admission to visit.
The entire experience feels pre-consumed.
The beaches I remember were filled with people reading books. Today, they’re filled with people photographing books.
Once upon a time, someone packed Ernest Hemingway for a summer trip. Now they pack a Hemingway cover and may never discover what it means “for whom the bell tolls.”
Cinema has always understood summer differently.
From the aimless wandering of teenagers in coming-of-age films to the sun-drenched sensuality of Call Me by Your Name, from the endless afternoons of Italian cinema to the flirtatious longing of Éric Rohmer’s Claire’s Knee, the essence was always the same: people got lost because they allowed themselves to drift.
As Greek poet Titus Patrikios wrote:
“Imagine if I hadn’t made it in time this summer
to see the blinding light again,
to feel the touch of the sun on my body,
to smell fresh and decaying scents,
to taste sweet, sour and peppery flavors,
to hear the cicadas deep into the night…”
Today, we rarely get lost.
GPS knows where we are. Our friends know where we are. Strangers know where we are. Even our hotel sends us a message asking for a review before we’ve checked out.
Adventure requires uncertainty, and we’ve developed something close to a pathological allergy to anything undefined.
In Greek, one could jokingly call it allergyria—an invented word meaning an allergy to joy, spontaneity and lightheartedness.
If we stretched the metaphor further, it would describe an abnormal reaction to things that should be harmless: laughter, excitement, enthusiasm, pleasure, carefree conversation, dancing in the sun, human connection, even the touch of another person’s skin.
And then there’s the financial thriller running parallel to every modern vacation.
You book four ferry tickets and your credit card reacts like a character from a Greek tragedy. The costs rise. The portions shrink. The math stops making sense.
I’m not arguing that the past was perfect.
We missed boats. We arrived at rooms that looked as if they had been decorated by someone with a deep personal grudge against aesthetics. Travel involved inconvenience, discomfort and occasional disaster.
But it also contained surprise.
And surprise has become a luxury.
Yet summer still resists.
It hides in a café that doesn’t have an Instagram account. In a beach that isn’t trendy. In a delayed ferry. In a conversation that goes on longer than necessary. In a day that never becomes a social media post. In the decision to leave your phone behind and allow yourself to be bored.
Because boredom was once an essential ingredient of summer.
It was from boredom that romances emerged. Absurd adventures. Mistakes. Stories worth telling.
Perhaps that’s why it feels as though summer has disappeared.
Not because the season itself is gone, but because summer was always more than a season. It was a rhythm of life. The feeling that time stretched endlessly ahead. The luxury of being bored without guilt.
As the Mad Hatter tells Alice in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: “You’re not quite the same as you used to be.”
It feels like the perfect caption for our era.
We’ve lost some of our sense of wonder.
And yet, perhaps there is reason for optimism.
Summer seems to have left without saying goodbye.
Which probably means it’s coming back.
